Read and Pray for Love, Reverence, and Understanding

Unitarian Universalism is a tradition that loves and reverences words of wisdom, holy words, spoken, remembered, and set down, cherished and passed down over the millennia. One of the reasons I could become a Unitarian Universalist was this thankfulness for texts and traditions.

I am very sad to meet folks who believe it is a good idea to ban and burn books. Books have been and continue to be great friends along my journey. Books are patient, waiting for when we can open them and sit down with the wonderful Mullah Nasruddin or the amazing Baal Shem Tov or find peace in the Lotus Sutra or ponder duty in the Bhagavad Gita. I can find comfort in the libraries of Hebrew and Greek Scriptures (TNKH and New Testament) and deep inspiration in the Qur'an and the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH - Peace Be Upon Him).

Living on the side of love isn't easy. My grief over threatening to burn texts is akin to my grief over other acts affirming hatred and violence over peace and love. But fury isn't going to fix fearfulness or harness the hatred that makes burning books and promoting misunderstanding seem like a strategy for goodness. That such fearfulness and hatred is coming from another clergy person -- someone who's job it to help folks tend toward goodness in this troubled life -- who belongs to a tradition that reverences holy words and even calls God The Word, deeply pains me. Because that's how the Qur'an is reverenced: as a living being, a direct presence of God in the world, to which we can listen and from which we can learn.

When the angel appeared to the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) to give the poetry that became the Qur’an, the angel pressed a book against the Prophet’s heart and said, “Read/Write!” (I’m told the word in Arabic has both meanings.) While no where near the prophetic greatness of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH), in my own religious tradition, 216 years ago on September 5, a young man, Hosea Ballou ardent to show people God’s love was drawn out of the crowd and ordained through the pressing of a Bible to his chest. Ballou cherished holy words and wrote thousands of words to convey God’s abiding love to others over the course of his own lifetime, changing my religious tradition dramatically.

Literature can grant us new ways of meeting our neighbors and appreciating and loving them as we ourselves would like to be appreciated and loved. Words of love and care convey the sacred in many traditions; we would do well to read and pray, not in isolation and fear, but with our neighbors, for love, reverence, and understanding.