Everybody Is a Templer

Everybody is a Templer... ...some of us just don’t know it yet A collection of my Templer Saal – Services held in Bayswater, Bentleigh and Boronia over the ten year periods from 1996 to 2006. Alfred Klink December 2006 CONTENTS 1996 Founder’s Day Service, December 3 1997 Kaffee Saal 9 August in Bayswater 10 1998 Youth Saal in Bentleigh 26 April 16 1999 Founder’s Saal in Bayswater, December 22 1999 Saal in Boronia 11 July (German) 28 2000 Boronia Saal 10 December (German) 37 2000 Founder's Day Saal in Bayswater 18 June 44 2001 Good Friday Service in Bayswater, 13 April 51 2001 New Years Eve Service in Bayswater, December 58 2002 Saal in Bentleigh, 28 July, followed by Community Discussion 64 2002 Saal 14 April 71 2003 Founder’s Day Service in Bayswater December 2003 77 2003 July 27 Service in Bentleigh 84 2003 Saal im Gemeinschafts Zentrum Bayswater 29 June (German) 90 2004 Saal Sunday 11 July in Bayswater 96 2004 New Year’s Eve Service in Bayswater, December 102 2005 Easter Service in Bentleigh, 27 March 109 2005 Saal in Bayswater, 3 July (German) 115 2005 Service in Bentleigh, Sunday 30 October 121 2005 New Year’s Eve Saal / Service in Bayswater 126 2006 Sommerfest Service in Bayswater, 5 March 132 2006 Saal 2006 in the Bayswater Chapel, 9 July 137 2006 Sunday Service 26 November in Bentleigh 143 Appendix How the Mind Works 148 Page 2 My collection of Templer Services FOUNDER’S DAY SERVICE, SUNDAY 8 DECEMBER 1996 Templer Community Hall Bayswater Musical introducti on Veronica Rudowizc & Anne Coleman Welcome to today’s Service. It is my privilege to speak to you on this Found- er’s Day occasion. I am Alfred Klink, and those of you who are aware of my many limitation know that public speaking does not come easy to me. But having reached the age of three score and something years gives one a certain advan- tage, people tend to make allowances for your age. I thank you in advance for that. In our Jahreskalender we select certain days as Holidays, as Remembrance days, as Festivals and as days of Celebration. That gives us a chance to refl ect on past achievements, to consider current commitments and to look forward to tomorrow. It invites us to think, outside of our daily duties and makes us aware of the social and spiritual environment that supports us. Today, on this day, we dedicate the Service to the Founders of the Temple So- ciety. To the people who created the spiritual environment out of which we grew. I remember when the day used to be called Hoffmann’s Gedenktag. We honour our founders and we refl ect on their life, and on the task they dedicated it to. To begin let us sing two verses from our Templer Hymn, “Trachted ruft ....”, number one in the little green Handbook. I have selected verses 1 and 2 for the start of the Service. 6 and 9 at the End. Feel free to sing in either German or Eng- lish, and please remain seated. Veronica Rudowicz The story of Christoph Hoffmann has been told many times. How, from a background of conservative pietism, he evolved to an intellectual idealist, and then into the pragmatic realist we know from historic accounts. From the idealist of the above hymn, which he composed in 1855, the idealist who saw the salva- tion of mankind in the preparation of Jerusalem for the return of Jesus Christ, to the realist that saw the Templer’s future in good education and scientifi c awareness. When he died in 1885, at the age of 70, he left a Society struggling against the odds, to establish itself, in a rapidly evolving commercial environment, on a sustainable basis. But beyond that he left us a legacy of ideals that are as fresh today as the day when, in his youth, they inspired him. I emphasise this point, as I feel Christoph Hoffmann, in his later period involved himself too much in the organisation and the fi nancial affairs of his project, to have retained his idealistic convictions. Perhaps he had no choice. Perhaps in the cruel circumstances of the Middle East environment, the fi ght to keep his people together, the battle for subsistence became the motivating force. By their very defi nitions, ideals and practicalities are mutually exclusive. One is a vision of what could be, the other a struggle with what is. The form, the structure so necessary My collection of Templer Services Page 3 for stable government, chokes idealism, like a wire cage reduces a songbird’s winged prayer to a smelly, mechanical, music box. Sadly the processes involved in making an idea become reality, inevitably forces us to become practical. The Idealist must learn to adapt, and to compromise, to negotiate and to barter. By considering practicalities, very soon, what was in the mind of the beholder a winged gazelle becomes a clay-footed turtle. A soaring cathedral turns out a high- rise offi ce block. The graceful arch of a bridge, fl ying over an estuary, fi nishes up as a dark tunnel under the river. An idyllic poem is forged into an instruction manual. So it came. Ideas turned gradually into guidelines, then rules, then regulations and fi nally laws. The vision of a world wide Templer movement became an embattled community of farmers and tradesmen, fi ghting the elements for a meagre existence. The cold reality of an idea demands sacrifi ces. When you build something, write something, compose something, at some stage of creation you have to say: There it is, fi nish, that’s it. It now has a form of its own, it is yester- day’s thoughts set in stone. If you do not let go, if you can not rise above it, time will pass you by. Perhaps social awareness, and scientifi c evolution, even then had bypassed the visualised “God’s Kingdom” in Jerusalem. The apocalyptic demise of the secular world had not eventuated, and the reality of preparing Jerusalem for the imminent return of Jesus became a search for a practical way for people to live together. Still, we have to ask, what was it that made Christoph Hoffmann’s work last and endure to this day. There have been many other schemes to form religious organisations, that have quickly disappeared again in the equalizing forces of everyday life. And that number includes the substantial efforts that went into creating the Korntal project by Christoph Hoffmann’s father, Gottlieb Wilhelm Hoffmann. I have no doubt in my mind that if Christoph Hoffmann, with his follow- ers, had stayed in Kirschenhardthof, the Society would not have lasted any longer than the Korntal project did. It too would have disappeared under the waves of offi cialdom. He didn’t. Christoph Hoffmann had an inspiration, he tied his idea to a chal- lenging and motivating, practical goal: - To create a settlement in Palestine! The Kingdom of God had to be in Jerusalem. It was such a visionary step that people, well off and with comfortable and secure lifestyles, packed up their beds and followed him. Even Mennonites already settled in Russia joined the group. Wether this vision of a new Jerusalem was Hoffmann’s free choice or wether it was in part forced on him by his confl icts with church and state authorities at the time, does not diminish the magnitude of the decision. He and GD Hardegg worked tireless and determined, planting the project on a resource-solid foundation. Hoffmann exchanged his idealism for security. For sta- bility reason he restricted growth of the Society to growth from within, established rules and regulations that enclosed the Society in a protective shell. A Great Wall of China. And like with the great wall of China it is diffi cult to decide wether its Page 4 My collection of Templer Services purpose was to protect against invasion from outside or to keep people in. So the Temple Society did endure, to this day, through many adversities, isolated by its very own design that kept it intact. It is like a rare plant, that people come to admire and to study. It never fl owers, does not produce any seeds, but is a perfect specimen of survival as it continuously adapts to any given environment. If I had to name one philosophy that motivated me more than any other during my lifetime, it would be the conviction that the world starts now, this moment, and at every new moment still to come. It starts again with every baby that is born, and with every seed that sprouts into the life-giving sunlight. With every new day and yes, with every new thought. It’s like the game of chance, or the laws of probability: History does - not - count. It is a human weakness that makes us think every effect must have a distinct cause. A fallacy, like gravity. Or that every cause will result in a defi nable effect. We have problems imagining a world that started for no reason at all. That’s why they invented the Big Bang for the Universe. Deep down we need to feel that someone, somewhere pushes a button, or opens a gate. The sequential nature of events in everyday life makes us forget we could never fully understand the past without physically recreating it in total. Environ- ment and all! You cannot judge or justify the past in the light of today’s technical and sociological awareness.

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