Creativity beyond the secular

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.”

― Octavia E. Butler, Black feminist science fiction writer

Immersing in our monthly theme of Creativity, I’ve been thinking of the theologian Henry Nelson Wieman. He wrote extensively of the “Creative Good,” a process you might choose to translate as “God.” He felt that there was a pervasive force for good in the universe, which flows through humans but is much much larger than us. As a religious naturalist, he believed that “nothing has causal efficacy except actual events.” In other words, he trusted nature and data. But he also believed that there is a power greater than humans, “which operates in a way qualitatively different from human operations, and produces values more important for human existence and human improvement” than what we can manufacture on our own. It’s not all about us, but we can listen and learn from what is beyond our imperfect understanding.

Wieman’s writing is academic and dense. But the ideas come alive for me when I am outside with the sun and the breeze and the abundance of birdsong. Near Council Grove last weekend, I joined several other Fellowship members at Flint Hills Wisdom Keepers, an annual gathering of roughly 70 indigenous elders and open-hearted learners. Unplugging my phone and gathering in a circle to hear ancestral knowledge, sing, pray, name my deep intentions, and eat delicious food, I returned to a reassuring state of humility. I’m not in charge. At times, my voice is heard, my leadership is received. At other times, I am here to listen, learn, and grow. I reconnected with my confidence that while I have a role to play on this planet, I am most successful when I surrender to a life force greater than my own narrow beliefs and commitments.

This weekend, we kept a fire burning for 36 hours, with different people taking two hour shifts day and night. We listened to stories and appreciated each other’s creativity. Artists brought their work, including Ruben Ironhorse Kent, who shared his art and wisdom with the Fellowship last October. I am inspired to notice the way UUFM already functions in this way, and how we might further cultivate this organic collaborative creativity.

As a religious naturalist, I am concerned about the strains in our liberal culture, and Unitarian Universalism in particular, that value measurable data over experiential learning, or “science” over “ritual,” whatever those terms mean. At times, the Sunday Services Team has received requests for more “secular services,” but as a community we have not yet defined this term. I feel that it’s important for us to come together to express not only our wonder at the facts, but also our deep longings for the future. Only in this way can we make credible commitments to that future. Reflecting on the importance of strategic organizing to move beyond racism and patriarchy, author and organizer adrienne maree brown writes:

At this point, we have all of the information we need to create a change; it isn’t a matter of facts. It’s a matter of longing, having the will to imagine and implement something else. We are living in the ancestral imagination of others, with their longings for safety and abundance, a longing that didn’t include us, or included us as enemy, fright, other.

Elsewhere in her book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, she reminds us that we are future ancestors. Our imaginations will shape the experiences of seven generations ahead of us; let’s do them justice! My time with indigenous elders last weekend reminded me of the ancestral imagination of the people of our land, as well as our opportunity and obligation to listen to their diasporic descendants. In my weekly land acknowledgements I often take time to qualify that “we are still learning how to do this.” This learning is not a simple process; it must be infused with longing, love, and hope.

Longing, loving, and hoping are not secular practices. When I speak of us as a spiritual community, I mean that we are doing more than thinking, talking, and making decisions. We are investing in relationships with each other, our descendants, our ancestors, our land, our neighbors, and that Creative Good that is bigger than each and all of us. This is the kind of creativity that we are tending during our circle around the fire Sunday morning, and that inspires us to take fire-keeping shifts throughout the week. We are not always gathered in reverence. There is much laughter. Many of us go out and complete meaningful work in the secular world. Sometimes we do that together. But we survive as a religious community because we care for something more profound, something beyond words and captured only in symbols like the flaming chalice. What is your name for it?

In faith and love,
Pastor Isa