Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Wednesday, June 5, 2013


Deep-Sea Unitarians

We claim kinship, mental as well as physical, with those unafraid mariners of the North, who, in the early Middle Ages ceased to hug the shallow shoreline, launched out upon the main, sailed the uncharted sea by the sun, and when that failed them by the never-setting stars, and found “Vinland the Good.” We are deep-sea Unitarians. As such, we are not overly concerned about the eddies and cross-currents to the right or to the left of us on the surface of the mighty stream of liberal thought. But let there be no misapprehension as to our essential position. We cherish no undue reverence for the mythologies of old, whether Norse, Greek, Hebrew or Christian. We accept them, not as special revelations of ultimate truth, but rather as the disclosures of the best that the men of old could embody in words after pondering the problem of existence. And if their findings no longer serve to feed our souls, let us not give way to whining about the meagerness of our heritage, let us like resolute and resourceful men and women dive deeper, soar higher, and formulate the findings of our explorations in the world of space, time, and mind into nobler and more soul-satisfying concepts to sustain the loftier race that is to be.

Amandus H. Norman (born June 5, 1865)


Nora Unitarian Universalist Church
Hanska, Minnesota
(Photo by Jatakuck)

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