GA 2009 - Anniversary Sermon
The Challenge of Connection - The Rev Margaret Kirk
Above all, he wanted people to be able to walk on them safely. And now they do. People come from all over the world to see York and walk on the Roman wall that a dissenting minister with the wonderful name of Wellbeloved, campaigned to save. But if you make the journey from York to Whitby to the tiny Unitarian chapel hidden away down an alley, you`ll find that its most famous minister there– Francis Haydn Williams, spent an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to destroy walls – walls built, not for the protection of a city, but for the aggrandizement of an influential landowner. Walls, he argued, that encroached on common land that had existed for many years for all people to take pleasure in. Even now as we`re coming up to the anniversary of his death in 1910, there are Whitby people who will tell you stories that have been passed on to them about the legendary Francis Haydn Williams who objected so much to the enclosure of common land on the Abbey plains that he organised rallies and led marches and encouraged his supporters to break down the walls. And he went to prison on more than one occasion for ignoring injunctions to cease his militant behaviour. When his witnesses gave evidence at York Assizes in July 1903 some of them were quite elderly and spoke of their memories of being able to walk and play on the part that was now enclosed as a private garden – and of people and horses and carriages using the whole of it. These stories didn`t cut much ice with the jury. The lord of the manor and his family, retained their right to enclosure. Most people in Whitby haven`t got a clue that Haydn Williams was a Unitarian – what`s that? But Whitby people know he was a trouble maker, or, depending upon your view, a defender of ordinary people`s rights: fiery, difficult, passionate, driven and he took an axe to a wall that was constructed to keep ordinary people out and he incited others to do the same. `Something there is that doesn`t love a wall` We heard the words sung earlier: `Building bridges between our divisions Words, enhanced by the melody David Dawson composed for today`s service: words written by the women of Greenham Common back in the eighties. And it`s in our new purple hymn book, so you can sing it when you get your copy. And so are those other beautiful words of the poet Rumi…. that I sometimes have the courage to sing to my congregation at York: `Come, come, whoever you are, When Rumi died in December of the year 1273, we`re told representatives of every major religion went to his funeral and he is reputed to have said – and this in the midst of the crusades and violent sectarian conflict: `I go into the Muslim mosque and the Jewish synagogue and the Christian church and I see one altar.` Come, come, whoever you are, The challenge of connection. We pride ourselves a lot as a movement on the value of freedom. So hear again, some of the words of David Foster Wallace I read earlier: `The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the “rat race” – the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.” The challenge of connection. When the editor of The Daily Mail, Paul Dacre gave a lecture in November of last year, he said his inspiration as a journalist had been the novelist E.M.Forster whose guiding philosophy throughout all his writing was `only connect”. And Paul Dacre reminded his audience that E.M.Forster had urged us to `only connect`. And so he did. It`s there in print - the epigraph `Only connect` under the title of the novel that he was acclaimed for - `Howard`s End`. And every single one of E.M.Forster`s novels is an exploration of the difficult, challenging, messy, almost impossible business of reaching out to other people, in human relations, in other cultures, other ideologies, understanding difference – not always managing too, but at least making the attempt. Every one has that underlying urgency. In Howard`s End we have the words, as though spoken from the heart of the main character: `Only connect!……….Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die,` But I had a hard job trying to reconcile the philosophy of E.M.Forster with the editor of The Daily Mail and all I could think was, if he was your inspiration, how did you go so badly wrong? How could an editor of a popular paper that sells hundreds of copies, with so much influence, go so badly wrong, if he really believed in the spirit of true connection? And is it possible that he could have forgotten those famous words of Forster`s written at the outset of WW 2.: “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” `Only Connect`. There are some fine words in Singing the Living Tradition, the UU hymnal, that I`ve used a lot: `This is the mission of our faith: It isn`t just David Foster Wallace who tells us that our `default setting…will leave us with that gnawing sense that we have lost some infinite thing.` Jesus was saying pretty much the same thing. The most compelling wisdom that Christianity offers us through the narrative of Jesus of Nazareth, is the gift of being human and the need to receive each other in the spirit of love. – not just because of some ethical code of righteousness, or something that will earn us rewards in a future life, but because, it is the most important kind of freedom that makes us human. You can strip away a lot about Christianity that you might find distasteful but you cannot strip away that radical message of ` only connect`. `Bring people back into human belonging` – sit with them, eat with them, listen to them, touch them, receive gifts from them, be prepared to look them in the eye. Or, if all that seems like a bit of a tall order, you may like to try doing what David Foster Wallace says is not intended as moral advice, or a way of behaving that you`re expected to automatically be able to switch on, because it`s hard and takes will and mental effort. But this is what he says: “If you`re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at the fat, dead-eyed, over made up lady who just screamed at her little child in the check out line – maybe she`s not usually like this – maybe she`s been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who`s dying of bone cancer or maybe this very lady is the low wage clerk at the motor vehicles department who just yesterday helped your spouse. Maybe, maybe not….it all depends on what you want to consider…..you may want to operate on your default setting…but if you`ve really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options.` Freedom is immensely precious to our Unitarian spirit – the freedom to think for ourselves, the freedom to be ourselves, the freedom to question, the freedom to change our minds, the freedom to discover our own truth. Sometimes the pursuit of that freedom stops us from doing the hard work of really engaging with each other. There`s a little book that`s been around for a while now called The One Minute Mystic with a passage in it that says: `Some people think they just need to know a bit more. Then everything will become clear, be explained, sorted. And they`ll be changed. What a load of tosh. To “know” changes nothing. Hitler knew. Stalin knew. All the most evil people in the world knew stacks. They`d probably make a very good pub quiz team. What does change people is when they stop exploiting others – and start contemplating them. Looking at people not as targets to hit, objects to exploit or problems to solve – but as mysteries to reflect on. Wishing the best for them however hard it might be. Now, that`s what I call change.` At the heart of who we are as a movement is the space for mind and spirit to flow freely, forever making new connections….. and that is a challenge because it requires us to understand things differently. Risky stuff, but then that is what it means to be alive. That is real freedom. And that is what we do, uniquely, at our very best, when we come together to celebrate, to affirm and honour our precious Unitarian diversity. From the very bottom of our hearts we wish the best for each other however hard it might be at times. © Rev Margaret Kirk - April 2009 |
The most famous Unitarian minister of the York chapel, Charles Wellbeloved made it his mission to save the Roman wall around the city which had fallen into ruin. He pointed out there was only one other place in England where the ancient walls were still complete enough to preserve – that is here in Chester. And he worked tirelessly to raise money and organise public support so the city wall could be preserved for future generations. 