Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed that “It is a happy talent to know how to play.” But I have found it a difficult talent to utilise over the past couple of years. The last time I can remember being immersed in play was doing the chicken dance at Rachel’s and my wedding. It was also the first day someone entered the country infected with Covid and life changed dramatically for me in two ways. Getting married does that for everyone. The other change encompassing us all occurred six weeks later when we went into lockdown busy hoarding toilet paper.
My Dad was a pretty smart guy. He had a lot of academic degrees after his name and when younger I thought of him as the only Renaissance man I knew. Why? He seemed to know the answer to every question I could throw at him. Later I figured out that he was conning me. When he didn’t know the answer, he still gave me one, saying it with enough authority that I bought it hook, line and sinker.
Sherlock Holmes, the master of deductive reasoning, tells us in The Sign of the Four: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
His approach minutely analyses a clue, making huge claims about the information it must contain. From a stocking found in the river he arrives at the height, weight, social class and personal history of the victim.
Dr Watson is an undeclared Unitarian. Being a scientist, he methodically collects the clues that Holmes finds and does the boring tests and legwork to make the case hang together. He is unwilling to accept the conclusion until the weight of evidence supports it. Dr Watson favours inductive reasoning.
The Christian world is beginning Holy Week this week. I know that because it always begins the Sunday before Easter with Palm Sunday, the celebration of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. I know today is that day because all this week I’ve been inexplicably humming a song I used to teach the children of my parish on Palm Sunday years ago when my theology was more uncritical. I can’t remember all the verses, being old and all, but here are some snippets.
Kat Liu’s reflection on beating up on herself brought back a happier memory. It was a game my mother played with me when I was little older than a toddler. She would take my arms and force me to hit myself, not so it hurt but until I gleefully giggled when being scolded to stop hitting her baby. She meant no harm. How could she know I would get pretty good at the game? Only when I played it, it did hurt.
Like Kat, I remember bringing home an anatomy test with the highest grade in the class, 98%. But when I showed my parents the test they couldn’t stop laughing that my one mistake was switching uvula with anus. It was funny, why wouldn’t they laugh? Again, they meant no harm. But I was 12. I was very good at feeling shame, not knowing that was different from being embarrassed or being able to laugh at myself. I was black and blue emotionally from beating up my mother’s baby.
When I was a child I liked playing on the teeter-totter at the playground. Apparently, you call it a see-saw here. What I found challenging was finding the balance point with my partner at the other end. I was not a philosophy prodigy at the age of seven, so I had not the words to describe what I knew intuitively: balance is a positive outcome in a precarious world. I did know it was not easily achieved. As likely as not, one end would crash down with prostate-jarring intensity while the other end would fly up threatening to launch the occupant into the stratosphere. Giggling with glee at our failure, we would eagerly try again to teeter without tottering.
The congregations of Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist churches and Fellowships throughout Australia and New Zealand are deeply concerned at the growing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and call for an immediate ceasefire between Russian and Ukrainian forces, immediate cessation of the 8 year civil war in Eastern Ukraine, and withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.
We call on the United Nations to urgently broker a negotiated settlement guaranteeing the full withdrawal of Russian forces and resolution of the security concerns claimed by both parties to the conflict. Only a genuinely negotiated resolution that addresses the security fears of both can protect the world from the current danger of escalation into a wider and possibly nuclear catastrophe for life on our planet.
We urge our governments to provide substantial and continuing humanitarian aid to respond to the catastrophic impact on the lives of all people in Ukrainian and to support neighbouring countries who are accepting those who are fleeing the conflict.
We call on our governments to offer transportation to our countries and safe haven and refuge for those fleeing this war. We also call for all persons in Australia and New Zealand on temporary visas and who cannot safely return to Ukraine to have their visas extended until a genuine settlement is achieved.
We commend the words of the Unitarian Universalist Services Committee, ‘All powerful states must be held accountable to the principles of human rights.’ ‘We join our prayers to those of people around the globe, who cry out in this moment—we demand peace; we demand an end to the bloodshed; we demand respect for human rights!’.
Authorised by Rev Clay Nelson, President of the Australian and New Zealand Unitarian Universalist Association (ANZUUA), Auckland Unitarian Church.
The world is stuck. There is lots of evidence. This premise is supported by recent events in Aotearoa New Zealand. The once admired Prime Minister has been stripped of her beatification, not by anything she has done or failed to do, but by our anxiety displayed on Parliament’s lawn. The pandemic is still taking a toll, never mind to a much lesser degree thanks to her government’s decision to put people’s well-being ahead of the GNP. Russia has declared war in Ukraine and threatens the world with nuclear weapons. Certainly nothing Jacinda has done. Thanks to that war, petrol costs are skyrocketing. Again, not Jacinda’s doing. Due to the pandemic interrupting supply lines, petrol costs, labour shortages due to illness, supporting vulnerable people and businesses, inflation is the monster under the bed everyone thinks Jacinda should scare away. Out of our anxiety we want certainty. That desire gets expressed as a demand for a quick fix, when no such thing exists.
I find myself in a conundrum. One of the chief reasons amongst many that drew me to live in Aotearoa New Zealand was its long history of nonviolence, beginning with the Moriori of the Chatham Islands. They once were warriors but chose to become warriors for peace. They paid a high price when more violent and aggressive Māori invaded the islands. Gandhi considered them greater geniuses than Isaac Newton.
Then there is the moving story of Parihaka. Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi preached a gospel of non-violent resistance to European settlement on confiscated Māori land, and more than 2,000 followers came to live at their community at Parihaka. They passively resisted the surveying of their land for European settlement by ploughing it. On 5 November 1881, about 1600 volunteers and Constabulary Field Force troops marched on Parihaka. Several thousand Māori sat quietly on the marae as singing children greeted the force with songs.
