This piece was written by Sara Robinson, a journalist and Unitarian Universalist, in response to the events in Knoxville, Tennessee this week.

You can still donate here, and attend a vigil in your area if you feel so moved.

Of Madmen and Martyrs

by Sara Robinson

We are an odd group, we Unitarians.

Conventional wisdom says that we’re soft in all the places our society values toughness. Our refusal to adhere to any dogma must mean that we’re soft in our convictions. Our reflexive open-mindedness is often derided as evidence that we’re soft in the head. Our persistent and gentle insistence on liberal values is evidence of hearts too soft to set boundaries. And all of this together leads to a public image of a mushy gathering of feckless intellectuals that somehow lacks cohesion, backbone, focus, or purpose.

You can only believe this if you don’t know either the history or the modern reality of Unitarian Universalism. The faith’s early founders, Michael Servitus and Francis David, were executed for the radical notion that belief in the Trinity — which excluded Muslims and Jews — should not be a requirement for participation in 16th century public life. Four hundred years later, in the same part of the world, other Unitarians died in concentration camps for having the courage of their humanist convictions. Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother from Michigan who was killed by the Klan in the days following the Selma march in 1965, was one of ours, too.

(Read on … )

By now, all are aware of the terrible tragedy that befell the people of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Here is a list of resources for ways in which you can help:

• Pray.
• Donate to the Relief Fund
• Leave a message at the Supporting Our Friends in Knoxville blog
• Attend a vigil, many will be held across the country
• Send a paper crane to the children of the church:

  c/o Brian Griffin, Director of Life Span Religious Education
  TVUUC
  2931 Kingston Pike
  Knoxville, TN 37919

• Join the Facebook group, Thoughts&Prayers–Knoxville UU
• Pray.

Please comment if you have other items to add to this list.

How do we as human beings reconcile the essential dichotomies of hope and fear, of change and security?

Quoted in this December 2007 sermon at the Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., today’s selection addresses just this question. It comes from a now out of print meditation manual from 1983, To Meet the Asking Years, edited by Gordon B. McKeeman. Author Ida M. Folsom is a long-time Universalist who was on the Universalist Church of American Extension Board from 1946-48.

The Waters of Life

by Ida Folsom

There are times in the lives of all of us when the greatest and most imperative need is for a sense of security and confidence that cannot be shaken by the winds of chance.

The waters of life never run smoothly. Every day has its darkness and its light, its bitter and its sweet, its pleasure and its pain. There are always unfulfilled promises, hopes that fade into the mists of years, the dreams from which we rudely awaken. It is in moments like these when we feel the futility of dreams, the cruelty of promise and the wastefulness of hope.

One of the great song writers, who understood life, challenges us with these words: “Unless you have a dream, how can you have a dream come true?” and we might follow his thought by asking: “Unless we have a hope, how can we find courage for the road, and unless we have a goal, how shall we know when we have arrived?” Dreams with purposes, hopes with purpose, aspirations with purpose, are the “everlasting arms” that bear us up and make sure our confidence in ourselves when the current seems to be running against us.

I will say to my soul: “Thou shall not be shaken by the exigencies of life, for all experiences are necessary to thy shaping,” and I will look hard at the hammer and anvil that shape them.

Source: “The Waters of Life” by Ida M. Folsom, from To Meet the Asking Years, edited by Gordon B. McKeeman, as quoted in this December 2007 sermon at the Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington, D.C.

Today is the shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice. Many Unitarian Universalists celebrate this holiday either in conjunction with Christmas or in place of it, and many UU churches hold rituals or services today as well.

Beloved author Susan Cooper, while not a Unitarian Universalist, has written a poem used by many revels programs and in UU churches in celebration of this day.

The Shortest Day

by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!

Source: “The Shortest Day” by Susan Cooper

The days grow shorter and shorter, and so a reflection on the Darkness seems appropriate.

Poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was raised by Unitarian parents and strongly influenced by Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson, among other like-minded individuals, and so is often claimed as a Unitarian Universalist. Her poems are used in many modern Unitarian Universalist churches, and this one is particularly apropos at this time of year.

419

by Emily Dickinson

We grow accustomed to the Dark –
When light is put away –
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye –

A Moment — We uncertain step
For newness of the night –
Then — fit our Vision to the Dark –
And meet the Road — erect –

And so of larger — Darkness –
Those Evenings of the Brain –
When not a Moon disclose a sign –
Or Star — come out — within –

The Bravest — grope a little –
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead –
But as they learn to see –

Either the Darkness alters –
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight –
And Life steps almost straight.

Source: Poem 419 by Emily Dickinson, via Google Books, Emily Dickinson, selected poems, pg 57.