Uncategorized

by Geoffrey R Usher

Robert A Storer served two long ministries in Massachusetts in the second half of last century. He visited Sydney in 1982 and preached in the Sydney Unitarian Church, and then in 1985 I stayed with him at the start of my speaking tour of Unitarian Universalist churches across America. I want to start by reading a piece entitled “Trust” which is in Robert’s little anthology Prayer Thoughts

May we learn to trust in the things we see about us each day.
In simple acts of goodness, in kind and gentle words, in ways we gladly help one another.
May we learn to trust in people,
In those with whom we disagree,
In those who want from life something quite different from what we desire.
In those who cannot possibly see things our way.
May we learn to trust in the underlying rightness of people’s motives.
Remove from us any suspicion or fear that another person deliberately wishes to injure us.
Let us learn to trust in the important things,
The things that are precious in our lives,
The daily friendly contacts,
The ability to laugh away tension, to drive away our fears.
Let us rejoice in friends who believe in us even when we act rashly and blindly, who stand by us even when they cannot defend all that we do or say.
Enable us through the strengthening power of this communion so to live on this earth that we will strive to increase moments of beauty, to enlarge the happiness of others, to strengthen the bonds of human fellowship, to extend the areas of peaceful living on this earth, to trust that all can be well with us and others when we give life and motion to our trust.

You can read this sermon in full here.

IN THE STREET AND IN SOCIETY I AM ALMOST INVARIABLY CHEAP AND DISSIPATED, my life is unspeakably mean. No amount of gold or respectability would in the least redeem it — dining with the Governor or a member of Congress!! But alone in distant woods or fields, in unpretending sprout lands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even on a black and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that the cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home… It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him.

Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian and leading transcendentalist. He has long been an inspiration to Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists. The piece above comes from his diary January, 1857

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

Unitarian Universalism arose out of the joining together of Unitarian and Universalist Churches in the US. Here is how they describe themselves.

In Unitarian Universalism, you can bring your whole self: your full identity, your questioning mind, your expansive heart.

Together, we create a force more powerful than one person or one belief system. As Unitarian Universalists, we do not have to check our personal background and beliefs at the door: we join together on a journey that honors everywhere we’ve been before.

Our beliefs are diverse and inclusive. We have no shared creed. Our shared covenant (our seven Principles) supports “the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Though Unitarianism and Universalism were both liberal Christian traditions, this responsible search has led us to embrace diverse teachings from Eastern and Western religions and philosophies.

Unitarian Universalists believe more than one thing. We think for ourselves, and reflect together, about important questions:

The existence of a Higher Power
Life and Death
Sacred Texts
Inspiration and Guidance
Prayer and Spiritual Practices
We are united in our broad and inclusive outlook, and in our values, as expressed in our seven Principles. We are united in shared experience: our open and stirring worship services, religious education, and rites of passage; our work for social justice; our quest to include the marginalized; our expressions of love.

A more detailed explanation can be found here.

The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.

George Orwell.

Sermon delivered to Spirit of Life Unitarian Fellowship on Sunday 18 March 2018 by the Rev Geoffrey Usher.

At the meeting of the London Group of the Society on 15 September 1994, the speaker was the Rev Dr David Wilkinson, a Methodist minister and Chaplain to Liverpool University. Rev Dr Wilkinson held a PhD in astro-physics, and was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1993 his book was published: God, the Big Bang and Stephen Hawkins. The title of his talk to the Alister Hardy Society was “Spirituality and Modern Cosmology”

He began by emphasising that he had come prepared to learn, since no-one knows all the answers to cosmic questions. Important, that:- no-one knows all the answers to cosmic questions

However, he said, modern cosmology – the study of the world around us – modern cosmology had forced many people to consider religious questions in relation to science itself. They had been forced to consider those religious questions, even if they had no particular religious axe to grind, no particular dogma to defend.It seemed that, the more we discover, the more religious questions we face – particularly questions about the emergence of spirituality in modern cosmologies.

The full sermon on the influence of modern cosmology on the concept of God can be read here.