My title for this morning, "Where Have We Come From?", was inspired by noticing that some commercial interest has labelled this "Grandparents Day." I thought about how our grandparents, and all our biological and spiritual ancestors, have influenced and shaped us. They are "where we have come from," and they’re worth remembering.

The question can be answered in so many equally valid ways! Where have we come from individually, in our religious or spiritual journeys, to reach this Unitarian Sunday service? Where have we come from as a species – from water, from the stars, from lower states of consciousness ..... many possible answers there. Where have we come from as a civilisation, to reach the anniversary of a terrorist attack and remember with sorrow all the human suffering associated with that event. And – the question which I’ll reflect on particularly now, with thanks to Reverend Charles Eddis of Montreal for providing good background material – where have we come from as Canadian Unitarians, to reach this point of independent denominational status, 41 years after the founding of the Canadian Unitarian Council in 1961.

Charles Eddis gave his talk on June 24^th this year in Quebec City, at the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, meeting in Canada for probably the last time ever. I attended part of that assembly, and Ida Fisher and Helga Tewfik were there for the entire gathering. We knew we were part of an historic occasion, and we revelled in it! Yet we were, I think, conscious of our limited understanding of why this had to be the last time, why the separation of the Canadian Unitarian Council from the UUA had to take place. The best that many of us could do to sum it up was, "It’s just time for this step; we’re ready!"

Charles suggests that it’s impossible to fully understand separation, separateness, and independence, just "as men do not fully understand women, or women men, because neither is the other." I think he was suggesting that Canadian Unitarians and American Unitarians will never be able to see things from quite the same perspective, and I agree. It applies to all our differences and uniquenesses, I think – as the radical psychoanalyst R.D. Laing has said, "I cannot experience you!" Your history, your experiences, have brought you to a unique place, different from the place at which I have arrived. But all this doesn’t mean that we can’t try to fill out our own picture of where we’ve come from together – which is one step towards answering the even more important question of where we’re going, together!

The closing day of the General Assembly, which was when Charles gave his talk to the Historical Society, was Fête Nationale, St. Jean Baptiste Day, which he explained to confused Americans as Quebec’s Fourth of July, complete with fireworks. Ironically

A short walk from here," he said, "are the Plains of Abraham, where British General Wolfe defeated French General Montcalm in 1759, bringing to an end most of the French empire in North America.

The result was three peoples: the English in the United States, the English in British North America, now known as Canada, and the French Canadians. Any hope of one of these three groups approaching even a limited understanding any one of the others probably depends to some extent on at least a faint sense of knowing where each of us has come from. The same doubtless applies to understanding between Canadian and American Unitarians, and before we try to take in American Unitarian history, it behooves us, I think, to know something of our own, to know at least a little bit of where we Canadian Unitarians have come from. For simplicity, I’ll only refer to our history as an organized national movement, just the past 40 years or so.

Here’s a lovely little story from the early days of our Canadian Unitarian Council history – and remember that while our organizational history goes back only a bit more than 40 years, there’s been much change in that time. See if you think this could happen now:

In 1966, Charles recounts,

Duff Roblin, then the Premier of Manitoba, walked into a Unitarian gathering in Winnipeg and for ten minutes thought he was at a meeting of New Democrats. He recognized seven members of the legislative assembly, including three cabinet ministers, two Winnipeg city aldermen and one member of the Winnipeg Metro Council, all of whom were New Democrats. [At that time] The Canadians were ....... the NDP meditating, if not praying.

Well, some of you can guess that I don’t too much mind that description, but let’s remember that it’s where we’ve come from, not where we are today. We’re still, I’m fairly sure, disproportionately left-wing politically – it must have something to do with our Principles! -- but there’s more diversity among us now than that 1966 story would suggest. There are people integrating their Unitarian values with a commitment not only to the Green Party, but to the Liberals and Conservatives too – and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a few Unitarians helping to keep the Canadian Alliance aware of the worth and dignity of every person, too!

That’s what, to me, is so wonderful about diversity in our movement and in this congregation – whether it’s diversity of race, background, occupation, political conviction, talents, sexual orientation, age or whatever – it not only enriches us to be touched by so many kinds of people, but it enables the values of our movement, our free religious endeavour, to permeate more of our culture and our community. It’s wonderful when someone takes our seven Principles onto the assembly line where they work, or into the University; -- suppose someone were taking those Principles into the top levels of the corporate world or into Cabinet meetings or into other places which might seem unlikely, because we don’t associate them with where we’ve come from. Wouldn’t that be great?

Taking us back to our national origins, Charles Eddis reminds us that the United States was formed for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," whereas Canada was formed, in the words of the Fathers of Confederation, for the purpose of "peace, order, and good government."

"Canadians respect authority," says Charles. "They are suspicious of American suspicion of authority. Authority has a moral obligation to care for people individually and collectively. .......... Having faith in and respect for law, Canada has less than half the number of lawyers per capita the United States has. Although placing no stress on freedom, it has kept alive a culture in which, with the absence of patriotric conformity, Canadians are freer to be themselves."

This seems to me an important and fascinating and rather paradoxical truth about where we’ve come from as Canadian Unitarians. We come from a nation which does not include "freedom" in its reason for being; and we come from a tradition whose central principle is a free search!

Canadians don’t have a clear sense of national identity, says Charles. At the same time, they sense they have something special that they want to keep. With all due respect to their neighbours south of the border, most Canadians do not want to be Americans. A historian has observed that "Canadians are the world’s oldest and most continuing un-Americans." Not anti-Americans, but non-Americans. And we struggle over who we are if we’re Canadians, not Americans just as we struggle over who we are if we’re Unitarians, not in the religious mainstream. You could say that we’ve come from a place and state of uncertainty, into a place and state of struggling for identity – still a very transitional state with no sense of having actually arrived anywhere. But we know we have: we’ve actually been a nation for 135 years, even without knowing who we are, and we’re now a Canadian denomination even without knowing exactly who we are! A sense of identity doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite for having an identity!

One of the vital pieces of our history as Canadian Unitarians predated the formation of the Canadian Unitarian Council by about 20 years. From 1940 to 1946, a small newsletter called The Canadian Unitarian was published in Ottawa and distributed with the local newsletters of Canadian congregations. Never underestimate the power of a newsletter, local or national, in shaping an identity! I think it’s the fact of communication, rather than a printed publication in itself, which is key, and I believe the same kind of step forward in shaping identity is happening with the internet now, as new websites are initiated and our members communicate with one another by email. More and more people are finding us that way, too – and they usually have some sense of who we are by the time they get to a service. Similar things had happened earlier – after the Second World War, some radical and outspoken Unitarian Ministers, particularly in Toronto, had generated considerable attention from the media. The Unitarian Service Committee of Canada, founded in 1945, was also getting coverage, both in city newspapers and on television, so much so that the word "Unitarian" became almost a household world, though its meaning was not very widely known. (There are still people who identify us with the USC, even though it’s been an independent organization for many years.) Again, some kind of identity was being formed, even if those most involved weren’t very sure about what it was! Where we have come from has proved to be an inescapable part of who we are. What we’re doing now, as a congregation and as Canadian Unitarians, is going to have a huge effect on future Unitarian identity, like it or not. What a responsibility!

Back to our history: Charles relates how on May 14^th, 1961, "some fifty Canadian Unitarians and Universalists from Vancouver to Halifax met and approved the bylaws which brought the Canadian Unitarian Council into being, and elected its first Board of Directors" . He adds with understated and understandable pride, "The Board elected me its first President, a position I held until 1965." The first CUC pamphlet, Unitarians in Canada , was published in 1963. Its back cover listed the name and location of every church and fellowship in Canada. Other pamphlets by Ministers in Canada followed, but there haven’t been many of them and for the most part our congregations have relied on American publications. Did you know that some of us are currently working on a new series of thoroughly Canadian pamphlets, and the very first one published is likely to be "The Six Sources of our Faith" by our own Craig Beam!

As early as 1969, at the CUC annual meetings in Montreal that May, some Toronto area delegates proposed that Canadian congregations should separate from the UUA, and the CUC go its own way. Twenty four congregations were present as delegates defeated the proposal 29-21 – it was close! Since then, there’s been more and more enthusiasm for "standing on our own feet," until this past May there was a unanimously positive vote for the final independence plan. Where have we come from? From cautiousness and self-doubt, into the confidence and energy which are needed to operate autonomously. To me, this evolution at the national level mirrors what’s been happening here in Waterloo, where we’ve moved in the space of just a few years from quarter-time Ministry to full-time, from a converted house to a building with more space (but not enough space!), from small friendly gatherings of a dozen or two people to a situation in which, with hardly any hesitation, we undertake the hosting of a Regional GatheRiNG likely to be much larger than any meeting we’ve had before. I hope very much that even as we rejoice in our expanded horizons we won’t forget those small friendly gatherings and will work hard to find ways of maintaining them within our larger structures, at the local as well as national levels.

In its early years, the CUC was administered by a devoted volunteer, and it wasn’t until 1983 that the first professional Executive Director was hired. This has changed the way Canadians have thought about the CUC. Since then, we’ve taken it (and our responsibilities for it) more seriously and have developed that increasing sense of identity, commitment and confidence that I’ve already mentioned. The first Unitarians began preparing for the ministry at theological schools in Canada – not Unitarian schools, but open to Unitarian students. With an Executive Director at the helm, the CUC functioned more smoothly and effectively. Later, an Administrator and an Office Assistant were added. We are now (since this summer) also served by two Directors of Regional Services (fulltime professionals), one in the west, one in the east, and by a fulltime Director of Lifespan Learning. (The Executive Director, Mary Bennett, and the Director of Lifespan Learning, Sylvia Bass-West, will be with us for the Regional GatheRiNG in October.) Many congregations, too, now not only have Ministers but paid Directors of Religious Education, Administrators, Music Directors and other staff. Nationally and locally, we’ve come from total reliance on volunteers to a recognition that some work, at least, can best be accomplished when professional skills are employed. May we not forget that we will always need volunteers – that in fact everyone who comes through our doors without pay is volunteering their presence – your presence -- and may we continue to appreciate them.

This reflection has said hardly anything about our spiritual identity – where we’ve come from in terms of beliefs, convictions and religious practices. I’ve touched on those at other times and will do so again. But I want to suggest that there are parallels to be found between where we’ve come from organizationally on the one hand and theologically or spiritually on the other. We’ve never been able to articulate very well just what it means to be a Canadian or a Unitarian, let alone a Canadian Unitarian! Yet we’ve managed to create a structure for living out our Canadian Unitarian identity, and perhaps that’s the best way of articulating it. Similarly, I think, at the congregational level and as individuals, we’ve struggled mightily and without complete or permanent success to say who we are and what we stand for. Yet we’ve managed to create a congregational structure for living out who we are and what we stand for, in our services, our activities, our committees and our caring for one another.

Where have we come from, nationally, locally, individually? We’ve come from small and uncertain beginnings, with a sense that there is something special in a free faith, something worth cherishing. Where are we now? Just a little further on, a little more confident, growing up, but with a long way to go. And where will the long journey take us? Perhaps to revisit our beginnings, with determination to preserve what was best when we were starting out, and to build on that rather than discarding it. As Charles Eddis said in conclusion to his talk,

And as poet T.S. Eliot has said,

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

May we come to understand, at least in part, where we have come from, where we are, and where we are going, and embrace it all! So may it be.