Fear that not. Be not awed. Know it to be the embodiment of thine own intellect. As it is thine own tutelary deity, be not terrified. Be not afraid, for in reality is it the Bhagavān Vairochana, the Father-Mother. Simultaneously with the recognition, liberation will be obtained: if they be recognized, merging thyself, in at-one-ment, into the tutelary deity, Buddhahood in the Sambhoga-Kāya will be won. -The Tibetan Book of the Dead

I'm in the middle of a kind of conversion experience. Last year, reading this blog, you would have found me expressing a scrupulous antagonism toward all things religious. Today, I find myself increasingly interested in reaching out to people of faith, hoping to find common ground, and help build a cultural ethic that is respectful of religion without the unethical, immoral, violence, political fractiousness, and anti-intellectual baggage that religion sometimes brings, and with a shared commitment to such values as reverence (for life, and also for a mysterious something larger than any one person's individual experience), humility, compassion, brother- and sister-hood, family, and community that many (though not most) religious traditions strive for.

Part of this change is politically inspired. I see my nation increasingly fracturing along religious fault lines. I've been guilty (GUILTY!) of practicing oppositional and confrontational politics and religion, which I've slowly learned does little more than to build walls higher, and alienate people from one another. Certainly, my guilt is a forgivable reaction to the purposeful divisiveness coming from politically powerful religious and political figures who are striving to shut out those who have progressive and secularist views from the national debate. But, by butting heads with them at every opportunity, using the same intemperate language and tactics as they, I discover that I am doing more to assist them in shutting the rest of us out than I am to keep the doors of productive discourse open.

I believe there are unexplored opportunities for reaching out to others - moderates, and those who are extreme because the only "spiritual" leadership they know comes from radicals. I have hope that we can find a common ground with many of our evangelical brothers and sisters, and people of all faiths and none, and build a better society.

One of the first stumbling blocks is language about God. It is so difficult to reach consensus when we do not share even a kernel of shared core beliefs and a common language with which to talk about them. That means that there is a need to add a new dimension to our lexicon of religion...

The first step to achieving this is to find what we can agree on when discussing "God". Being an atheist, if someone mentions to me that "God" wants so-and-so, my first instinct is to grab my wallet and remind them that they have no evidence of God. But, perhaps a more productive approach would be to talk to them about the tiny kernel we agree upon. God, like every other idea, belief, or even fact, is - at the end of the day - an abstraction in our minds. I have a mental concept of a building to which I will be driving in about an hour, where I will sit down at a desk and work in front of a computer terminal. Those things are real, but they are also mental images tied to a set of ideas that imperfectly represent them in my mind. So, whether God is real or not, God is also a set of mental images and ideas imperfectly represented in the mind of the believer.

And, though I don't have a belief in any of the theological concepts that go together in the mind of the believer to form their concept of God, I do have to acknowledge that I can concieve and believe in the fact that the universe I live in is much larger than my individual experience can comprehend. That "Greater Mystery", could - without doing violence to the term - be an understanding of God that even the atheist can share with the believer. After all, believers universally think of God (or the Dharma, or whatever) as just such a greater mystery.

I want to reshape my "Sunday Sermons" for the future from the starting point of shared values and earnestly shared ideas of "God". From now on, I intend for my Sunday post to go in the new blog category of "The Ecumenical UU", and to serve the purpose of building bridges within our culture that will serve traffic no matter what direction it is coming from. I would like to see evangelical types be able to sing with Unitarians the wonderful anthem (with a beautiful and simple melody) called Spirit of Life, and for everyone to sing together - with their own individual ideas about what the Spirit is, but also in celebration of a kernel of commonality between us all in reverence for that Spirit. The lyrics:

Spirit of Life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close; wings set me free; Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.

Update: By coincidence, Philocrites has news of Christians moving to embrace philosophical humanism... I hope they will consider folks like me allies.