Our Christmas traditions came from ancient Nordic and Celtic pagans. You already knew that, right? To this native of the northern hemisphere, New Zealanders use those traditions at the wrong time of the year. The British are blessed with numerous ways to celebrate the winter solstice because the Vikings and Romans, then French, brought their traditions to England and Scotland. These pagans’earth-based deities and celebrations came from their agricultural lives and dependence on nature. They had to live in tune with nature, and nature inspired all of their holidays.
‘Two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind is drawn to them: (they are) the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’ Immanuel Kant ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ [1724-1804]
Let us start with 3 Questions: What are ‘higher values’? Why do we want or need them? How do we develop ‘Higher moral values’ for living a good life?’
Simple answers are:
Higher Values are the ideals, beliefs and principles for living a good and moral life, as individuals and as societies.
We want Values because it is in the nature of being Human for our intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual Well-Being.
We develop Higher Values through philosophical inquiry into ‘what is true and good’ within Ourselves and in Humanity. It is a lifelong journey of Inner reflection upon our experience, study, knowledge, dialogue and questioning what we think and why.
After today’s service, we’ll be holding our Annual General Meeting. In three weeks, Jonathan Mason will be leading our service and kicking off our annual pledge drive. The fact these events were coming up got me thinking about our church’s finances, and more particularly about what we’re doing with what we have and what our members give.
Today’s service is brought to you by our third Principle, Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations, and our fourth Principle, A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
The topic of spiritual intelligence is huge and fairly new in academic circles. This talk barely scratches the surface of thought on the subject.
I would like to start off today by telling a story. From there, I will describe some of my own experiences growing up a UU. Then, I will analyze our Seven Principles and explain thoughts others have had about UUism as they have told me. I will end by explaining my own creed. But first, as I said, a story.
I first came to this church in 2014 because I had met someone during a residential training course on community organising. The course participants came from community organisations, from trade unions (me), and from faith groups (the person I met).
He and I discovered that, not only did we have shared values and a shared vision for a better world, but that the internal dynamics and politics of trade unions closely resembled the internal dynamics and politics of churches. So much to talk about!
Some months later, the politics of the Anglican Church spat him out and he fell on his feet here, in this church, as your minister, Clay Nelson.
So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come to pass what my poet said; `Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler’s trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar’s garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen. The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As when the summer comes from the south; the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation, — a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God, — he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature in The Conduct of Life, Nature and Other Essays, Dent/Dutton 1908, 1937, Pages 37-38.]
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson knew how to upset Unitarians, for he had been one of them. Emerson was from a Unitarian family, trained at Harvard College, and his brother William was educated at Gottingen and was a minister. Waldo became minister of Second Church Boston in 1829. But he took a break, after the death of his wife, and headed to Europe. Returning he wrote this extraordinary essay, Nature, from which I read. He was a mystery to his fellow Unitarians. In 1838 he spoke to the Divinity Class at Harvard, in words that caused a huge controversy:
I titled today’s service “Remembering Anzac Day”, purposely. It disturbs me to see or hear references to “celebrating” Anzac Day, when I believe it should always be a day of mourning for all those who died so futilely at Gallipoli, and all the others whether they returned or not, who have gone off to war from New Zealand.
The 24th April, the day before Anzac Day is the anniversary of the death of my father, Bror Muller, who died in 1967. This talk is really about my father’s experiences during the Second World War as an enemy alien and, in his words, 100% committed pacifist. I’ll also talk about how those experiences affected his life after the war, and the impact on his family, or at least on me, growing up in the 1950s and 60s.
