In response to my invitation to you all to submit questions for this week’s reflections, I heard from three people, a couple of them with multiple questions. So, I’m choosing one question from each of those three people – and naturally I’ll be glad to talk with them, or with any of you, about the questions which remain on your minds, or which are raised for you today!
The first question I’ve selected is this:
What are some of your all-time favourite books, novels, movies, and\or TV shows, and what do your preferences reveal about you philosophically and spiritually?
I’m going to offer a very brief response to each part of the question, giving just one or two of my favourites in each category. (This is cheating, of course, because it’s really a library of books, but) I have to say that one of my favourite “books” is the one we call the Bible. It’s such a rich mixture of fact and fiction, history and mythology, preaching and poetry, wisdom and silliness, that I find it quite inexhaustible. As some of you might guess, it competes with another library to be my favourite – “The Complete Works of Shakespeare” would come awfully close, for similar reasons, if I had to choose just one volume to take with me to a solitary existence somewhere. But I think the Bible comes out just slightly ahead. And what does this kind of choice say about me philosophically and spiritually? Probably that I value the old and familiar stories and poems and thoughts very deeply, and find in the classics of the Western tradition, rather than in more contemporary or distant works, the most helpful and stimulating and beautiful literature for my soul.
Novels, by contrast, are modern by definition, and my favourite novel contrasts even more sharply with what I’ve said about the classics, by being relatively unknown and from an obscure part of the world, though still the western world – namely, Canada! The novel is The Cashier by Gabrielle Roy, who’s better known for The Tin Flute and other stories set sometimes in Montreal, sometimes on the Prairies. It’s about a very ordinary bank clerk, the cashier of the title, who’s of a serious, even anxious turn of mind – he doesn’t take life lightly at all, but worries about everything from a lost umbrella to the possibility of nuclear war. But while that makes him a rather tedious person to relate to – he’s certainly not the life of any party – it’s Alexandre Chenevert’s redeeming quality: he cares, deeply, about every experience he has. He’s the kind of person that existentialist philosophers have in mind, I think, when they talk about the importance of “being there,” of cultivating a concerned awareness of the life into which we find ourselves thrown, whether we like it or not, and of trying to find the best way to live in that situation. So I suppose my liking for this book tells you I’m something of an existentialist, believing that the search for truth and meaning is not just a pleasant sparetime activity for intellectuals but something of ultimate importance for ordinary people.
As to my favourite movie, I guess it continues the theme; it’s “Babette’s Feast,” from a story by Izak Dinesen, aka Karen Blixen, who wrote Out of Africa. Babette is a well-known French chef in the 19th century, who has to leave France – I forget just why, it was something political – and ends up as cook to a couple of elderly sisters in an obscure Scandinavian village. She comes into some money, and blows the whole lot on creating a feast for the villagers – a feast which transforms their lives with its extravagance, generosity, hospitality and love. It reminds me a bit of another movie, “The Europeans,” from the book by Henry James, in which there’s a clash of cultures between the hardworking, well-to-do but puritanical American family at the centre of the story and the sophisticated, extravagant Europeans who visit them and change their lives – not necessarily for the better in this case, but certainly in an expansive kind of way.
You may get the sense by now that I enjoy drama of the slowly-unfolding kind better than fast-paced action-adventure. Right!! It’s purely temperamental, I recognize, and nothing to do with one kind of literature or movie being “better” than another. But it does mean that when it comes to television, too, I tend to prefer shows which emphasize believable characters and ethical dilemmas, rather than those with themes of catching the bad guy or speculative fantasy. Sometimes these overlap and the boundaries are fuzzy – I like NYPD Blue and E.R. and Friends and The Practice and Judging Amy and especially The West Wing, although it sometimes goes too fast for me to follow the details. But I’m most devoted to Jeopardy, which doesn’t fit in any of the categories I’ve mentioned – any time there isn’t a meeting to attend at 7.30 pm, I’m probably watching Jeopardy and testing my general knowledge against that of the players. What do these choices say about me philosophically and spiritually – well, probably not much more than that I’m temperamentally like some of you and unlike others, that we have some tastes which overlap and some which differ, and that that’s likely to be true of any two people within the congregation. It’s part of our diversity, and I hope we can all celebrate it.
Second question: What do UUs believe as far as controversial life issues such as abortion are concerned?
Any question which begins “What do UUs believe about .......?” is going to get a cagey answer! Because we’re as diverse as I’ve already suggested, the most that can ever be said is that “many” of us “tend” to believe certain things, and usually it’s even muddier – “some” UUs believe this and “others” believe that. This is because we don’t have official positions on belief or ethics which bind every one of us – even our seven Principles are a covenant between congregations and open to individual interpretation and adoption or rejection. Still, it is possible to identify some typically Unitarian thinking about even controversial issues; I’ll give it a try.
My sense is that most Unitarian Universalists, who value both reason and compassion highly, would try to bring both their reason and their compassion to issues such as abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, war, contraception, and all the other difficult matters which involve life and death. Since just the abortion issue was specifically mentioned, I’ll say something about that in particular, but I ask you to remember that my answer, however hard I try to be fair and even-handed, will inevitably reflect my own convictions which may not be yours – and that doesn’t necessarily make mine either right or reflective of the majority. In this case, however, I think I do happen to be fairly typical of UU thinking.
A well-known Unitarian was once asked where Unitarians stood on an issue and he said, “We don’t stand; we move.” But the first Principle of the Unitarian Universalist Association, now adopted by the Canadian Unitarian Council, which is “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” translates into respect for each person’s ability to make decisions about what is right for them in any given situation. Most of our members (though not all) think that abortion is one of those decisions that must be individually and situationally made by the people involved.
Another, and central, Principle for us is to encourage “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” We believe that each one of us has glimpses of truth, but that none of us has a monopoly on it, or on the right way to live. You will almost certainly find more Unitarians in the Pro-Choice than the Right-to-Life movements, but we respect those of our members whose consciences lead them to a minority point of view on the UU spectrum or within this congregation. We don=t expect that everyone will think alike. What we do expect is that each of us will consider carefully and thoughtfully all opinions about abortion, sexuality and ethics in general, and then come to our own decisions.
Our thinking about abortion takes place within a wider context of thinking about how people can live good and loving lives. Unitarians have a proud record of encouraging sex education, first with a pioneering programme for young teenagers, called “About Your Sexuality” which was developed about 30 years ago and has helped thousands of our young people avoid the need to exercise their choice for abortion, and then with the more recent program, applicable to all ages, called “Our Whole Lives.” Perhaps our sponsorship of programs as these is the closest we come to an “official position” on abortion -- we believe in educating people so that they can make their own decisions. And one of the things we’d encourage people to keep in mind is that life at all costs may not be as worth sustaining as life that is welcome and timely.
Third question: I have often wondered about this idea of Chaplains. I understand what the Minister does, but what do Chaplains do? What training do they have and what services do they offer?
You know, if I’d “planted” questions, which I didn’t, I could hardly have come up with a better one. The Sunday Program Committee had thought of having our two Lay Chaplains, Judith Koeller and Fiona Heath, give a talk on Chaplaincy during the summer, but for various reasons it couldn’t be arranged, so here’s a great opportunity for me to put in a little plug for our Lay Chaplaincy Program.
You may have heard Don Bastedo mention last week, when we were honouring Bob Whitton, that Bob was instrumental in starting the Chaplaincy Program in Canada. The program’s unique to Canada, in fact – it doesn’t exist in the same form anywhere else. When you hear the word “Chaplain” you may think of Ministers working in hospitals or prisons or the armed forces, but our Unitarian Chaplains are not Ministers at all. They’re members of our congregations who’re specially designated and prepared (on the job and by mentoring, workshops and networking) to perform rites of passage – that is, to marry people, dedicate children and officiate at funerals and memorial services. To try to remove some of the confusion, it was decided about a year ago to use the phrase “Lay Chaplain”, but that’s relatively new, so some of us forget some of the time. When the congregation has nominated them, and the Canadian Unitarian Council has approved the nomination, the Lay Chaplains are licensed by the Province of Ontario to perform marriages, so if anyone wonders whether the weddings they do are just as legal as anyone else’s, the answer is definitely yes. (For the other things, such as dedicating babies and conducting funerals and memorial services, no licence is needed by anyone.)
Another ceremony that our Lay Chaplains are happy to conduct is a Service of Union between same-sex couples. At the moment, as you probably know, these have no legal status in Ontario but even so, if it comes to applying for spousal benefits or other civil rights, it can be helpful to show that the ceremony was performed by a licensed person and was recorded in the Marriage Register of the congregation, as our ceremonies are. Perhaps in the future, if same-sex weddings become legally recognized, there might even be retroactive recognition given to Services of Union which the Lay Chaplains have conducted. We advertise this service in the community, and quite often it brings people to the congregation because they find it suggest a welcoming and inclusive attitude, even if they don’t need any of the Lay Chaplains’ services.
Lay Chaplains’ only responsibilities are for rites of passage; they’re not counsellors or theologians or preachers or pastors. But they perform a very valuable service in the community – which the Minister, whose primary responsibilities are to the congregation, can’t do. They provide thoughtful and beautiful ceremonies for couples from different faiths or backgrounds, or perhaps with no religious affiliation, who want a spiritually sensitive service rather than a legal minimum at City Hall. They tune in to the needs of bereaved people who want some personal and appropriate recognition of a loved one’s passing and don’t know anyone else to ask. They celebrate with couples (perhaps the same ones they’ve married) when a child is born to them and they want a ceremony of naming and dedication and rejoicing. They can do any of these things for anyone who’s not a member of this congregation – and for many people who attend their ceremonies it’s their first real contact with Unitarians. What a great way to discover who we are!
If you have a friend who’s looking for someone to marry them, or conduct a memorial service, or get creative with some other kind of ceremony, tell them about our Lay Chaplaincy Program. Give them my number or email address, if you like, and I’ll make sure their request gets passed on to Judith or Fiona. We’re very lucky to have them!
That’s the last of the questions I want to discuss, but among the others there were a couple of factual ones which can be answered very quickly, so here goes:
Do UUs pray?
Some do and some don’t (now that really didn’t surprise you, did it?)
How do UUs celebrate Christian holidays?
As festively as possible – and as many non-Christian ones as we can, too!
Is there a family camp or youth camp sponsored by UUs?
Yes; it’s called Unicamp, and it’s wonderful and not far away. Ask me about it!
What do UUs believe about the afterlife?
Well, by now you know the answer – they believe a whole range of things! You know, it might be more satisfying to ask a particular UU – maybe the person sitting next to you, here or at the picnic. Ask them “What do you believe about ....... (whatever)?” You’ll get some interesting answers, and even more important, you’ll start a conversation. That – conversation and community – is what we’re all about.