The The Unitarian Church in NSW PO Box 355, Darlinghurst NSW 1300 15 Francis Street, East Sydney (near Museum Station) Tel: (02) 9360 2038

SUN www.sydneyunitarianchurch.org

Sydney Unitarian News Editor: M.R. McPhee

December2016/January 2017

MODERN UNITARIANISM IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND

As soon as the Unitarian Toleration Act was passed by the UK Parliament in 1813, many churches promptly declared Unitarian allegiance – and not just in England. In Scotland, Unitarian congregations had been form- ing since 1776 in Edinburgh, Montrose, Glasgow and Dundee. Just as when Theophilus Lindsey started his church in London in 1774, there had been no legal repercussions, though the minister at Dundee, Thomas Fyshe Palmer (1747–1802), was transported to Australia on purely political charges in 1794.

In 1813, about a dozen congregations declared themselves and Rev. Thomas Southwood Smith (1788–1861, pictured at left) of Edinburgh organised them into the Scottish Unitarian Association with the help of Rev. James Yates (1789–1871) of Glasgow. After using five rented meeting places over the years, the Edinburgh congregation built St. Mark’s Unitarian Church in 1835. It is still in use today, though no-one seems to know how it got its incongruous name.

In Ireland, things took a very different turn in the early 1700s, when the Presbyterians there began to demand more wide-ranging discussion of theological questions, unbound by the official Westminster Confession. This led to the formation of the non-subscribing Antrim Presbytery in 1725, which drifted to Arianism in the follow- ing decades. A similar liberalisation took place in the southern Synod of Munster, though it started later. A conservative backlash in the 1800s caused Henry Montgomery (1788–1865, pictured second from left) to lead the secession of the Remonstrant Synod of Ulster in 1830.

Periodicals with a Unitarian orientation started in 1832 with the Bible Christian (a reference to personal inter- pretation of Scripture), followed by the Irish Unitarian Magazine, the Christian Unitarian and others. In 1910, the Antrim, Munster and Ulster bodies merged to form the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, which has been in association with the British Unitarians ever since. (Indeed, the large church in Dublin is officially Unitarian.)

Getting back to Britain, three national Unitarian bodies were formed before 1820. These were the Unitarian Book Society (1791), the Unitarian Fund (1806) for mission work and the Unitarian Association (1818/19) for promoting civil rights. In 1825, they merged to become the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. By then, the Essex House congregation had moved, so the building became the headquarters of the new organisation, joined by the Sunday School Association when it was formed in 1833.

1 The first secretary of the BFUA was Rev. Robert Aspland (1782–1845), prime mover of the Unitarian Fund and a founder of the Unitarian Association. He edited the Monthly Repository from 1806 to 1826, the first Unitarian publication to last any length of time, and started the lighter Christian Reformer for less educated members in 1815. His son, Rev. Robert Brook Aspland (1805–1869) took the latter over in 1845 and later led the administration of Manchester College, which taught both divinity and lay disciplines. (Despite the name, it was located in London at that time and it is now at Oxford.) Fittingly, the younger Aspland also became secretary of the BFUA in 1859, for which reason both men (see the two pictures in the centre on p. 1) are con- sidered to have made great contributions to organised Unitarianism.

During this period, Unitarian theology had shifted from rejecting the Trinity and the pre-existence of Christ to more general questioning of the divine origin of Scripture. The doctrines of American Unitarians were known of but considered quite radical. James Martineau (1805–1900, pictured second from right) was the most influential Unitarian thinker of his century and he did as much for the religious side of the movement as the Asplands had done for the organisational side. He entered Manchester College in 1822, at which time it had been moved to York in order to have the engagingly named Rev. Charles Wellbeloved as its principal. After he graduated with high honours in 1825, he spent the rest of his life as both a minister and a teacher.

Martineau wrote the first of his many books, Rationale of Religious Inquiry, in 1836, which caused great consternation among older Unitarians by giving reason supremacy over Scripture. In 1840, he became Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political Economy at Manchester New College (now back in its home city). A sabbatical year in Europe in 1848/49 changed his viewpoint dramatically and he became a Transcendentalist. He became principal of the college (by now in London) in 1869 and retired in 1885, after which he wrote his best-known books.

It would be unfair not to mention his sister, Harriet (1802–1876, pictured at far right), who became a social theorist and a prolific author. An early feminist, she has been described as the first female British sociologist.

The history of Manchester College is almost a microcosm of British Unitarianism. It was established as the Warrington Academy by English Presbyterians in 1757 and the famous chemist, Joseph Priestley, was one of its teachers. It was re-founded as the Manchester Academy in 1786 and offered courses in radical theology as well as sciences, languages and history. After a period in York, where its Unitarian identity was established, the college returned to Manchester in 1840 as the New Manchester College, at which time the University of London agreed to award degrees to its graduates.

The College moved to London in 1853 and remained there until a new building was built at Oxford in 1889, designed by the Unitarian architect, Thomas Worthington. Today, it is known as the Harris Manchester College, named after its benefactor, Baron Philip Harris.

(Continued on p. 12.)

SERVICE DIARY

Meetings every Sunday from 10.30 – 11.30 a.m. (followed by coffee, tea and food)

Date Presenter Topic 4th December Peter Crawford Christmas for Unitarians NO SERVICES UNTIL FEBRUARY 5th February Peter Crawford The Land of the Rising Sun 12th February Patrick Bernard Alexander Pushkin and the Invention of Russian Language* 19th February Nigel Howard The Science of Global Warming* 26th February Michael Spicer Travels in Vietnam and Cambodia*

* These will be video presentations.

[Please check the church website (www.sydneyunitarianchurch.org) for updates. The program for March will be available from the beginning of February.]

2

Tan cierto como que pertenecemos al As surely as we belong to the universe, we universo, pertenecemos el uno al otro. belong together.

Nos hemos reunido aquí para ir más allá de We gather here to move beyond our isolated nuestro ser aislados mientras nos conectamos selves as we connect and reconnect with y volver a conectar con los demás. others.

Es bueno estar juntos, porque es en nuestras It is good to be together, for it is in our connec- conexiones entre sí que llegamos a conocer- tions with each other that we come to to know nos más plenamente, y de esa manera ser ourselves more fully, and in that way to be more más en casa aquí en la Tierra, más abierta a at home here on Earth, more open to the gifts los regalos que trae cada día. each day brings.

Encendemos este cáliz, símbolo de nuestra We light this chalice, symbol of our heritage of herencia de libertad en la búsqueda de la freedom in the search for truth, to encourage us verdad, para animarnos una vez más para once again to stay on this path of connected- mantenernos en este camino de conexión y ness and openness. apertura.

Submitted by the ICUU from a service at the recent Council Meeting and Conference in the Netherlands; the English words were adapted from a piece by Rev. Margaret Keip of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations by Rev. Jorge Espinel, who also wrote the Spanish translation.

老子: 「道德經」: 第一章 The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The 道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。 name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The 無名天地之始﹔有名萬物之母。 unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of

故常無，欲以觀其妙﹔常有，欲以觀其徼 all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifest- 。 ations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the 此兩者，同出而異名，同謂之玄。 same source. This source is called Mystery. Mystery 玄之又玄，眾妙之門。 within Mystery, The gateway to all understanding.

Submitted by Unitarian Universalists Hong Kong; modified from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching (Chapter 1) by Lao-tzu.

[These are the Chalice Lightings from the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists for the months of October and November.]

Rev. Jorge Espinel came to the US from Colombia and graduated from the Meadville-Lombard Theological School in Chicago with a Master of Divinity in 2013. He was ordained as a UU minister in 2014 and is now the UUA’s Director of the Latino Ministry, which provides support to Spanish-speaking U*Us around the world. This work is done in conjunction with the Church of the Larger Fellowship and the International Office of the UUA, and also with the ICUU.

Rev. Margaret Keip was a minister of a number of churches on the West Coast between 1976 and 2013, including 25 years as co-minister of the UU Church of the Monterey Peninsula in Carmel, California, with her husband, Fred. She also served as a Trustee of the Starr King School for Ministry in Berkeley in 1982–92 and as Chair of its Board of Directors in 1989–91.

Unitarian Universalists Hong Kong (known until about 2009 as the Spiritual Seekers Society) was formed in 2004 by a group of young people who found each other via the Internet. Nine of their fourteen founding members are Chinese and the rest are of other nationalities. Once they started holding regular meetings, their appreciation for Unitarian Universalism grew and they began to translate UU materials into Chinese for use in their services. UUHK has three sub-groups: the Buddhist Sangha, the Progressive Christian Fellowship and the Humanist Group. Please see their website for more information: www.uukh.org.

3 WHY TRUMP WON

By Peter Crawford

I, for one, awoke on the morning of the American election believing the result to be a fait accompli and that the betting money I outlaid on a Clinton victory was more an investment than a gamble. How wrong I was! When I belatedly turned on the radio to the ABC and listened to the late afternoon results announced and analyzed by Tony Green, I was in a deep state of shock. When Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were all called for Trump, it was all over. Now there has been some talk about a recount, but anyone who knows American politics knows that the Democrats are far more familiar with ‘vote early, vote often’ strategies than the Republicans. They always have been and probably always will be. A recount with large pluralities is bound to be a farce unless there was some hacking of the electronic vote system, but again this is highly unlikely since most of the computer nerds capable of such bizarre behaviour are overwhelmingly Democrat supporters and, let us say, far more fanatical about trying on such a crazy scheme.

Let us look at the real reasons Donald Trump won and, unexpectedly, won by far more than could have been imagined. First of all, there was immigration. Millions of Americans are tired of being lectured to by the multicultural diversity lobby and sick of watching the great country that they love losing its core identity. Far more seriously, they are disturbed by the adverse economic ramifications of these changes. Of course, in New York and California this is a minority concern but, in the great heartland of America, once the land of the American Dream, people are damned upset; although they say little, their voices being swamped by the liberal pro-growth, pro-development media.

Next, they are sick of their great manufacturing industries biting the dust. States like Kentucky and West Virginia foresee the end of their coal industry; Detroit has seen the end of its car industry. Thirdly they are deeply disturbed by the decline of real wages over the last thirty years. As a consequence of Latino immigra- tion, real wages in the building industries of such places as Wisconsin have declined from, say, $28 per hour in 1992 to, say, $10 per hour today. This, of course, is not the fault of the humble Latinos but it is understandably resented by local workers who watch their standards decline and, at the same time, see their country experience massive demographic change.

Many states have adopted the name ‘Rust Belt’ to describe their plight. Reaction against seemingly intermin- able refugee intake from Syria and Africa was a major cause of the Trump wave. Trump played relentlessly on ‘people who shouldn’t be here’. Trump played very much to an agenda which drives both left- and right- wing thinking; that is, the seedy corrupt conspiracies of Big Business to increase immigration and reduce wages for ordinary workers. This may seem strange coming from a demagogic conservative like Trump, but his appeal to the traditional rhetoric of the left while simultaneously appealing to his own base did no harm at all. Trump was above all a populist.

Let us look at America’s immigration debacle. Since the immigration acts of the 1960s, centred around the year 1965 and reaching an apogee with Teddy Kennedy’s legislative initiatives of the early 1970s, no less than a 100 million new settlers have entered the US, most legally but many illegally. There are an estimated 12 million undocumented workers in the US playing hide-and-seek with the authorities. This immigration revolution, by the way, has extended to every European country including Australia and New Zealand, and is accompanied by a strong narrative of diversity and multiculturalism which suggests that anyone who op- poses the project for whatever reason is racist and xenophobic.

Rightly or wrongly, this narrative is reviled by millions of ordinary Americans and was key to Trump’s original cut-through and popularity in the Republican primaries. It is doubtful that Trump would have re- ceived his original prominence and catapulted into prominence if, like his Republican competitors, he had not boldly come out on the issue of immigration, particularly uncontrolled border-crossing from Mexico.

Protection of industry is a concept that has received only ridicule from the political elites in recent decades. While undoubtedly enriching the economies of nations as a whole, millions of ordinary folk have been left behind. Tens of millions of workers have seen their jobs pass to Mexico, China and other nations in Asia. Trump did not so much attack free trade but rather suggested the process had been incompetently mis- handled. He promoted his own supposed business acumen in the ‘art of the deal’. There can be little doubt that free trade will enrich the world as a whole but there can be equally little doubt that there are winners and losers – and the losers struck back. 4 We have seen our own nation, Australia, reduced to a mere quarry and farm, a nation of politicians and peasants living off the fat of a very rich land. Urban folk in white-collar areas have profited greatly, doing less onerous work and making good money while industrial workers have gone to the wall – and, in this election, American workers screamed ‘enough is enough’. The achievement of Trump was to bind the idea of protection with the endorsement of one of America’s two major parties. Without the combination of both, his rather dubious crusade would have got little traction. There is a lesson in this for Australian politicians in that, if a credible party were to challenge media and elite opinion on free trade, then their campaign may have a surprising resonance. But this would require a combination of political weight and credibility with the protection idea.

The general failure of American foreign policy in the Middle East was another key reason for Trump’s win. Just as the killing of Osama bin Laden was a key factor in Obama holding onto power in 2012, his failures since were a key reason for Hillary’s loss in 2016. Throughout the Obama years, with Hillary as a patently inept Secretary of State for four of them, we witnessed a supposed Arab Spring in 2011. There, we saw a US betrayal of Western allies in Egypt, and only the resilience of the Egyptian people saved the situation with no thanks to America. In Libya, we witnessed the utter betrayal and foul murder of Muammar Gaddafi, at a time when he had become, for all intents and purposes, a Western ally. This was followed by the incompetent failure to save the American diplomatic staff in Bengazhi. Libya has since fallen prey to ISIS and is now a fragmented shambles whose open borders permit an interminable flow of asylum seekers from Africa into Europe via Italy.

But most outrageous of all was Hillary’s constant fanning of the flames of civil war in Syria. Only good luck saved us from some inchoate and inevitably unsuccessful involvement there. Clearly, Assad is the lesser of evils there, as we witness the US attempt to betray the Christians and other minorities to Islamic extremist groups. Trump was the beneficiary of this insult to our intelligence and he also spoke strongly against George W. Bush’s ill-fated Iraq War. This is all very positive for those, like this writer, who believe the whole entry into the Islamic world has been an ill-fated catastrophe. Trump very succinctly, and without any complicated technical argument, stated that he would defeat ISIS and otherwise stay out of the Middle East. This was very appealing rhetoric to those who are fed up with everything about the Middle East and would just like to move on. Trump cleverly avoided any discussion on how he intended to accomplish this task, just leaving it to every-man’s imagination.

Finally we come to the savage negative campaigns against the respective candidates. While the campaign against Trump exposed him as a vulgarian who groped women and a man who had been bankrupted, there was never any suggestion that he was an out-and-out criminal. By contrast, Trump’s campaign, aided greatly by Julian Assange from his bolthole in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, suggested that Hillary was a very serious criminal who should be in prison. Although Trump has backed off from his ‘Lock her up’ chant, he never retreated from his claim that the system is rigged and that Hillary had criminal proclivities on every- thing from Whitewater and Jennifer Flowers to Benghazi and Email servers. Perhaps, the questions affecting her Emails and her connections with Saudi Arabia were major factors in her demise.

So, Hillary turned out to be an even worse Democrat candidate than did Trump a Republican. The campaign itself was one of the most unseemly and bitter in US history – policies gave way to personalities, accusations of unsuitability and criminality overwhelmed normal debate. America has not seen the like of it before or since. To reiterate, clearing away all the ballyhoo, Trump won the election on immigration, protectionism and the Middle East debacle. He did not win the popular vote, but he was a brilliant populist candidate who won in the states that counted.

[It was good to receive this article one day before this issue went to press. Here are some wise Japanese pro- verbs for him to contemplate on his vacation.]

Vision without action is a daydream, action without vision is a nightmare.

I will master something, then the creativity will come.

When you're dying of thirst, it’s too late to think about digging a well.

The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.

One thousand days to learn; ten thousand days to refine.

5 CHURCH SERVICES ANY DAY NOW….

PASTOR: Praise the Lord!

CONGREGATION: Hallelujah!

PASTOR: Can we please turn on our tablet PC, iPad, cellphone, and Kindle Bibles to 1 Cor 13:13. And please switch on your Bluetooth to download the sermon.

PASTOR: Let us pray committing this week into God’s hands. Open your Apps, BBM, Twitter and Facebook, and chat with God. Come on!

PASTOR: Please have your credit and debit cards ready, as we shall now take tithes and offerings. You can log on to the church Wi-Fi using the password:

Lord32177.

[Ushers circulate mobile card swipe machines among the worshipers.]

Those who prefer to make electronic fund transfers are directed to computers and laptops at the rear of the church and those who prefer to use iPads are allowed to flip them open. Those who prefer telephone banking are allowed to take out their cellphones to transfer their contributions to the church account.

[The holy atmosphere is truly electric as cellphones, iPads, PCs and laptops beep and flicker!]

SECRETARY: This week’s cell meetings will be held on the various Facebook group pages where the usual group chatting takes place. Please log in and don’t miss out. Thursday's Bible study will be held live on Skype at 1900 hours GMT. Please don’t miss out.

You can follow Pastor on Twitter this weekend for counselling and prayers.

God bless you and have a wonderful weekend.

[This delightful gem was found on the John Mark Ministries website (www.jmm.org.au), evidently written by Rev. Dr. Rowland Croucher and others in December 2012.]

The following are real ads, classified and otherwise, published in newspapers across the US:

FREE PUPPIES – 1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbour's dog.

FREE PUPPIES – Mother, a Kennel Club registered German Shepherd; Father, Super Dog...Able to leap tall fences in a single bound.

FOUND DIRTY WHITE DOG –- Looks like a rat. Been out a while. Better be a big reward.

CUTE KITTENS – Two cents or best offer.

WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE – Worn once by mistake.

FOR SALE BY OWNER – Complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 45 volumes. Excellent condition. $200 or best offer. No longer needed, got married last month. Wife knows everything.

FREE – One can of pork and beans with purchase of three bedroom, two bath home.

WANTED – Somebody to go back in time with. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.

6 CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN

Christ climbed down went around passing himself off from His bare Tree as some sort of North Pole saint this year crossing the desert to Bethlehem and ran away to where Pennsylvania there were no rootless Christmas trees in a Volkswagen sled hung with candycanes and breakable stars drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer with German names Christ climbed down and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts from His bare Tree from Saks Fifth Avenue this year for everybody’s imagined Christ child and ran away to where there were no gilded Christmas trees Christ climbed down and no tinsel Christmas trees from His bare Tree and no tinfoil Christmas trees this year and no pink plastic Christmas trees and ran away to where and no gold Christmas trees no Bing Crosby carolers and no black Christmas trees groaned of a tight Christmas and no powderblue Christmas trees and where no Radio City angels hung with electric candles iceskated wingless and encircled by tin electric trains thru a winter wonderland and clever cornball relatives into a jinglebell heaven daily at 8:30 Christ climbed down with Midnight Mass matinees from His bare Tree this year Christ climbed down and ran away to where from His bare Tree no intrepid Bible salesmen this year covered the territory and softly stole away into in two-tone cadillacs some anonymous Mary’s womb again and where no Sears Roebuck crèches where in the darkest night complete with plastic babe in manger of everybody’s anonymous soul arrived by parcel post He awaits again the babe by special delivery an unimaginable and where no televised Wise Men and impossibly praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey Immaculate Reconception the very craziest Christ climbed down of Second Comings from His bare Tree this year Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1958) and ran away to where no fat handshaking stranger in a red flannel suit and a fake white beard

For those with long memories, here is a poem by another New Yorker from an earlier generation of radicals, known as the Beatniks. Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti was born in 1919 and completed a B.A. in journal- ism at the University of North Carolina in 1941. He joined the US Navy as an officer and served in both the Atlantic and Pacific theatres. A visit to the ruins of Nagasaki in 1945 made him a lifelong pacifist.

Funded by the GI Bill, Ferlinghetti obtained an M.A. in English literature from Columbia University in 1947 and a Doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1951. Living in San Francisco from 1953, he took up painting and trans- lated French poetry before he started writing his own. (The poem above is from his second collection, A Coney Island of the Mind, published in 1958. It is not known when the actual poem was written.) He founded the City Lights Bookstore and then added a publishing house, which produced the works of many Beatnik writers, including Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac.

In later years, Ferlinghetti was active in the Hippy movement and left-wing politics. He travelled extensively and wrote more than 30 books of poetry, fiction, art criticism and film narration. He won numerous awards, both in the US and internationally, and became the Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 1998. He often gave public recitations and even made recordings of his poems and stories. Most impressively, he is still alive at 97.

7 STÉPHANE (Part 4) By Patrick Bernard

Stéphane was either unable or unwilling to see the difference between tenacity and obstinacy, between the sensible and the arbitrary, none of which got better as he grew older. He became what might best described as a stubborn law-abiding citizen, whose obsession with order often verged on lunacy. There was a sacro- sanct routine that could not be altered under any circumstances. Life was like a house of cards that would collapse as soon as any of its parts was moved or changed. Most domestic activities had to be undertaken with the reassuring predictability of reliable clockwork. The house or the apartment, depending on where the family was staying at the time, had to be vacuumed every day. Beds had to be made with military precision. Bed sheets and pillowcases had to be changed every week. All meals had to be served at exactly the same times every day. The dining room table had to be set according to timeless traditions, with father and mother sitting at opposite ends like the two sphinxes guarding the gates of the Amun-Re temple in Luxor.

Stéphane’s risible inflexibility manifested itself in everything he did, even in the simple act of walking. He was the sort of person who believed that pedestrians should use the footpaths as cars used the roads, follow- ing similar rules and conventions. In other words, this being France, pedestrians should walk on the right side of the footpaths. He followed this unwritten law meticulously, with the fervour of a religious fanatic, expecting everyone to comply with his holy scriptures. As a result of his peripatetic zealotry, he was then perpetually surprised and irritated by the prevailing anarchism governing Parisian footpaths, as if having to negotiate his way between dogs’ excrements was not upsetting enough.

In those days, Parisians felt neither compulsion nor obligation to collect their beloved pets’ droppings and there were no ‘Poop-Scoots’1 yet to clean up the stinking mess left by ‘man’s best friends’ all over the streets of Paris, particularly in the most affluent arrondissements2 that were “a minefield of ‘merde3 ”, as Stéphane used to lament. Unfortunately, no one will ever know if this observation was not intended instead as a snipe directed at the local residents, for whom he had no great fondness in any case.

Stéphane’s naivety was ever more disturbing on pedestrian crossings, where he felt unequivocally protected by the law. He would therefore cross roads without hesitation, within the clearly delineated markings; certain of his rights which he believed safeguarded his person regardless of the oncoming traffic. No matter how often he was told that human flesh and bones do not win against the metal of speeding cars, Stéphane insisted on his legal entitlement as a pedestrian and it was a daily miracle that he did not end up killed or seriously injured. He was, of course, correct to think he was in the right but wrong to believe that the law guaranteed his safety. This reckless innocence, often bordering on folly, epitomised Stéphane’s temperament and extend- ed to every other aspect of his life.

From an early age Maurice felt an irresistible urge to challenge, if not overthrow, this sclerotic lifestyle. Needless to say, this seditious attitude created great tension between father and son who were like two tectonic plates moving in different directions thus building up conflicting forces towards an unavoidable earthquake.

Stéphane was very fond of quoting the classics, often inappropriately, as he thought that such prestigious refer- ences gave more legitimacy to his most outlandish assertions. For instance, he repeated over many years the famous “To be or not to be, that is the question!”, having completely misunderstood Shakespeare’s phrase in this case. Stéphane thought that it meant: “You have to be true to yourself. Don’t be a mindless follower and don’t pretend to be what you are not!” In other words, he translated this famous line as “To be yourself or not to be yourself, that is the question!” He could not accept that Hamlet’s soliloquy was a meditation on whether one should continue to exist or not and then got very affronted when Maurice tried to correct him on this point. Snapping back with wounded pride, he roared: “How dare you? Who do you think you are? What would you know at your age?”

Years later, Maurice came to think that, although his father had indeed misinterpreted Shakespeare’s famous dictum, he had been correct in emphasising the necessity to be true to one’s principles and beliefs in order to salvage a modicum of integrity – even if it meant foregoing either personal welfare or the approval of others

1 Small vacuum cleaning scooters that would appear on the streets of Paris in the 1980s 2 districts 3 ‘merde’ being the colloquial French word for ‘shit’ 8 or, in some extreme cases, even if it meant risking one’s own skin. As Boris Pasternak, whom Stéphane greatly admired, said: “Don’t change from a wolf into a lapdog.” These were potent ideas that would in- fluence Maurice for the rest of his life, although he would inevitably breach such commendable principles on many occasions. In his more magnanimous moments, as he himself approached old age, Maurice wondered if his father had not intentionally misinterpreted Hamlet’s soliloquy for fear that it might inspire his sons to even consider the idea of suicide.

Stéphane had a few other aphorisms he would repeat ad nauseam, appropriately or not, but these jaded pearls of popular wisdom coloured with a touch of Irish fatalism would remain forever stored in Maurice’s memory. Two of Stéphane’s favourite proverbs were: “Life is indeed a bed of roses; you just have to avoid the pricks” and “Yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s a train coming towards you!”, which he alone found amusing. Stéphane was one of those irritating people who laugh at their own jokes and he would find those even more hilarious if no one else did. At other times, thinking he was preparing his sons for the realities of existence, he would warn them with a fatherly benevolence: “If you wake up in the morning with a smile you can be sure that on that very same day you will run into someone who will try to wipe that smile off your face!”

A more obscure wisecrack was: “No matter what you do, no matter where you are, there you are!”, the mean- ing of which escaped Maurice at the time but he liked its absurdist irony so much that he espoused it as his own motto. Soon he began to quote it himself at every opportunity, also often mal-à-propos, thus becoming a parody of his father, which distressed him greatly. Later on in life, it dawned on him that Stéphane meant: “No matter what you do, no matter where you are, you can’t escape from yourself!” and, as Maurice grew older, this turned out to be as clear and true as the world observed through a pane of glass.

Few individuals return from war unscathed, without physical or mental wounds of some sort, the latter being more difficult to diagnose and therefore to treat. This would prove to be the case with Stéphane who had had the moral and physical courage to fight ‘the good fight’ but was not provided with the support he needed after the war, which made his return to a semblance of normalcy very difficult. Not surprisingly, his outgoing per- sonality had changed markedly during those seven cursed years on the battlefields of Europe and North Africa, and his condition deteriorated further as a consequence of his stint as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany.

He would frequently sit silently for hours, staring into a void, dazed and unable to communicate. During such episodes, his wife and his two sons would stay away from him, as they feared that any distraction might jolt him out of his semi-catatonic state and trigger an unpleasant reaction. This unpredictability became the most difficult aspect of his slow descent into what the author, Thomas Moore, called “The Dark Nights of the Soul”4. It was clear that there was something seriously wrong with Stéphane but no one knew exactly what it was that ailed him. There were multitudes of other Second World War veterans afflicted similarly, so friends and relatives put up with it as bravely and as compassionately as they could. Meanwhile, both government and health authorities seemed to ignore these private tragedies altogether. To add insult to injury these damaged men were often considered by the community to be either bludgers or weaklings; thus, they were left alone to confront their ghosts.

In the aftermath of every war ongoing questions about many of the survivors often linger uncomfortably and this uncertainty makes their wellbeing even more problematic. What did they do to survive when so many around them had died? Was it just luck? When he was motivated by spite Maurice sometimes wondered if his father had done something to be ashamed of in order to save his skin. Was he really arrested by the Gestapo? How and why? If he had been tortured what did he do or say to live another day? Was he really sent to the prison camp in Sachsenhausen in Germany? What did he do there? What are the troubling war memories that have so ailed him for the rest of his life?

Before 1938, Stéphane had been a joyous and confident young man, reputed among friends and relatives for his generosity and his practical jokes. By the time he was demobilised in 1945, he had become withdrawn, taciturn, paranoid, short-tempered and subject to unexpected mood swings which could be occasionally terrifying. For these reasons, and may be other unknown ones, he began to find solace in regular solitary drinks which diminished him further into a wreck of self-pity. Like many other forgotten casualties of war, before or since, he didn’t drink to celebrate life but to numb it. He would then pathetically fall asleep on his winged armchair in the lounge room, where no one else was allowed to sit in at any time. Dribbling and snoring like a wounded beast, he thus became a figure of derision, if not contempt, at least in the eyes of his

4 Title of a 2004 book by the psychologist, Thomas Moore. 9 two sons. To avoid further embarrassment, his wife would then close the lounge room doors to spare her sons from this unedifying spectacle.

He was a broken man who had lost his sense of purpose, his raison d’être, and his life had become a mere series of tasks he continued to perform for no apparent reasons other than fulfilling what he considered to be his duty which, to be fair, he did to the best of his diminishing abilities in intermittent periods of sobriety and lucidity. His wife, whom he never ceased to adore, and his boys, who despised him by then, were all that mattered to him. Having invested everything in the three of them emotionally and financially, he had unreasonable expectations, particularly of his two sons who were bound to disappoint him, thus further aggravating his despondency. Nicholas did his best to fulfil his father’s fantasies but Maurice, who did not cope well with that kind of parental pressure, did not even try. Thus, they drifted further apart, which worsened their respective sorrows as they re- called with equal melancholy the wonderful relationship they had so enjoyed in the past.

It is commonly believed that veterans of armed conflicts are reluctant to talk about their war experiences – the truth being more often that no one is prepared to listen to them. On the few rare occasions when Stéphane attempted to share his harrowing war memories with his sons, they invariably raised their eyebrows to the ceiling, sighing or yawning to indicate with disrespectful lassitude that they had heard those stories a thousand times before, even if that was not the case. As far as they were concerned, once was enough and even that was already too much.

This was the 1960s and war was much more unfashionable then than it is now. Battlefield reminiscences were ungratefully considered to be an obscene celebration of martial violence and veterans were all thought to be fascists, even though that was the very ideology they had fought so hard and millions had perished to defeat. In fact, it seemed that more sympathy was extended to the vanquished who had started this apo- calyptic conflict than to the victors who had stopped it. More sorrow was expressed for the bombing raid victims of Dresden than for those of Coventry. More compassion and outrage was felt for the people of Hiro- shima than for those of Nanking. Aware that he only inspired boredom and indifference, Stéphane withdrew into aggrieved silence.

Then as now, the young confused pacifism with appeasement. Today’s university students demonstrate the same well-intended but naïve militancy as their predecessors did in the 1930s, when they shouted down Winston Churchill as he appeared on British campuses trying in vain to warn against the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany.

The decline of Western liberalism, the horrors of war, the wasted years, missed opportunities and other per- sonal failings drove Stéphane to drink more than he should have, seldom in excess though, but with enough regularity to transform him into a lesser person.

[This is Part 4 of what will be Chapter 6 of Patrick’s epic work, Perennity. The series has been running in this journal for a few years now, with Parts 1–3 of this chapter printed in the last two issues and Parts 2 and 3 of Chapter 5 (‘Tatiana’) published earlier this year.

Sadly, we have just learned that Tatiana (Patrick’s mother) passed away near the end of November and he is in Paris at the time this is being written.]

Paris Dogs Street Vacuum Cleaner ‘Poop-Scoot’

10 A GOOD YEAR FOR CHEMISTS!

We can’t let this year get away from us without reporting that not one but three prominent British chemists were born 250 years ago in 1766. The first, born in Edinburgh on 21 July, was Thomas Charles Hope, best known for his discovery of strontium. The son of a surgeon, he completed a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh in 1787 and then went to the University of Paris for further study. A great believer in the value of chemistry to medical practice, he taught both disciplines (chemistry first) at the University of Glasgow from 1787 to 1795.

In 1791–2, he analysed a mineral sample from the West Highland village of Strontian and identified a new metallic element in it. (Strontium was subsequently isolated by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1808.) Hope also devised an ingenious apparatus, 0 with which he determined that water reaches its maximum density at 4 C, publish- ing his results in 1805. Already a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he went on to become the Professor of Medicine and Chemistry at the university there in

1797 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1810. He retired in 1833 and died in 1834.

Next was William Hyde Wollaston, born on 06 August in Norfolk. He, too, studied medicine, graduating from Cambridge University in 1793. He practised as a doctor until an inheritance in 1800 enabled him to pursue aspects of chemistry and physics that interested him more. He started a chemical firm and promptly developed a process for producing platinum in commercial quantities. While analysing the by- products from the platinum ore, he discovered the elements, palladium (1802) and rhodium (1804).

Wollaston also worked in physics, devising a number of instruments. He showed that static electricity and electric current were essentially the same phenomenon, observed the absorption lines in the solar spectrum and developed a superior lens for cameras. He was Vice-President of the Royal Society until his death in 1828.

However, the most famous British chemist of that era was John Dalton, born on 06

September in the northern county of Cumberland. As a Quaker, he was not allowed to attend university, so he acquired much of his scientific knowledge informally. Having run a school with his older brother from the age of 15 and made a name for himself as a meteorologist, he then taught mathematics and natural philosophy (i.e., physics) at the Unitarian New Manchester College between 1793 and 1800.

Dalton then conducted groundbreaking research into the variation of vapour pressure with temperature and formulated what is now called the Law of Partial Pressures. In 1803, he proposed the first modern atomic theory, whereunder each element had a characteristic atomic weight and atoms of various elements combined in fixed ratios to form molecules of compounds. He went on to a distinguished academic career, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1822 and also a member of the French and American national Academies. He continued doing research and writing papers until his death in 1844.

Only 100 years ago, another Scottish chemist, William Ramsay, died in 1916. Born in Glasgow in 1852, he graduated from the university there and obtained his doc- torate from the University of Tübingen in Germany. He became a professor at the University College of Bristol in 1879 and progressed to the Chair of Chemistry at University College London in 1887.

It was there, between 1894 and 1910, that he identified the inert trace gases, argon, neon, krypton, xenon and radon in the atmosphere. He also isolated helium, which had only been identified on the Sun prior to that. This added an entire new column to the Periodic Table and Ramsay was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904, the first Briton to achieve that honour.

11 (Britain and Ireland, cont’d)

In 1928, The British and Foreign Unitarian Association merged with the Sunday School Association to form the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. Since they both shared the Essex House building, no change of headquarters was needed. However, that building was destroyed by a bomb in World War II and had to be rebuilt. Today, the General Assembly has 170 member congregations: 146 in England, 21 in Wales and 4 in Scotland. The English churches are divided into 13 regions for administrative purposes.

In 1930, the General Assembly acquired a building at Great Hucklow in Derbyshire, which has been used as a conference centre since that time. It has been the site of its Annual Meetings until recently and is still used for various other conferences.

[This is from Part 2 of the author’s ‘Unitarianism in Europe’ series of PowerPoint presentations, which traces the history of our denomination on the Continent and in the UK from the 15th Century to the present. Part 3 covers the more recent history of Unitarianism in Continental Europe, including many countries where it only appeared after 1900, and that will appear in one or more future instalments.]

SPECIAL CONCERT

Our legendary Music Director, Kaine Hayward, has organised something very special for us at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, 18 December, to help us get through the recess. Please come and join Sydney’s finest young singers for a candlelit recital of some of the most intimate and profound music ever composed for voice and piano, which will include works by Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven and Alexander von Zemlinsky.

Kaine has given us notice that he will soon graduate from the Conservatorium of Music and then proceed to post-graduate study in the US in the April of next year. All the more reason to honour his years of service to our church and to attend one more of his excellent concerts before he goes.

Membership renewals for 2017 are due from 01 January, so the best time to pay them will be at the Christmas Party. Those wishing to join our church can use this form by way of application but should not send payment until their membership is accepted.

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MEMBERSHIP/RENEWAL FORM

I, (name) ______of (address) ______

______Postcode ______

Phone(s): (home) ______(other) ______

Email: ______

I apply to join/renew membership in (delete one) the Sydney Unitarian Church and agree to abide by the rules as set down by the Constitution and management of the church.

Signature: ______Fee enclosed: $_____*

Cheques should be made payable to: Treasurer, Sydney Unitarian Church. Membership will be valid for the calendar year 2016.

* Annual membership is $20 and includes the SUN journal; subscription to the SUN only is $15. 12