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

February/March 2008

INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF PLANET EARTH

At the behest of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the UN General Assembly has declared 2008 to be the International Year of Planet Earth. Unusually, this year constitutes the middle of a triennium (2007-2009) dedicated to the promotion of earth sciences and their importance in achieving sustainable development. In addition to the IUGS, the IYPE Project has 12 Founding Partners and 26 Associate Partners, all of which are international, regional or major national organisations with areas of expertise ranging from geology through soil science to meteorology.

The Project’s ten research themes have been chosen for their societal relevance, multidisciplinary nature and ‘outreach’ potential. These are:

 Groundwater: reservoir for a thirsty planet?;  Hazards: minimizing risk, maximizing awareness;  Earth and Health: building a safer environment;  Climate Change: the ‘stone tape’;  Resource Issues: towards sustainable use;  Megacities: going deeper, building safer;  Deep Earth: from crust to core;  Ocean: abyss of time;  Soil: Earth’s living skin; and  Earth and Life: origins of diversity.

(The ‘stone tape’ refers to an ongoing study of ancient sedimentary rocks to determine how the Earth’s climate has changed over geological time.)

The ‘outreach’ aspect is an essential feature of the IYPE, in that it will target decision makers, the voting public and the 400,000 geoscientists around the globe ‘who need help in using their knowledge for the benefit of the world’s population’. The international project seeks to raise the surprisingly modest sum of $US 20 m., to be divided equally between its Science and Outreach Committees. In addition to attracting the attention of the target groups, the various publications and activities have the objective of doubling the number of people who are currently seeking qualifications in the geosciences.

1 The Global Launch will take place at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris on 12/13 February, which promises to be a major event. The IYPE website (www.yearofplanetearth.org) contains a wealth of information, including booklets developed for each of the ten research themes and a Mission Statement entitled: Planet Earth in our Hands. As is the case with all International Years, the bulk of the work will be financed and carried out by the National Committees of the UN’s member states, over 90 of which are already ‘up-and- running. In this country, that endeavour will be headed jointly by the Geological Society of Australia and Geoscience Australia, an agency of the federal Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism. In keeping with last year’s coverage of the International Year of the Dolphin, we mean to provide periodic updates throughout 2008, so ‘watch this space’.

[The IYPE logo was originally that of the German Ministry of Education and Research’s Jahr der Geo- wissenschaften (Year of the Geosciences) in 2002. The inner circle is red and represents the solid Earth, outside of which are the hydrosphere in dark blue (above) and the biosphere in green (below), surrounded in turn by the pale blue atmosphere.]

SERVICE DIARY

Meetings every Sunday from 10.30 –11.30am (followed by coffee, tea and biscuits)

Date Presenter Topic 3rd February John August Christian Apologetics 10th February Ian Ellis-Jones ‘God is Dead’ Theology 17th February Peter Crawford The Impact of the Church of Ireland 24th February Stephen Whale Music Service 2nd March Ian Ellis-Jones Mystery Religions and Christianity 9th March Sharon Diacos Think Like an Elephant 16th March Mike McPhee The Irish War of Independence 23rd March Peter Crawford Can Free Churches Survive? 30th March Stephen Whale Music Service

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

РУССКАЯ ПАСХАЛЬНАЯ ВЕЧЕРНИКА

RUSSIAN EASTER PARTY

SATURDAY, 03 MAY 2008

Our first social/cultural event of the year will be an authentic and very lively Russian Easter party. As was done on the first occasion, two years ago, it will feature such culinary delights as borsht and piroshkis, also entertainment in the forms of music and song. You are also encouraged to wear Russian attire or even costumes, as that was a most memorable feature of the previous event.

The party will take place in the church hall, starting at 7 pm, so be sure to attend and bring a bottle or two of your favourite beverage with you. A donation of $20 per person will be needed to help with our expenses (to be collected on the night). To assist with our catering, please confirm your attendance and any guests you are bringing either to the Committee at the church or ring Michael Spicer on 0423 393 364.

2 We light this chalice as a symbol of our faith. By its light, may our vision be illumined; By its warmth, may our fellowship be encouraged; And by its flame, may our yearnings for peace, justice, and the life of the spirit be enkindled.

Submitted by the UK General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches; words written by Rev. David Usher, founding president of the ICUU.

Ẹgbọ Eyin Ijọ Eniyan O ye dear brethren, Oluna Olorun wa, Olorun Ikan soso ni Our Lord God is one God. Ifẹ Ni Yio Bva Araiye La It is love that will guarantee Ẹjẹka Fẹ Arawa Salvation for all. Ki Aba Le Ri Igbala Let us love one another Fi Tọkan Tọkan Rẹ Fẹ Ottun Gbogbo That we may gain salvation. Ti Nse Re Re Sincerely love everything that Si Fẹ Ọmọ Ẹnikeji Rẹ Gẹgẹ Bi Is good with your heart, Ara Rẹ Also love your neighbour as yourself, Eyi Ni Akuja Ofin Ati Gbongbo Ẹsin For this is accomplishment of the Law and true rooted worship.

Submitted by the First Unitarian Church of Nigeria; Yoruba and English words by Rev. Olufemi Olaniyi Matimoju, the church’s late founding minister.

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

The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches (www.unitarian.org.uk) has 6000 adult members in 186 congregations across England, Scotland and Wales. Despite the term, ‘Free Christian’, nearly all of its congregations are now Unitarian by name. However, past constituencies include English Presbyterians, General Baptists, Methodist Unitarians and Universalists. The British and Foreign Unitarian Association was formed by a merger of three such bodies in 1825 and initiated the National Conference of Unitarian, Liberal Christian and Other Non-Subscribing or Kindred Congregations in 1881.

The GAUFCC came into being in 1928, when the Association and the National Conference combined. In addition to its British affiliates, the General Assembly has close relations with the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, which has two congregations in Northern Ireland and two in the Republic. (‘Non-Subscribing’ refers to rejection of the dogmatic Westminster Confession.) Its national publications are The Inquirer (fortnightly), The Unitarian (monthly) and Faith and Freedom (half-yearly). . Rev. David Usher is originally from Adelaide but became a minister in the UK before moving to the US, where he was instrumental in the foundation of the ICUU and served as its President for two terms in 1995– 1999. He is now back in England as minister in Sevenoaks, Kent. His brother, Rev. Geoffrey Usher, was minister of SUC in 1976–1991 and, since then, has been at the Upper Chapel in Sheffield.

Ijo Isokan Gbogbo Eda (the Unitarian Brotherhood Church) was founded in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1919 by a multi-denominational group of religious liberals. Their hymns and services were conducted in the regional Yoruba language with the aid of native drums. Only the First Unitarian Church of Nigeria (founded in 1994) is mentioned on the ICUU website, though the first church in Lagos was built in 1936 and had its own school. The present leader of the Unitarian Brotherhood Church is His Grace Most Reverend Superintendent A. Soyombo-Abowaba. (The Yoruba language is spoken in much of Nigeria’s coastal south and the Romanised script uses dots under certain letters to vary the pronunciation. Why so many words are capitalised escapes us, however.)

3 HOW I MET MY WIFE By Jack Winter

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way.

I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I’d have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn’t be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do.

Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or a sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion. So I decided not to risk it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of.

I was plussed. It was concerting to see that she was communicado, and it nerved me that she was interested in a pareil like me, sight seen. Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt capacitated-as if there were something I was great shakes at – and forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number of times. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings.

Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. Wanting to make only called-for remarks, I started talking about the hors d'oeuvres, trying to abuse her of the notion that I was sipid, and perhaps even bunk a few myths about myself. She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory character who was up to some good.

She told me who she was. “What a perfect nomer”, I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.

[This Valentine offering was first published in the New Yorker magazine of 25 July 1994, but it is also dedicated to the commencement of the new school year and the (at least) three teachers of English in our congregation. Such persons are not legendary for their numeracy but we also hope they will draw some inspiration from the following metric conversions, whose provenance is not known.]

2000 mockingbirds: 2 kilomockingbirds 2000 pounds of Chinese soup: won ton Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement: 1 bananosecond Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon 1000 aches: 1 megahurtz Basic unit of laryngitis: 1 hoarsepower 1 trillion microphones: 1 megaphone 1 million bicycles: 2 megacycles 10 cards: 1 decacards Force of 1 kilogram of falling figs: 1 Fig Newton* 1000 cubic centimetres of wet socks: 1 literhosen 1 millionth of a salmon: 1 microfiche 1 trillion pins: 1 terrapin 10 rations: 1 decoration 8 nickels: 2 paradigms

* Any physicist knows this should be 9.8 Fig Newtons.

4 Irrespective of their numeracy, there have indeed been creative works on scientific subjects written by literary types who had no great expertise in those areas. Consider the following:

THE DINOSAUR

Behold the mighty dinosaur Famous in prehistoric lore, Not only for his power and strength But for his intellectual length. You will observe by these remains The creature had two sets of brains – One in his head (the usual place), The other in his spinal base. Thus he could reason ‘a priori’ As well as ‘a posteriori’. No problem bothered him a bit He made both head and tail of it.

So wise was he, so wise and solemn, Each thought filled just a spinal column. If one brain found the pressure strong It passed a few ideas along. If something slipped his forward mind ’Twas rescued by the one behind. And if in error he was caught He had a saving afterthought. As he thought twice before he spoke He had no judgment to revoke. [Behold this prehistoric beast Extinct ten million years at least.]

[This clever piece was written in 1920 by Bert Liston Taylor, who was a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.]

COSMIC GALL

Neutrinos, they are very small. They have no charge and have no mass And do not interact at all. The earth is just a silly ball To them, through which they simply pass, Like dustmaids down a drafty hall Or photons through a sheet of glass. They snub the most exquisite gas, Ignore the most substantial wall, Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass, Insult the stallion in his stall, And scorning barriers of class, Infiltrate you and me! Like tall And painless guillotines, they fall Down through our heads into the grass. At night, they enter at Nepal And pierce the lover and his lass. From underneath the bed – you call It wonderful; I call it crass.

[This was published in John Updike’s Telephone Poles and Other Poems (Knopf, 1960).]

5 THE MIRACLES OF

One hundred fifty years ago, in the months of February and March, 1858, a series of eighteen apparitions were observed in the grotto of Massabielle by a 14-year-old French girl named . The first of these occurred on 11 February, when Bernadette and two other children went to gather firewood in the grotto – there she saw ‘a small young lady’ standing in a niche in the rock, who asked her to return there daily for the next fifteen days. The other children saw and heard nothing, but word got around and the townsfolk assumed the apparition to have been the Virgin Mary. Bernadette, however, only called her ‘Aquerò’ (meaning ‘the lady’ in the local Occitan dialect) and said she had a white veil, a blue sash around her waist, a golden rose on each foot and a string of rosary beads in her hands.

More and more people accompanied Bernadette on her subsequent trips to the grotto and became convinced that they were witnessing a miracle, even though they only saw Bernadette go into a trance-like state. However, on the ninth occasion, she reported that the apparition had told her to drink from the spring that flowed under the rock. The floor of the grotto was hard and dry, so she dug a hole but with no result. Yet, a day or so later, water did appear and Bernadette and others drank and washed in it. Though Bernadette made no such prediction, the spring water was soon reputed to have curative properties.

After the thirteenth apparition on 02 March, the girl quoted the lady as having said: “Please go to the priests and tell them that a chapel is to be built here. Let processions come hither.” Bernadette went with two aunts to the parish priest, Fr. Dominique Peyramale, who was very skeptical and insisted that the apparition identify herself. However, the apparition gave no reply when asked and the priest then demanded that the apparition make the rose bush beneath the niche flower.

That did not happen but, during the sixteenth apparition on 25 March, Bernadette stood transfixed for over an hour with a candle in her hand. Witnesses, including the town physician, saw the candle burn down till the flame was in direct contact with her hand for fifteen minutes – yet she showed no sign of pain or injury then or afterward. When the vision ended, the doctor briefly applied a lighted candle to Bernadette’s hand and she reacted to it. During that apparition, the girl asked the lady repeatedly to identify herself, and she finally replied: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

This was truly remarkable, in that Pope Pius IX had promulgated the doctrine of Mary’s birth without the stain of Original Sin only four years earlier and referred it for discussion amongst the clergy. There was no way that a barely literate peasant girl could have even known the name of the doctrine, and her teachers and priests testified that she did not hear about it from them. The matter finally got some official attention as a result and Bernadette was rigorously interviewed by both church and civil officials. She stuck to her story with a consistency and demeanour that the church authorities, at least, found convincing.

But Bernadette disliked the attention she was attracting and went to a hospice school run by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction. She then joined a Sisters of Charity convent and stayed there until her death at the age of 35 in 1879. Already, Lourdes had become a pilgrimage centre and the requested Basilica of the Immaculate Conception was completed there in 1876. A movement to have Bernadette made a saint led to her body being exhumed in 1909 and again in 1919 – on both occasions, her remains showed no signs of decomposition, though her crucifix and rosary had rusted. She was beatified in 1925 and canonised in 1933 by Pope Pius XI, not so much for her visions as for her simplicity, humility and holiness of life. She is the patron saint of sick persons and of Lourdes.

Almost 5,000,000 pilgrims from all over the world visit Lourdes every year, some to seek treatment in the Grotto. In the 145 years since Bernadette dug up the spring, 67 cures have been acknowledged by the as ‘inexplicable’ (not ‘miraculous’), but only after what the Catholic Church insists are ‘extremely rigorous scientific and medical examinations’. The Lourdes Commission, which examined Bernadette after the visions, also ran an intensive analysis on the water and found nothing more unusual than a high mineral content.

As Unitarians, we are naturally inclined to scepticism (to say the least) when we read stories such as these, and we hasten to add that the information given here is from secular sources. The full texts contain many disclaimers and qualifications that were omitted for the sake of brevity.

6 FAUSTUS SOCINUS DEFINED EARLY UNITARIANISM By Phillip Hewett

Four centuries ago in Siena, the Italians would have burned Faustus Socinus at the stake. But now that his call for reason in religion no longer sounds as threatening as it did, his native city has named a street after him. Time has also mellowed ancient animosities over other beliefs that for more than two centuries were known as Socinianism: optimism about the capacities of human nature, emphasis on a moral life rather than correct beliefs, the claim that human beings have freedom of the will enabling them to live such a life, and disbelief in post-mortem punishments in hell. If this sounds familiar, it should: Socinianism later came to be known as Unitarianism.

Socinus (Fausto Sozzini in Italian) was born in 1539 into a prominent family in Siena, where the atmosphere of Renaissance humanism encouraged free inquiry. Three years later, the Inquisition began to make Italy unsafe for those who questioned Roman Catholic dogma, and his uncle Laelius – who had first broken with Catholicism before raising questions about Protestant orthodoxy in letters to John Calvin and others—went into exile. When Laelius died, young Faustus inherited his uncle’s heretical writings, then went into exile himself in 1574. He went first to Switzerland; then to Transylvania, where a Unitarian, John Sigismund, had been king from 1540 to 1571; and finally to Poland, where he lived until his death in 1604.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was at that time the largest and most tolerant country in Europe, often called the “heretics' asylum.” In its capital city of Kraków, Socinus found a large Italian colony as well as a congregation of nonconformists. They were part of a movement that had begun in 1565, the year the Unitarian historian Earl Morse Wilbur considers “the historical beginning of organized Unitarianism.”

Socinus rapidly became an influential figure among the proto-Unitarians, though paradoxically enough he was never a formal member: Under Anabaptist influence, they had come to require baptism by total immer- sion as their initiation rite, and to this Socinus would not consent. His views on this debated question, as on most others, eventually prevailed, but not until after his death. Consequently, he led the movement from the outside – so effectively that by 1596 his position was unchallenged, and during the remaining eight years of his life he set his stamp upon its thinking.

Even in the tolerant atmosphere of Poland his unorthodox beliefs made him a marked man. In 1598, while he was sick in bed, a mob of drunken students invaded his apartment, dragged him out, made a bonfire of his books and papers and threatened to do the same to him if he would not recant his heresies. When he refused, they were on their way to throw him into the river when he was rescued by professors from the Catholic faculty of theology, whose humanitarian concerns outweighed any religious prejudices. After this episode, Socinus left the city and was a guest on the remote estate of a friend until his death in 1604. There, in 1933, largely through the efforts of the historian Wilbur, a monument to his memory was raised by Unitarians from the English-speaking world.

Still, modern Unitarian Universalists would find some of Socinus’s beliefs strange. He lived only a genera- tion or two removed from medievalism, and he shared its belief in the absolute authority of the Bible. It was his interpretation of what he found in the Bible that made him a heretic – no Trinity, no original sin, no Atonement through the death of Jesus. Such ideas are still anathema to most Christians, even though the movement he pioneered has evolved much further since his time.

[Reprinted with the author’s permission from the Nov/Dec 2004 issue of the (American) UU World journal. Socinus died in the March of 1604 and we mean to commemorate other early Unitarians in like manner through the year. Rev. Phillip Hewett is Minister Emeritus of the Vancouver (Canada) Unitarian Church and served as interim minister at both the Adelaide (1981) and Auckland (1989) Unitarian Churches during his sabbaticals. He is the author of many books, his latest being Racovia: An Early Liberal Religious Community (Blackstone Editions, 2006), about the proto-Unitarian settlement in Poland where Socinus sought refuge.

Patrick Bernard’s Voyage saga will resume in the next issue.]

7 ICUU NEWS

The ICUU will sponsor a Leadership Training Conference for leaders of emerging groups in Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, on 07-12 February 2008. The nearly 50 conference participants will be ministers and lay leaders from groups in Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, and the faculty will include leaders and ministers from Canada, India, Transylvania, South Africa, the UK and the USA. The conference will focus on the stated needs of these groups, which include theological foundations of liberal religion, theory and practice of worship and religious education, congregational organisation and governance, and decision- making in pluralistic systems. Participants will be provided with a wealth of training materials and religious education (for both children and adults) curricula from the host countries and will address ways to make these materials, curricula, and practices culturally appropriate and relevant to their own communities. The ICUU is funding the entire Conference, including travel expenses and accommodation, for which it is seeking donations from Western congregations.

COMMITTEE NEWS

The next Committee meeting will be held on 10 February 2008. If members have any issues which they would like discussed at the Committee level, they should contact the Secretary on 0423 393 364 or email: [email protected].

CONTACT US

The SUN welcomes any and all contributions our members may have. If you have any items you believe would be of interest, please submit them for publication. As you can see from the contents of this issue, such items can be serious articles, informative ‘fillers’, poems or even jokes.

Deadline for copy for the April issue of the SUN is Sunday, 23 March 2008. The preferred method for sending documents is as an attached WORD file to: [email protected] – otherwise, simple email is suitable for short items or messages. Alternately, copy can be posted or brought to SUC.

Membership renewals for 2008 are now due – please see the form below for that purpose; also if you are not a member and wish to join.

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MEMBERSHIP/RENEWAL FORM

I, (name) ______of (address) ______

______Postcode ______

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

Email: ______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 is valid for the calendar year 2007 and should be renewed by 01 January 2008.

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

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