May's Transitional Thoughts

As UUs we certainly have our serious and even tense moments. However, there is a characteristic of Unitarian Universalism that I think sets us apart from most other religious groups in an unexpected way. This characteristic is what I would call “the light touch.” By that I mean there is more room for joy, optimism, and humor in the way we approach religion than in any other religious approach of which I am aware, despite those occasions at which we sometimes can be rather grim.

Obviously, the “light touch” is not our exclusive pos- session. Any other approach to religion that allows human beings spontaneously to express their human nature can have it. But, that is just the point. Not many other approaches to religion celebrate the actuality of being human as fully as we do. At least I don’t know of any. It is not that we deny the worth of the higher reaches of theological speculation or the imperatives of moral and spiritual aspiration. These are important to us in many ways and in many degrees.

It is not that we deny the worth of such things, but that, almost to a person, we affirm the beauty, the joy, and the liveliness of being human in the first place. We affirm being able to think for ourselves, to feel for ourselves, to do for ourselves, to laugh for ourselves and, when the inevitable occasion arises, to laugh at ourselves. It even makes sense to laugh at our own religion when it becomes stuffy and self-important.

It is almost second nature for many of us UUs to take a step back, look at ourselves and other human beings, and then acknowledge the quirkiness we see all around us. It is almost our second nature to analyze the strange sights we see and try to make artistic and metaphorical sense out of them.

That is why we produce such interesting celebrants of the human condition as Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, and Bela Bartok—each of them a Unitarian or Universalist or both. Sometimes it takes science fiction or fictionalized music to make sense of who we are, where we are, and why we are. Our penchant for acknowledging our quirkiness is, also, why Steve Allen said so much for us -- and to us. It is why P.T. Barnum, his circus, and his long stream of human oddities seem to fit so well within our tradition.

I am intrigued by Barnum’s three ring circus in which he had three acts going all at the same time. Univer- salist, though he was, there are reminiscences of the Trinity in that image -- as if, in one ring, we have the Father doing his heavenly high wire act; in another ring, the Son in a clown’s suit, his head in a dogmatic lion’s mouth; and, in the third, the Holy Ghost inspiring and then floating through hoops of moral fire. I don’t know that Barnum thought of his three rings in such terms but, being latter day UUs, we can. We can look on the circus seriously and religion humorously and celebrate them both.

We seriously (and lightly) celebrate the human in its many forms. Some of us may get a little stiff-necked and rigid at times -- like the puritanical religions out of which many of us came -- but we never lose the tug that the “light touch” makes on our religious heart.

Don Vaughn-Foerster