By Daniel Rigney
Today I’m coming out of the shadows to acknowledge my affiliation with a small and obscure religious cult. I’d rather not identify the cabal by name quite yet. I’ll just call it U2 (pronounced “you squared”) and leave it at that.
If U2 had an official credo, it might be “We’ll take our wisdom wherever we can find it.”
Every major religious tradition seeks wisdom in, among other sources, its own intrinsic canon of sacred scripture. The Bible. The Quran. The Dhammapada. The Tao Te Ching. The revelatory scriptures of U2 could be called simply “the library,” and would include not just the venerable writings of other religious traditions, but also myriad works of philosophy, natural and social science, fiction and the arts.
U2, on its best day, is open to insights from every direction. Ancient teachings from every age and continent. Cutting-edge science. Frame-breaking art. Birdsong and leaves of grass. Personal experience. Shared reflection. Silent meditation. Lessons learned from communal activism in the service of civil and human rights. All of this within the context of a community of shared concern that respects each member's freedom of religious thought.
U2 on its best day brings an attitude of healthy skepticism to whatever it encounters, but also a spirit of openness to the unfamiliar, as it seeks to distinguish between those cultural memes that are likely to sustain and nourish life on Earth, and those that aren’t.
Unlike other secret societies, U2 is shamelessly unselective, welcoming into its midst persons manifesting the full rainbow-spectrum of ethnicities, genders, and social backgrounds. It welcomes refugees from every sort of fundamentalism. It welcomes gays and straights alike. It welcomes scientific geeks and artistic nerds. It welcomes theists, atheists, agnostics, and those (like me) who think the whole theism-atheism debate is a dusty and tiresome relic of 19th century culture. And while the modal politics of its members are decidedly progressive and leftward, U2 preserves a respect for what residual wisdom may be found in more conservative traditions.
The founders of U2 never intended that it should become a secret society. Things just turned out that way. Most people have never heard of U2. Fewer than one in a thousand Americans, and one in ten thousand Earthlings worldwide, participate actively in its communal celebrations. Its poetic water and flower communions. The lighting of its flaming chalices. Its call to a life of prophetic, nonviolent action.
U2 has so much to offer a world groping for a meaningful synthesis of science and religion, of intellect, heart, and hand, of person and community. The world needs a living liberal religious tradition that takes its wisdom wherever it can find it.
Yet I fear that U2 will remain largely unknown to a vast and potentially receptive audience of younger people, and particularly those who describe themselves increasingly as ‘spiritual but not religious.’ The next generation of passengers aboard Starship Earth might want to learn more about this progressive and free-thinking religious tradition (if they only knew of its existence) as they navigate their way through an uncertain and seemingly accelerating future.
If you're curious, the "cult" in question is Unitarian-Universalism, or UU.
Danagram
Today I’m coming out of the shadows to acknowledge my affiliation with a small and obscure religious cult. I’d rather not identify the cabal by name quite yet. I’ll just call it U2 (pronounced “you squared”) and leave it at that.
If U2 had an official credo, it might be “We’ll take our wisdom wherever we can find it.”
Every major religious tradition seeks wisdom in, among other sources, its own intrinsic canon of sacred scripture. The Bible. The Quran. The Dhammapada. The Tao Te Ching. The revelatory scriptures of U2 could be called simply “the library,” and would include not just the venerable writings of other religious traditions, but also myriad works of philosophy, natural and social science, fiction and the arts.
U2, on its best day, is open to insights from every direction. Ancient teachings from every age and continent. Cutting-edge science. Frame-breaking art. Birdsong and leaves of grass. Personal experience. Shared reflection. Silent meditation. Lessons learned from communal activism in the service of civil and human rights. All of this within the context of a community of shared concern that respects each member's freedom of religious thought.
U2 on its best day brings an attitude of healthy skepticism to whatever it encounters, but also a spirit of openness to the unfamiliar, as it seeks to distinguish between those cultural memes that are likely to sustain and nourish life on Earth, and those that aren’t.
Unlike other secret societies, U2 is shamelessly unselective, welcoming into its midst persons manifesting the full rainbow-spectrum of ethnicities, genders, and social backgrounds. It welcomes refugees from every sort of fundamentalism. It welcomes gays and straights alike. It welcomes scientific geeks and artistic nerds. It welcomes theists, atheists, agnostics, and those (like me) who think the whole theism-atheism debate is a dusty and tiresome relic of 19th century culture. And while the modal politics of its members are decidedly progressive and leftward, U2 preserves a respect for what residual wisdom may be found in more conservative traditions.
The founders of U2 never intended that it should become a secret society. Things just turned out that way. Most people have never heard of U2. Fewer than one in a thousand Americans, and one in ten thousand Earthlings worldwide, participate actively in its communal celebrations. Its poetic water and flower communions. The lighting of its flaming chalices. Its call to a life of prophetic, nonviolent action.
U2 has so much to offer a world groping for a meaningful synthesis of science and religion, of intellect, heart, and hand, of person and community. The world needs a living liberal religious tradition that takes its wisdom wherever it can find it.
Yet I fear that U2 will remain largely unknown to a vast and potentially receptive audience of younger people, and particularly those who describe themselves increasingly as ‘spiritual but not religious.’ The next generation of passengers aboard Starship Earth might want to learn more about this progressive and free-thinking religious tradition (if they only knew of its existence) as they navigate their way through an uncertain and seemingly accelerating future.
If you're curious, the "cult" in question is Unitarian-Universalism, or UU.
Danagram
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