organizing unorganized religion

One of the interesting things I find about attending a Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship is that it is a wonderfully undefined entity. By self-definition, it is a group that avoids adherence to any creed. As a result, we have a wide variety of faiths, traditions, and beliefs melding under one roof. In short, unorganized religion.

In contrast, organized religions exist under a very strict structure, a result of adherence to tradition and scripture. It is a system that relies onunquestioned belief and faith. By default, dogma rules the day and diversity of beliefs do not exist.

Unlike organized religion, unorganized religion (as I like to call UU) operates under a big umbrella. There are no creeds or dogma to guide the process, or to answer our questions. Our closest attempt at creating structure are the seven principles.

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

One can question how these differ from the dogma, or creeds, of organized religion. The difference, which I feel is significant, is that the principles are rules of conscience, and require the person to use thought and reason to arrive at the proper action in concurrence with the principles. People followtheir own course of action, given it concurs with the principles.

Organized religious dogma, on the other hand, gives you no such liberty to use internal reason. “Thou shalt keep the Sabbath Day holy” is pretty straightforward. It externalizes personal responsibility and eliminates conscience . You simply do as told. If a person runs upon a problem where the proper course of action is not delineated like the 10 Commandments, they are suddenly placed in a position where they must think for themselves, or allow a minister to do it for them.

While unorganized religion has its benefits, it also has its challenges. I suspect the only thing we might agree upon is that we should have service on Sunday. Anything other issue is likely subject to more opinions than congregation members. God settles that dispute for the faithful, and if he doesn’t, his mouthpiece theminister does. We have no such authority in unorganized religion, and it leaves us with a challenge, getting organized.

Which isn’t to say we are ineffective. Our fellowship, the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks (UUFF), has succeeded in building a new sanctuary, growing membership, and provided a rich variety of lay led sermons. But it isn’t easy.

Another challenge with unorganized religion is how to invite people into the membership. People who have stepped off of the path of traditional religion are notoriously independent. And private. And a little bit defensive, having been beaten about the head with those same traditional religions for a lifetime. Likewise, those of us who are members don’t want to impose ourselves or our beliefs on anyone, anymore than any one of us would want to be imposed upon.

Which leaves us in a difficult position in engaging new people without overstepping the boundaries of telling them what they should believe. That is the tactic of organized religion, and they employ it effectively. It is important that we remain true to our principles, and don’t adopt those practices that run counter to our principles.

Due to our unorganized nature there is a strong chance we will hit a limit in growth, a capacity of disorder, where ability to function as a group becomes impossible without finding some unifying element to organize around. A minister is a possibility, their leadership may bridge the gap between organized and unorganized, allowing for continued growth among the interested.

As it is, unorganized religion has much to offer. Freedom to explore the spiritual, without judgement, and encouragement to ask, and to seek out answers to, the hard questions. Unlike organized religion, we won’t pretend to have all the answers, just a community within which to ask the questions, where we can share the struggle in seeking answers.

Many of those questions, despite our quest, will remain unanswered in this lifetime. It is their nature, as it is human nature to attempt to organize the unorganizable, to plant trees in rows when they are meant to be scattered randomly, to build square houses on round hills.

It is important to remember the beauty and organic nature of an unorganized, or human, fellowship.

In closing, I remind myself; What is more divine, and which is more human? The heights of a gothic cathedral, a metal warehouse turned mega-church, the rigid construct of organized religion? Or the sublime beauty and randomness of a summer thunderstorm, of Nature, of unorganized religion?

Will we find god in chaos, or in order?

In organized religion, you’ll find an answer.

In unorganized religion, you’ll find the question.

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ship your firewood to Alaska, apparently there is a market

Today I had to stop and fill gas. It is one of my least favorite things to do, but I couldn’t put it off any longer. Let’s just say it is a good thing I live up hill from town. We always fill at the east Fairbanks Fred Meyer’s store because we get a 10 cents per gallon discount for being regular shoppers there. I pulled into the gas pumps, just missed getting hit by someone pulling out while looking at their dashboard, and parked at one of the center pumps.

Embarrassingly, despite my environmental leanings and tree hugging credentials, I drive a 96 GMC extended cab sierra pick-up. IE, gas guzzler. But the price was right (thanks Mom and Dad) and it has been a good vehicle for getting around on some of our ventures into the Alaska wilderness. None the less, it leaves me more than a little depressed when I fill it up, and not just because of the hit my bank account takes.

I climbed out of the car and into the brisk 25 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, air. Depending on which bank thermometer you went with, it could have been as cold as 30 below, or as balmy as 22 below. Personally, I think the banks set their thermometers differently to give us some illusion that they aren’t all in cahoots. I, for one, don’t buy it.

Banks aside, I stood watching as the dollars on the meter quickly outpaced the gallons. It wasn’t much of a race, the dollars had a 3 to 1 advantage over the gallons (with my 10 cents discount).

As I was standing there, in my too light high water carhart pants and my boiled wool slippers, looking pretty much like a doofus (I’m entering my doofus phase), I spied the bundles of wood for sale next to pump attendants shack. Certainly, I’ve seen bundles of wood before. I’ve even seen this same brand. Today, standing in the cold, feeling guilty next to my inefficient truck, burdened by the necessity of having a gas fueled vehicle, the bundles of wood pushed me over the edge.

Let me clarify. Fairbanks sets in the middle of a boreal forest that stretches from Alaska to the Atlantic coast of Canada. We have no shortage of trees locally. Or firewood. But for some reason Fred Meyer is shipping logs in from Washington state. No less, using Oil to ship those logs in from Washington state. Oil that had probably been harvested on Alaska’s north slope, then shipped Seattle in order that it could power a barge to haul wood from Washington back to Fairbanks. (Like God, Football in Oklahoma, Oil gets the big ‘O’ in Alaska.)

Somebody, please explain the economy in that process. I don’t get it.

To top it off, the bundles are wrapped in plastic. PLASTIC. Not the stuff you want to burn in your wood stove, or use to start your fire with when burning your imported logs. (I didn’t check, maybe the logs are stamped with ‘Made in China’ somewhere.) Plastic, a non-renewable resource. Plastic, made of oil, that sometime in prior years may have flowed through Fairbanks heading south, returning now, to go into the landfill to be mined by some future generation in desperate need of petroleum products for things we take for granted, like say, medicine.

So, a wood industry, making a point of their “renewable” resource wood, uses plastic to keep their bundles together. Why not newsprint, or some other low-grade paper that could be used to start those logs on fire? Maybe it isn’t as cheap as plastic, but that may only be a matter of time, unless you figure all the oil making paper uses.

What about invasive species? We have infestations of insects threatening many of our trees and natural habitats in Alaska. Is there any threat from new invasions from these untreated woods being shipped in from the south? Honestly, I don’t know enough about it. But even if the likelihood of the imported wood being infected is minuscule, why expose our natural resources to any risk when we don’t need to?

And Fred Meyers, the store chain that brought re-usable grocery bags to the mainstream in Fairbanks, replacing their old plastic bags at the landfill with plastic wrap for logs. There are certainly sources for firewood locally, I wonder if they were explored? (That would be no.)

When the weight of our human folly comes crashing down upon, cleansing the surface of the earth of our collective stupidity, who do we have to blame besides ourselves?

OK, well maybe God.

And Exxon.

And Conoco-Philips.

And BP, how could I leave out BP?

But mostly just ourselves. Will we leave our children to bear that burden?

One last thing about the pallet of imported firewood bundles, it was almost sold out.

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