Thursday, February 28, 2013

Liberty and the Soul

The religious question finds its solution in liberty. … The liberal principle preeminently is that humankind has a soul, that we are to be reached only through the soul, that nothing is of value save as it effects a change in the soul. An inflexible justice, granting with inexorable firmness liberty to all, even to those who, were they masters, would refuse it to their adversaries, is the only issue that reason discovers for the grave problems raised in our time.

— Ernest Renan (born February 28, 1823)

Gentle, Upright and Kind

The worst of errors is to believe that any one religion has the monopoly of goodness. For every person, that religion is good which makes them gentle, upright and kind. But to govern humankind is a difficult task. The ideal is very high and the earth is very low. Outside the sterile province of philosophy, what we meet at every step is unreason, folly and passion. The wise people of antiquity succeeded in winning to themselves some little authority only by impostures, which gave them a hold upon the imagination, in their lack of physical force.

— Ernest Renan (born February 28, 1823)

The Need for Religious Community

During my growing up years in a small village in Maryland, the local Methodist Church was central in my life. But in my high school years, questions and doubts about my religious beliefs began to surface. Feelings of isolation began to grow, for there was no one with whom I could discuss my changing beliefs and experiences, no one to share my yearning and searching. My high school and early college days and my time in the Navy were deeply lonely times. I still recall with painful intensity those early months in the Navy when I was just eighteen, frightened, and alone. At the end of the day, I would crawl into my bunk, and pull the blankets over my head, and pray that God or someone would help me in my loneliness, and then I would cry myself to sleep —fearful that someone in a nearby bunk would hear me. Praying didn't seem to help, but I think the crying did. How much I needed someone to share my religious search. How great was my need for someone to care. The need for a supportive and searching religious community has never left me. That, in part, is why I became a minister; that, in part, is why I am committed to building a strong Unitarian Universalist movement.

— O. Eugene Pickett (ordained February 28, 1953)

Experience and Impressions

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it — this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, "Write from experience, and experience only," I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!"

— Henry James (died February 28, 1916)

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Song of the Silent Land

Into the Silent Land!

Ah! who shall lead us thither?

Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather,

And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand.

Who leads us with a gentle hand

Thither, O thither,

Into the Silent Land?

Into the Silent Land!

To you, ye boundless regions

Of all perfection! Tender morning-visions

Of beauteous souls! The Future's pledge and band!

Who in Life's battle firm doth stand,

Shall bear Hope's tender blossoms

Into the Silent Land!

O Land! O Land!

For all the broken-hearted

The mildest herald by our fate allotted

Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand

To lead us with a gentle hand

To the land of the great Departed,
Into the Silent Land!

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (born February 27, 1807)

The Human Voice

How wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the of the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written upon his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only, as God revealed himself to the prophet of old, in "the still, small voice," and in a voice from the burning bush. The soul of men is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (born February 27, 1807)

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Address to a Worker’s Congress at Marseilles

For four hundred years the human race has not made a step but what has left its plain vestige behind. We enter now upon great centuries. The sixteenth century will be known as the age of painters, the seventeenth will be termed the age of writers, the eighteenth the age of philosophers, the nineteenth the age of apostles and prophets. To satisfy the nineteenth century, it is necessary to be the painter of the sixteenth, the writer of the seventeenth, the philosopher of the eighteenth; and it is also necessary, like Louis Blane, to have the innate and holy love of humanity which constitutes an apostolate, and opens up a prophetic vista into the future. In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, animosity will be dead, royalty will be dead, and dogmas will be dead; but Humanity will live. For all there will be but one country—that country the whole earth; for all there will be but one hope—that hope the whole heaven.

— Victor Hugo (born February 26, 1802)

On Les Misérables

You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Misérables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: "Open to me, I come for you."

— Victor Hugo (born February 26, 1802)

Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Monday, February 25, 2013

State and Church

The state is that organism of associated human beings and their commonwealth of lands and political principles which assures protection, providence and freedom for all its members. The church is that organism of associated human beings and their commonwealth of faiths and spiritual culture which affords the ordering of experience that is necessary for the personal fulfillment of its members and the cohesion of their society. The state is imperfectly just and the church imperfectly whole. The justice of the state requires regulations sufficient to protect all from the predatory movements of any and to provide for all, opportunities commensurate with their humanity. For these tasks, the structures of society need perpetual reformation. The wholeness of the church is hindered by the outer divisiveness of its sectarianism, but still more by the inner incompleteness of its spiritual survey. The faiths of the church need perpetual revision.

That church will best correct the faulty justice of government which most purely sees the changing revelations of its own prophetic light. That church will best sustain the state in its task of outer political order which most perfectly affords for citizens the integrity of an inner spiritual order.

— Von Ogden Vogt (born February 25, 1879)

Altogether Indispensable Worship

Worship is like a breathing spell in a long and arduous foot race, or the hour of roll call in a prolonged and hard-fought battle: ... it is altogether indispensable to sane and wholesome living— it is important enough in life to warrant the erection of classical temples and Gothic cathedrals. It is  indeed so important that one finds one's self sometimes wondering how any of us can afford to do anything but educate ourselves in this art. ... To be effectively a person and thereby help others to be persons is the sum of abiding satisfactions in life. Worship in the sense of this aim is natural and necessary, and in the Great Community all mature people worship. Its objectives are not absolutely fixed as to their content.

—    Guy Allan Tawney (1870-1947)

Von Ogden Vogt (1879-1964)

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Shutting the Door

Open doors are admirable at times, but the most sacred and the sweetest things are never done until the door be shut. I was a watcher, one day, of a little child. Heaven's blue was in her eyes, and the sun's golden glory shone upon her head. In one room sat her mother, and in the room next to it, her aged grandfather. The little one wanted to ask old grandfather — and you know grandfathers are proverbially generous and soft — she wanted to ask him for a gift. But before she asked for it, the little hand shut the door between the two rooms. Why done? Because the child had a certain sense of modesty, which could not bear that any but the one to whom the prayer was spoken should hear the request. I have seen nothing prettier or sweeter. The motions of the child's hand were but the revelations of the child's heart. So there must be the closing of the door before even the little, honest, earthly prayer could be put up to the earthly father! And there is a certain sanctity and mystery peculiarly solemn and sweet in a whisper. …

There are other times, many times you know, when we shut the door, and they are usually about the best times of our lives. Lovers are not fond of the door being left open. Where there is love between two souls, the first thing almost is to shut the door. Why? Because there are things too sacredly sweet and too sweetly sacred to be looked at and listened to by curiosity-mongers and strangers, or even by friends. When the soul is at its best, it wants no spectators. So the little child at prayer, the lovers at their meetings, and the husband and wife at their best, instinctively "shut the door."

— George Dawson (born February 24, 1821)

Amidst the Decay of Systematic Religion

The fact is, the world is fast passing away from systematic religion — that is, from theologies that affect to be complete and final statements of what relates to the infinite, or even complete statements of that which relates to human duty and human holiness.

With regard to myself, I am more than ever convinced that the best thing nowadays is to organize men — not for the defence of the Devil, and his personality; nor to make a stand on behalf of the Trinity; nor to do something for Heaven; but to bring together the scattered forces of charity; to gather together men and women so that the warmth that is diffusive from the heart may uphold and alter. This is the most important of all — to gather men together to examine on what basis morality is to be placed when tradition is decaying, when the old authority is impossible, when no form of religion can be allowed to claim its exclusive right over our own judgment and conscience, and when we deny that a thing is made right or wrong by being made the law. A very pressing question, which must, before long, come up before the nations is this: In the decay of the traditional faith on which morals have been based, what basis is to be put before men, so that they may still believe that there is right and there is wrong, and still be able to judge what is right and what is wrong? Just as in politics the great question will be how to get a good authority, and a wise reverence for that authority, out of the large liberty that modern times give us; so, with regard to religion, the first great question is, on what shall we base, for the future, our ideas of right and wrong, and how obtain the sanction of law in these matters?

— George Dawson (born February 24, 1821)

Preach the Glad Tidings

The whole world is your vineyard; go, sow everywhere; go, preach the same glad tidings, the same hope that animates you preach to every creature in every part of the world. You are but the least of seeds, it is true, but you shall grow until at last the organization of which you are the beginning has overspread the world. You are but a little leaven, it is true, hidden away in three measures of meal; men do not see you, they do not know what is coming from you; but go, and your agitating presence shall go on and on until it has pervaded the whole world and the whole world is changed by your presence in it.

— Lyman Abbott (1835-1922)

George Dawson (1821-1876)
Minister, Church of the Saviour, Unitarian, Manchester (1847-1876)