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Thandeka and Affect Theo_logy: Questions And Answers For Unitarian Universalism
The Reverend Dr. Linda Anderson Presented to the Ohio River Group, October 2008
When asked to explain Unitarian Universalism briefly I often say we are a non-creedal, ethically based religion, meaning'that we claim the right and the responsibility to structure our own personal faith systems: This, of course, results in a community of people who define their beliefs in very. different terms. What holds us togethe1· through such differences is an ethical approach to life, as delfneated in the Statement of Principles and Purposes. Unitarian Universalists seek authenticity and congruence. Faith and reason_ both must play a role in beliefs; experience and conscience, in dialogue with community values, must each play a role in
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-�"· --, .: ·' · On the whole, I think this is an acceptable description for those who might look for une:But at the same time I know that l have left something out; I've missed something of substance. I've not described our vitality, our energy together. I don't know what it is, but I sense it is some kind of bridge between the individual and the community, between one's beliefs and one's actions in the world. Why are we together if our religious communities are all about individuals? Some kind of enlivening connection exists among us.
Perhaps this connection is the elusive "spirituality" of our faith, that which some would claim unites us. I am looking for words to depict that which brings us alive and makes us a viable religious community. Where; then, might we begin to look? I suspect we would recognize the
. source of our vitality in the Unitarian Universalist spiritual practices that would flow from such a center and would speak to who we are in our hearts ?J.S well as our minds and that would allow us
· experiences of depth and give rise to inspiration for ethical living, even with our different beliefs.I think we would, but I do not find such practices among us now, (perhaps due to my own lack ofperception, but nevertheless). 1 Thus I seek the enlivening spirit that holds us as UnitarianUniversalists, as well as the spiritual practices that would embody such a spirit.
The more we can know and speak of these things, the stronger we will be. Thus, when Isay. "spirituality" I do not mean one belief that we all share because I don't think articulatip.g astatement of belief would lead to anything particularly meaningful or profound, given ouremphasis upon freedom of belief. Nor do I look for "spirituality" in our approach to religion. Ido agree that we share an approach, which I stated above, but I do not consider it deep enough toserve as our life force.
Thandeka, a Unitarian Universalist theologian, minister, writer and professor, haspresented us with an increasingly clear portr!3,it. of what she calls Affect Theology. In AffectTheology, Unitarian Universalism might find a way to articulate those enlivening connectionsbetween the individual and the communal that give us our presence in the world and to findspiritual practices that would speak to them. In this paper I want to explore Affect Theology:
1 The "Fulfilling the Promise" survey, discussed in Rebecca Parker, Blessing the World, p. 87, indicates that 75% of us find something missing in UU'ism.
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what it is, where it comes from, and most particularly its implications for both the deepening a·nd broadening of Unitarian Universalism.
Affect Theology We experience life first through the sensate impressions coming to our bodies from the
outside world, impressions which we can feel as emotions, dispositions, moods and the like. Our · thoughts, which define and seek to understand what happens to us, are influenced by our feelings because we seek to have congruence between the sensate impressions of our bodies, the feelings through which we experience those impressions, and our ideas about them. Our feelings influence our b�liefs and our attitudes. In turn, our thoughts and feelings manifest in the actions, the words and deeds we offer to the world. These four factors of human experience .form our religious consciousness as well.
Thandeka ass-erts that the human -body, not human reason, makes "believers of us all." (Thandeka, ·2006) This is the keystone of ,Affect Theology and it presents a different understanding of religious experience. On our Unitarian side, we have long held that reason and freedom lie at the heart of our religion. Thandeka would paint a more nuanced picture and �he implications of this picture lead us in new directions. .,
Thandeka reminds us that Unitarian Universalists begin with personal experience as the heart of religious experience. "The living tradition we share draws from many sources" and the first of these- is "Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life." Personal, particular experience of that which is outside us, which is 'bigger than us, which transcends us. Such experience tou�hes our spirits and opens us, in a deep and multileveled way, to the very core of life, by whatever names we call that core.
Affect Theology rests upon what we mean when we say "personal experience." Thandeka points to Friedrich Schleiermacher's ideas as influencing her own.2 Schleiermacher is, she notes, · the theologian who "made the first reference for religious experience a biological fact of the human organism .... " Religious experiences are not founded on religious beliefs, " because all such beliefs are culturally specific and descriptive of personal ideas." Nor are religious . experiences founded upon reason. "Rather, the foundation of religious experience is a feeling, the feeling of being inextricably conn�cted to everything and everyone." (Thandeka 2004, 77,-78)
Schleiermacher called this biology of the human organism by the term affect, which is scientifically defined as· "the genetically dictated, emotional operating system of the · brain." (Tharideka 2004, 78 quoting Panksepp) Affect is a feeling, mood or disposition that arises when we receive a sense impression. For example, on the first spring day after a long winter, the sun warms our skin. Sensate impression from the outsjde world. We feel hopeful, or happy or grateful, etc. and we turn our face to the sky. Affect.
2 I am not a scholar of Sehl eiermacher and so in this paper I will primarily make use of Thandeka's understandings of his work and its influences upon her own.
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Affect is a non-sensate, internal, physical signal system genetically predetermined to have us express the impact of others and the world0 upon us, through feeling, facial expression, physiological responses such as sweating, shaking, body language, etc. It is the felt response to the sensate impression; the co·mmentary on what is going on inside us in a sensate way. When we are aware of our affective state, �e are aware of a mood, a feeling, a disposition. The world impresses itself upon us and we react. With that comes an awareness of what has transpired in us;· an awareness which expresses itself, Schleiermacher's affect.
Also with that comes an awar�ness of an external object or being which has impressed upon us, which expresses itself as what Schleiermacher calls intuition. We believ� our affect, which tell us that something external to us has impressed. upon us in_ a sensate way. We look outside of ourselves for that somet_hing. By our physical organic nature we believe in something . .
beyond ourselves because we experience the world as impressing itself upon us from outside of ourselves, We walk into an air conditioned room and we shiver with the cold. If questioned, we could readily acknowledge _tha..t. ,:we .. are aware .that the cause of our shivering is the air temperat�e ·i�
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th� -;�;�.;:·t� \�h'f�h, �e.,_i're.::rea�ting physiologically. We do not l��k·fo�·the . causeof our shivering except as a change in conditions external to our own bodies. Both the awareness of the outside impressing agent, as weU as our awareness of what has happened to us internally, our affect, happen somehow prior to thinking about, defining, explaining, understanding ouremotions and who or what is acting upon .them.
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But then we do think, or move into our mind consciousness. We seek to put wo.rds to ourexperiences. We take action. We look at the temperature on th.e thermostat, see that it registers 65 degrees and conclude that 65 is too cold a temperature for comfortable air conditioning. As that happens, the feelings that arise in us, based upon our physical experiences in the world and with the world, provide the orientation for our thinking. We believe our feelings, in this case discomfort with the cold, and use them as a guide to the world. We build our ideas around the certitude that ·accompanies our feelings. The feelings sanction the ideas as related to the world in which we live. (Thandeka 1995, 94-97) Thus Thandeka says "Our bodies. make believers of us all." (Thandeka 2006)
The physical is the first response. We walk into a bakery and smell bread baking. Maybe we take a deeper breath and we salivate. We feel hungry and we smile. We walk into a pile of dog excrement and we recoil. Maybe breathe a _little more shallowly. We. feel disgust and we frown. These physiological and 'affect responses arise in us without our conscious control of them. And, when we respond witr an affect'to the impress of the world, our response generates a response back from the world ... , Maybe the owner of the bakery smiles back at us, with appreciation. Maybe the dog .ciwner averts his/her eyes and feels embarrassment.
External impression gives rise to internal expression, affect, which becomes an external impression to s9meone else, giving rise to his/her ovm internal expression and so forth. Our personal experience, beginning with the sensate, does not exist with.in ourselves alone because we take it in and then we respond to it. Thus what goes on within us, which I have just described as sensate impression, affect ( emotional response to the sensate), thinking and action, is returned by us back to the outside world, causing the process to continue over and over .again. If you play tennis you know this is like serving the ball, having the person you're playing with return serve, which you then return back to him/her and sc:i the play goes on with each player responding to the
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the particular location and type of hit. This is how I understand Martin Luther King Jr. 's inescapable network of mutuality. It is the Indra's net of Buddhism, an image in whfoh everything reflects everything else and in which everything else is reflected in everything. I took a picture of a spider web once, right after a rain. In all the drops of rain on the web, if you look closely, you can see an image of me holding the camera. An Indra's net of interconnectio11 ..
The Albany Medical Center has a Starbucks across the street, so one day, after exhausting . hours in the ICU with a congregant, I wanted some tea. I walked into Starbucks and stopped at the nearest counter. There was a customer there, talking socially to an employee behind the counter, and two other workers also behind the counter. I stood there. The social conversation went on and on. I watched as another customer came in and went to what I now saw was a second counter, where she was immediately waited upon. The world at Starbucks was ignoring me, impressing upon me its silence. Before I could name the feelings that situation gave rise to, I felt them. Out of my affect I responded physically. Without rational decision, before I was even aware of what I was doing or fully articulated what was going ·on; I threw my hands .up in the air and walked over to the other counter. That physic.al reaction· pro�pted · � ���ponse in the employee who had been conversing with a customer. He experienced an. affect of his own, which he expressed by immediately moving toward me and yelling, Why is she mad at me? What's her problem? Bis reaction prompted another in me: I began to swut and feel fear.
The world impresses itself upon us and we express this impact first with an affect, a n�nsensate, physical signal system, which manifests as emotion, · moo�, disposition. Selfconsciousness soon arises and we become aware that !lOmething has impressed us and that we have responded emotionally. In our minds we become aware of and put words to our emotionsand our thoughts. In Starbucks I. threw up niy hands -- the physiological expression -- and theemployee had some emotional response which he expressed in a raised voice and .movement toward me. At which point my self-consciousness kicked in and I became i:iware that I felt afraid. My mind judged that he seemed a little out there, so I answered him calmly and said he could have told me if I was at the wrong counter. He yelled louder. How did he know what I wanted? Why was I sayinithat he was a malicious person? Even more calmly, now aware that I wanted to get out of the store, I replied that I had said no such thing and I started to walk out. He wouldn't let me. I realized that physically I had gone into hyper-vigilant mode, ready to. run. He insisted on.giving rpe a cup of tea and demanded that I smile as payment. I got out of there.
The factors of my experience: the sensate impressions, the affect - the expressed feelings, the thinking and the action all existed, not within myself only, but as an expression of response to the stimulus of that other person. I was acted upon by something outside myself and I reacted to it and my reaction brought a .reaction from the outside in fill inter-connected chain of cause and effect. Our experience, internal and external, becomes part of c.i process.
These are the two sides of being: the impress from the external world and the expressi.on from within us and their inter-related causes and effects. If the impress we get from the external world does not promote internal harmony between our feelings, our ideas about the world in · which we live, and our actions in it, we experience a feeling of disconnection, of brokenness, o:f alienation, as I did in Starbucks.
When there is harmony among the sensate impressions from the world, our affect, our thinking and actions, we. experience a feeling of profound connection with something outsid(�f
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us. Often this "something" is called God, but it can be named by many names, according to one's spiritual understandings. Thus it might be universe, or nature, or energy or spirit or laws of science or life, and so forth. The particular naming of it is not as important as the feeling of it. Our being and our thinking are felt as unified with the world and we feel whole. It is this feeling of connection whichis the foundation of religious experience .
. What are the implications of this for religious experience and understanding? Since we respond to the world first through physical sensate impressions, and since our feelings, our affect, arise through that interplay, that process, which also encompasses memory of other situations, of impress of the world and our expression back to it, and since our feelings provide the orientation for our. thoughts, then we must recognize that human knowledge is mediated through human feeling. All religious knowledge, then, has human feeling as its first reference. Nothing is directly recdved from God. No religious claim is absolute tmth; all claims entail aothropomorphic projections. All religions are culturally determined. (Thandeka 2004)
Religious faith and theology are groun�ed _in_. religio.us . . cQ1.1.sciousness and religiousconsciousne-ss is empirically baseu. Faith is exp�·;ie;;tfally b�;;d. Wb.at· it�xpres.sed is a person'sown state of mind, in its consciousness of feeling inter-connected, of feeling touched by something larger than ourselves. To speak of God is to refer to the consciousness of this interconnected feeling and to realize that this is life. Our being and our thinking are felt as unified · with the world outside us and we feel whole. Faith is the certainty that accompanies the feeling of connection. It is a holding as true of that which rests on feeling, on affect.. (Adams)
Many, if not all, of us can recall a time when we felt absolutely connected to something beyond ourselves. Many of us define those times as spiritual or religious. I can remember walking along the Atlantic ocean in May, around Mother's Day, only two months after my mother died. As I stared at the ocean and my senses took in the sight, the sound, the smell, the taste, the touch of it, I felt bereft, sad and lonely. Then I felt what I could only describe as a great love rise out of the ocean and fill me and comfort me and let me know that I was not alone. I felt completely connected to that love and unified with it. And I was sure that it was true.
The referent for religious experience is human experience, not revelation, not dogma, not scripture. " . .. our body lies in the bosom of the infinite world and every sinew and muscle of our body feels infinite life as its own. Here we discover life - all of it, because we are life; we embody it and it embodies us." (Thandeka 1995, p.118)
Are feelings always true? Can .we trust them implicitly? Can we trust, believe, have faith in the religious knowledge they lead us to? Yes, and . . . . There are two sides of being that come into play here: that which we take in from the outside and that which we give back to the outside world. Each affects the other in· an inter-connected chain. Thus our feelings provide us with infallible guides to our inner reality, although the ways in which our minds define and understand our feelings and the situations which gave rise to them might not accurately reflect the world external to us. Going back to Starbucks, my fear of that employee was "true" for me. It reflects the fear I feel whenever anyone raises his/her voice at me. I fear that physical violence, or the threat of it, will follow. I feel this because it is part of my memory, my history. Can I follow that fear with my thoughts and actions? Would I be justified in pulling a gun to protect myself from anticipated attack? Would I be justified in calling the police? No. Because while
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· accurately reflecting my internal state, my feelings may or m?y not accurately reflect the exteri:alstate. What do we do about that?
. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen monk, advises the practice of "Are you sure?"When we become aware of feelings, before we allow ourselves to act upon the meanings our
· minds give them, or the intentions we decide that other people have, we ask ourselves "Are yousure?" Further, in recognitio.n of the process of the cause and effect interplay of the world andus, and the place of memory in that, we need one another to check upon and verify theexplanations our mind� have given to any particular occurrence. Our communities provide themirror that enhances our understanding of both ourselves and each other. The employee atStarbucks felt as though I had called him a malicious person when in fact I had said nothing at allto him. An internal check of "are you sure?" and an external check with me might have broughthis own inner reality and the messages from the external world more into congnience for him.He and I both felt the disconnect between what we felt, the actions we took based upon our
. ,. feelings, and the.messages we received from each other. ·. .. ·-For.his ideaii'about ·affect Schleiermacher was called pagan and gnostic. Kant and other
philosophers maintained that reason, not feeling, was the foundation of faith. In liberal theology's embrace of reason as foundational we can find some of our own Unitarian theology. For example, Earl Morse Wilbur's assertion that "Freedom, reason and tolerance: it is these conditions . above all others that this movement (Unitarianism) has from the beginni,ng increasingly sought to p�omote." (WUbur, p.5) William Ellery Channing, certainly one of the architects of Unitarianism in this country, asserted numerous times that the esseri.c_e of human religion lies in human reason. This excerpt 'from Unitarian Christianity offers but one example. "We object strongly to the contemptuous manner in which human reason is often spoken of by our adversaries, ... The worst errors, after all, having sprung up in that church which proscribes reason, and demands from its members. implicit faith .... God has given us a rational nature, and will call us to account for it. ... Revelation is addressed to us as rational beings." (Channing,
. pp.75-6 passim) . Yet our first source, " Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder ... "
indicates that we have a second view of the foundations for religious experience. The source does not say personal experience as mediated through reason, or as articulated by the mind, or as explained rationally. It presents a much more i.tnmediate, visceral picture of experience as determinative of individual spirituality. Channing's understanding of religious experience disembodies us .and throughout our history some among us have recognized that. Theologians such as James Luther Adams have asserted that reason is not the way to a religion of spiritual depth. We tend to think that faith comes 'through knowledge and reason, but actually it comes
. prior to that. (Beach, p.23) · Therefore, if we allow that we begin with physical sensation, which then expresses .as
feeling, mood, disposition -- affect, and as intuition of that which has made an impression upon us, and following this, feeling influences our thinking and actions, then we have reclaimed
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ourselves as embodied beings. We have re-integrated ourselves; we have become whole. This is the basis for Affect Theology.3 It a'flirms a coherence that exceeds the grasp of reason.
Affect Theology provides a way for discerning, valuing, ahd . articulating· personal experience and understanding how feelings of congruence and interconnection are religious feelings. Affect Theology offers a way for us to do the redemptive work of healing souls through restoring congruence between the four factors of human experience with the world: the sensate, the affect (feeling that arises), the rational and the actions. The work of Affect Theology is to construct safe communities so that people can experience the feeling of interconnection, of being seen, of being known in a way that promotes wholeness. This transforms souls.
As Christine Robinson reminds us: "Why do people _come to church? It is not to learn. People don't even go to museums to learn. It's not to be entertained. People don't even go to Disneyland ll!§.t to be entertained .. They come to church ... especially they come to church to quench a thirst, find meaningfulness, to have an authentic experience, or in a more traditional religious l�guage, to connect with mystery, to see themselves, sub species eternitqfj{, .tQA.eepen
.... · their souls. We ministers then would be the Imagineers of ''So�i,,; Sorcerer's Appr��tices in theart of quenching thirst, filling voids, opening the doors of meaning. I'm guessing t�at many, perhaps most of you agree that evoking heart and depth and meaningfulness should be at the center of our ministries . .. "
Thandeka's Applications of Affe.ct Theology
Human identity is inter-relational: with itself in that the feelings and the body and the mind work together and with others in tha� a body cannot exist without environmental supports. If the messages we get from the outside world do not correspond to our sensate, feeling experiences, then we experience a feeling of disconnect. On the sensate level, have you ever sat on a train and felt yourself move as you watched a n�ighboring train? How strange does it feel when we realize that we were not moving, the neighboring train was? When we cannot trust our sensate experience to correspond with outside reality we become very disoriented.
On a deeper level, Thandeka examines the issue of white identity as a disconnect brought about by incongruent messages from the outside world which cause us to . split off from ourselves. In her book Learning to be White, which is an application of Affect Theology, she begins by relating stories of white shame, the feeling that arises the first time that white people became aware that their internal movement to connect with a black person did not receive· the affirmation of the outside world.
Thandeka recounts the s�ory of "Dan, a well�heeled Boston Presbyterian minister," ( a white man). "In college during the late 1950's, Dan joined a fraternity._ With his prompting, his local chapter pledged a black student. When the chapter's national headquarters learned of this first step toward integration of its ranks� headquarters threatened to rescind the local chapter's charter unless the black student was expelled. The local chapter caved in to the pressure, and Dan
s Thandeka, (Schleiermacher's Affekt Theology) points out that moderri scientists such as psychoanalytic theorist Michael Franz Basch and affective neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp make distinctions between affect and feeling similar to Schleiermacher's. Tlie field of neurotheology has emerged to study religious beliefs from a modern scientific viewpoint. (pp.213-14) Certainly the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh have led a Buddhist collaboration with modern neuroscience.
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was elected to tell the black student member he would have to leave the fraternity. Dan did it.. 'I felt so ashamed of what I did,' he told n:ie, and he began to cry. 'I have carried this burden for forty years,' he said. 'I will carry it to my grave.' ... Dan, in effect, was a wailer at the wake of his own moral standing. It was evident that his own moral f
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ilure of nerve had brought on a loss of self-respect. But behind this moral failure was a more original fear: exile." (Thandeka 1999, I and 9)
She explarns what happens in such cases. When we receive the message that we are not supposed to feel or desire what we do feel or desire, and if that message comes from peop-le we depend upon, love and/or trust, then the self tries to stop feeling what it is not supposed to feel. We experience this as shame. Although our community did not accept ·our feelings, we blame ourselves and begiri to think there is something wrong with our very being. We develop an antipathy toward the forbidden feelings and desires, as well as toward those who are the objects of those feelings and desires. (Thandeka, 1999, 26-27)
In the language of Affect . Theology, our. feelings_· did not receive messages from the outside world that felt congruent with them .. Because we· needed the approval and support of the outside world, our minds, in an effort to heal the external split, took over and tried to control our feelings, creating ari internal split between mind and feelings. Such a split impairs the development of a mature sense of self and further exacerbmes the dis1;:onnection. If we carry around the belief that it is not okay to feel what we feel, then we will cope with our feelings .by denying them, by ignoring them, by lying to ourselves about them, by hiding them, by covering them through substance abuse, by repressing them. We will fear our emotions, we will distrust
· them, and therefore ourselves. Our shame about who we are stops u.s from making connectionswith, not only ourselves, but the outside world as well. .Our ability to relate with D."l.tegrity isdiminished. We become disembodied.
I can relate to this. When, at the age of eleven, I experienced physical attraction and lovefor another girl, it felt wonderful. I felt whole. When I moved to act upon the feelings I receiveda strong message of disapproval, even disgust. I .became a turtle and withdrew into my shell. Icould not allow myself to love another female and for many years that meant I could not allowmyself to love anyone. I paid a high price iri order to hide from myself and even today I carry asmall vestige of the shame that was evoked in me and it sometimes affects my actions and mycomfort level as lesbian .. Clearly the work of going back and affirming my core experiences ofattraction arid love for women, of re-integrating my feelings with my mind and my actions, isongoing work.
Thandeka notes that racial healing in the United States requires that white peopleexamine their constructed racial identity as white and find the affective shame that underlies it.Uncover the shame, understand that the incidents and the responses of the outside world thatbrought it on were a lack of affirmation for who we were and not indicative of a fatal flaw withinus. Have compassion for our core sense of self, recover and affirm it. (Thandeka 1999, passim)
Restore congruence between and among our internal experiences. Restore wholeness.From a disembodied point of view, social problems become �piritual problems. When our
sense of wholeness is diminished, even threatened, by our communities because they do nothonor, recognize,' accept our affective communication, we often express the disconnect ·thatoccurs in a violent, destructive manner. Human breakdown does not occur in isolation. If we ·
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cannot alter our environment through our affective engagement with it, we split off from ourselves and it. Thandeka calls .this sin. The breakdown of human inter-affective communication. One cannot remain openheartedly in community and the feelings of disconnection turn into rage and destruction. The individual alone cannot bear full responsibility for this. Nor can the individual alone repair it.
Just as sin is a corporate affair, so is salvation. Thandeka defines salvation as the human experience of sustained inter-affective communication. This occurs, often, in covenant groups. Thandeka has become a dedicated prnmoter of covenant groups as arenas of salvific human interaction. Covenant groups allow for the presence of what she calls sacred time, slowing time down by filling it with the full presence of life. "Sacred time is biological time, the time our bodies take to act or think or feel. When we pay attention to biological time, we focus on the science and the art of spiritual practice." (Thandeka, UU World 2005) We fill such time with life because in covenant groups people can experience inner congruence of sensate, affective, rational and active experience. Their inner experiences can know congruence with the messages
.:-, . they �;ceive from. th� o�¥�"fa�'�"a�fa: i�1 thi; ���e: f�om th� �embers of the covenant group. They
can take the time to feel what they feel and express it in words and actions and the others present will pay attention and receive it with acceptance. This is a healing application of Affect Theology.4
Further Implications and Practices of Affect Theology for Unitarian Universalism What would Affect Theology look like if embodied in om congregations? This part of
my paper will serve, I hope, as a springboard to further thinking and discussion and experiencing. The ideas I include here feel preliminary to me and I fully expect them to develop as I live them.
Affect Theology offers a way of life based upon the premise that human experience is comprised of four factors: (sensate, affect, reason and action). When the messages we receive from the outside world correspond to our internal affect and its resultant thoughts and actions, we experience a feeling of connection, within and without. This feeling of connection is the foundation of religious experience. When they do not correspond, we experience a feeling of disconnection, which is the basis of many social problems.
Does Affect Theology point a way to an elucidation of that spark which gives vitality to Unitarian Universalist communities? Does it point a way to enlivening spiritual practices? I think so. I have experienced the life among us and it has occurred within a context of interior/exterior congruence. It has manifested as an empowering spirit of connection within the whole community.
Several years ago UU ministers in my area of the Hudson Valley performed marriages for same sex couples, although such were not strictly legal in New York. Two women, members of the congregation I serve, ages 88 and 74 at the time, asked me to perform the ceremony on our premises. They invited the entire congregation. As they stood facing one another, holding
4 I make an assumption here that readers have familiarity with the concept and practice of covenant groups. For more about them, see www.smallgroupministry.net and the Center for Community Values, www.the-ccv.org ·
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hands, having been together twenty seven years and clearly one, or both, of them in the closing years of life, a feeling of love for them entered us, love for each other, love for our community. We believed sponsoring that wedding was the just thing to do and we felt so happy to do it. Affect, thought, action in congruence, within and without. Connection to something greater than outselve.s. The energy in our congregation soared and we felt so alive, so connected to the best of who we are. It was a sacred, transforming time, a time which left its mark on us for months. This is a way for me to understand and articulate what holds us in vital community. It isn't reason, freedom or tolerance, no matter how important. It is the feeiing of connection to something greater than our individual selves, arising out of internal and external congruence.
An application of Affect Theology would, therefore,. have as its basis a recognition, understanding, and appreciation for the place of feelings and it would have an awareness of the ways in which the external world and our internal world maintain an interplay of cause and effect. We would understand, recognize and appreciate the crucial role of our communities as -places in which people paid attention to feelings; remained present ·with· them and =with ·each··
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other, and learned how to live with them. The discomfort with feelings, the minimizing. of them,. .
the need to "fix" them, relieve them, take them away, ignore them, deny them, fear them, despisethem, and all the other ways in which we split off from our feeHngs, would shift. People wouldexperience greater congruence between their minds, their act:ons and their emotions. Throughacceptance of one another, people would experience feelings of connection and wholeness. Thiscan transform.
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We would acknowledge such feelings as religious and seek to build upon them, knowing · the fe�Iing of connection as the living basis of our faith. We would understand ourselves as· individuals in community rather than communities of individuals. We would lift up communitiesin which people practice right relationship as a primary Unitarian Universalist spiritual practice.We would know that this heals and transforms the world. "The redemptive power of ourreligious movem�mt is the sacramental act of right relationship. This power is not a creedalbelief but a way of life. We know it because we live it. We create redemptive power here andnow in the world, among us, between us, through us. These feelings, when held by anorganization structure that supports and encourages its congregants to care for each other, are thepower that can recreate and revitalize our liberal religious movement anew. " (Thandeka UUWorld, 2005)
Liturgy ·as embodying Affect Theology: How would/could/does our liturgy embodyAffect Theology? Ho·w does it become recognized as one of our inspiring, enlivening spiritualpractices?
Liturgy would emerge as a "creative expression of an internal state of humanconsciousness." (Thandeka 1999) Those who offer it would speak of personal experience andwhat is religious about that. Each element of the service would further the possibility for feelingsof connection. We would see our liturgy as a way to experience wholeness through, connection:with ourselves, our community, with the sacred, with god, as we understand that. Beauty wouldhold an important place. Music, of course. Silence. Languag� would be evocative. Tone of voice,body language, even dress, would be evocative. Congruence would flow through the entireservice. The service presenter would have an awareness of his/her own personal religiousexperience, his/her own internal state of harmony or disharmony.
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Elements of the service would include opportunities for participants to become aware of feelings and to express them. Some movement might emerge. Even touching. Spoken words would include personal story, poetry. Hymns· would sing of sensation, emotion, thought and action. Thandeka points to the hymn Spirit of Life and suggests how it speaks to the four factors of personal experience. "Spirit of life, come unto me" -- the breath, the spirit comes as a sensate
·· experience. "Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion" -- emotion arises .. "Blow_ in __ thewind; rise in the sea. Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice" ""- action (and byimplication, thought), congruent with compassion. (Thandeka 2006) Add to that a tune whichflows and touches us and it is no wonder this hymn holds a place of such popularity in ourcongregations. It feels true.
When. Our Heart Is In A Holy Place also feels true to me. Again, the music itself,espycially the harmonies, move us. The words touch our multi-layered religious experiences."When our heart is in a holy place, when our heart is in a holy place;_ we are blessed with loveand amazing".grace, when ou:r heai t is in a holy place. v. l .Wheg we tru.st .. tJw. wi.sdom in_ each of. us: every col;r, every creed and kind, aniwe see our fac�·; iii·�-�ch '�th;;,s ey�;;·th��-0-�r h�art is in a holy place. v.2 When we tell our story from deep inside and we listen with a loving mind,and we hear our voices in each other's words, then our heart is in a holy place. v.3 When weshare the silence of sacred space and the God of our heart stirs within, and we feel the power ofeach other's faith, then our heart is in a holy place." This feels true for me because the song tellsabout and promotes connection and wholeness through emotion, understanding and action.
Joys and Sorrows provides an interesting case here. While I must admit to feelings ofambivalence, and more than occasional frustration, around that part of the. service, there havebeen times on Sunday mornings when the quality of the personal sharing has brought thecongregation to an awarenes� of their own feelings, to an awareness of what was happening inour community and to a level of response that spoke of a deep sense of connection. At thosetimes we have recognized the sacred among us. So each week I try to introduce Joys andSorrows in a way that might elicit such a depth of sharing, with varying results.
What else about liturgy? Social Action as embodying Affect Theology. How does/could/would our social action
efforts embody Affect Theology and come to be recognized by .us as another of our enlivening spiritual practices? The ethics that arise from feelings of interconnection already appear in our principles, from justice, equity a:ud compassion to acceptance and encouragement to spiritual growth to a free search foi: truth to peace to the interconnected web. It has long been the foundation of the Unitarian Universalist understanding of human nature that we are not fatally flawed or deserving of eternal condemnation; that we can change our behavior for the better; that each person has inherent worth and dignity; that "salvation" is available to all. It would seem as if the groundwork for intersections with Affect Theology already exists.
Yet in the congregation I serve, while many social action initiatives take place and they all emanate from good intentions, their tone is so often full of righteousness, ideological namecalling, with the accompanying arrogance of thinldng we know best what "should" be done and the elitism of considering ourselves the smartest people in the room and therefore the ones whose opinions matter the most. The feelings of inter-connection which could undergird our work for justice have no room in which to arise as the powerful religious impulses that they are. Which is
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another factor in why the feelings and sense of connection which filled us when the two women married was so powerful. We experience social action more often in our (swelled) heads than inour hearts.
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Within the context of Affect Theology, our understanding and experience of social justice work would shift and it would become a healing effort of restoration. Lack of messages from the outside world congruent with our inner world of feelings causes us to split off from our feelings and the resultant split causes us to suffer and often to inflict suffering on others. We lose a sense of connection with ourselves and with others and we look at the world thrnugh a subj.ect-object lens. We objectify other people and subordinate them to ourselves in a worldview that has led and continues to lead to grave injustice.
The spiritual practice of social justice work would, then, seek an atmosphere in which people can engage others in ways that enhance congruity and ensure both the collective and the individual well being. It would understand that we sustain ourselves through empathetic engagem.e11.t-and it weuld considerJ)J� -places in which our feelings and those of others engage as _ ·::::-,:·: -� -· places of creative interchange. R�ligious life is a way in which people connect to one another for spiritual uplift, moral agency and justice seeking. An environment that sustains and affirms the process of empathetic human engagement will advance a system of social justice for all. Thus sin refers to the splitting off from ourselves an'd each other and salvation refers to the restoration of connection. Both occur in community. (Thandeka 2004, 2006)
Our social justice efforts would understand the human feelings ·that undergird �ur attitudes, thoughts, values and actions. As Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine) and so many others have been pointing out for years now, our culture is fear-based and the social values and behaviors that people espouse are often rooted in fear. Our social justice work must address that fear. President Bush and the religious right have understood fear and used it for their own agendas. Too often people on the left have not understood it, or dismissed it as ignorance and attempted to reach people through facts and rational discussion. Yet we all know that when we are speaking and thinking and acting out of our emotions, no amount of rational explanation or appeal to our reason Will reach us, much less change us.
I have just returned from visiting my family in Florida, where they live a working class, paycheck to paycheck existence. They moved from New York south in search of a better life . but did not find it. Instead they only found low-paying, part-time work. We spoke about the upcoming presidential election· and shared who we would vote for. Only I would vote for Barrack Obama. The others preferred John McCain. Why? Because, my cousin explained, when "they" get in power, "thet' will take over everything. We know who "they" refers to -- African Americans. Now I caught my breath in sadness and distress at the depth of stereotyping and inaccuracy reflected in my cousin's reasoning, (using that word loosely), but then I saw it wasn't reasoning at all. It was fear that was talking. She feared loslng what l_ittle she had if someone whose racial identity she has learned to distrust came to power. She has been taught that Afric.an
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Americans and Euro-Americans are in competition for the resources of this countj,5 for a share of the wealth and the work and that you cannot trust that someone from your competition will look out for your interests. Is. this inaccurate and irrational thinking on the part of a whit_e American? Yes. Can it be changed by pointing out the facts of the economic and racial situations in this country? No.
Republicans and the religious right understand that her emotions must be dealt with. Some of the code language and innuendo coming· from the right about Obama and what will happen if _he is elected is addressing this fear. Some are stoking it and increasing it so that the Republican candidate can then be seen as the one who will not let happen that which she fears. What messages are coming from liberal religious voices, from the political left, or from the Democratic party? As of this writing (September), I have to say that I don't hear any messages speaking to such fear.
. A social action poiicy that embodies Affect Theology and understands itself as a . QQit[
"And I'll know that we're well on our way ... when the 6th grade Spiritual Education curriculum is as extensive as the sixth grade OWL unit, and nobody would think of letting someone teach it who hadn't been to a weekend training retreat, where their own spirituality is nurtured and they have a chance to think about what they believe and how they want to talk about it." (Christine Robinson)
Language. Such a consciousness shift, such words, could present us with a challenge in and of themselves. We UU's have an ambivaknt relationship with religion, religious words, religious practices. Not only does it hamper our ability to dialogue with people of different fait4s, it hampers our ability to speak with each other; to speak with ourselves. Yet, as Laurel Hallman reminds us, "If the Religious Existential Reality is 'grounded in the experience of existence', ... then we had better find ways to say that which is deeper than we can speak. The communication from person to person and generation to generation of a kind of truth that is based on the reality-as Bernard Meland once said-it is a truth based on the reality 'that we live more deeply than we think.' We live more deeply than we think.··:'.;' (and therefore people need an) opportunity to name their their relationship with Life in relational words." (Images for bu� Lives)
Last week at our supper and orientation for ·teachers in the RE program, a discussion arose about the name. of the program: Religious Education: Several people objected to .the word "religious" because, they said, it mad.e them uncomfortable. At the same time these very people have a longing for something more, something substantive, something real, ordinary yet extraordinary, something "spiritual" both for themselves and for their children. They want the juice and not just the dry cracker. Yet by putting it outside of a religious context, they find themselves stuck, because they have nowhere else to seek what they long for. Affect Theology could help us to recover words like "religious" and "religious experience" because, in its focus
· on human experience as the foundation for religious experience, it preaches no doctrine andaccommodates many beliefs and many different words to express them.. Affect Theology offersUnitarian Universalists a way to their own needs for spirituality.
How might we get there? Again, Christine Robinson, in her ·2008 Berry Street Essay,addresses this so well. "I wanted to say that if Unitarian Universalism is going to thrive and growit needs a depth of spirituality it hasn't had in living memory, and that we ministers just have tofigure out how to take more risks to bring this about. ... How do we develop as spiritual leaders,able and willing to take the risks and pay the prices? If I'm going to do this sorcerer's apprenticething well, consistently, and joyfully, I need three things. I need to tend my own spiritual life, Ineed my denomination to edge this quest for spiritualities auth�ntic to our tradit1on more into the·mainstream, and most of all, I need my colleagu�s.
Across the religious traditions, the recipe · for a spiritual leader to nurture their ownspirituality includes at least two things: daily spiritual practice of whatever kind, and somebodyto talk about it with ... There are some ways we can, urge our denomination to help us do thiswork and the most important of these is to push for the creation, at the denominational level, of aculture bf expectation about the _need for churches to deepen their spiritual lives. A culture 'ofexpectation is huge. If we could create as much buzz and interest about deepening our spirituallives as we have in becoming a Program Size Church; .. we might actually be able to make thatleap more often." Just talking about this with you here, taking the risk of writing this paper withyou in mind, has benefitted and changed me.
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Thus my "elevator speech" changes, albeit still a work in progress. Yes, I will continue to explain our approach of freedom of belief in tandem with an ethical platform that seeks authenticity in the living. But now I will add that our vitality comes from our recognition that the deepest of human experiences, religious experiences, are those accompanied by feelings of connection to something within ourselves and beyond ourselves, however we describe that something. Those feelings of conn_ection promote wholeness .... Our spiritual practice, as manifested in our worship services, our social action and our religious education, is to stay
. preserit with one another and to encounter one another as whole persons -- emotions, thoughts, ideas and actions. When we know and experience congruence between what we feel, what we think and how we act; when we experience messages from each other that acknowledge om feelings with acceptance, then connection arises. Unitarian Universalism, by affirming and pi:omoting connection, is a way of life whose ultimate goal is transformation: for healing, for justice, and for peace.
I find _in Affect Theology a way to think about religious experience that is congruent with my o� livet e·�perlence. I find if(frr�;y,�/frfe th'�t���-ll'h·;fp �s- io. own the deep ·spiritual practices that wait to flower in our liturgies, our religious education programs, our way of being in community, our social action. I find in Affect Theology a way to experience, understand and talk about that which enlivens our. Unitarian Universalist communities. The possibilities await.
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