Credo

October 28, 1993

I have never believed, and still do not, that anyone else could write a creed for me. However, “Aristides,” the quarterly essayist of “The American Scholar,” came very close in his piece in the Autumn 1993 issue, “Nicely Out of It.”

In his usual lively prose, Aristides was denying that he was “with it.” That is, he never embraced the fads and manias of each succeeding decade (50s, 60s, 70s, 80s): the dress, art, music, literature, celebrities, sports, diets and “self-improvement” videos. The entire essay is recommended if you have access to this journal.

But his concluding paragraph echoes with such crystal-clear tones what I sense, believe and aspire to, that I hope you will read it more than once (if you never read anything else in my 1993 “Musings”):

“I prefer being out in the cold with my own well-worn but comfortable out-of-it notions. These include: that there are a number of unchanging ideas – none of them particularly stylish – worth fighting for; that honor is immitigable; that, so, too, is dignity, despite the almost inherent ridiculousness of human beings; that one’s life is a work of art, however badly botched, which can be restored and touched up here and there but not fundamentally changed; that, in connection with this, integrity includes coherence of personality; that elegance, where possible, is very nice, but there are many things more important than style, loyalty and decency among them; that a cello is a finer instrument than an electric guitar; and that a man ought to start out the day with a clean handkerchief. I hope I speak for others who are out of it when I say we take these truths to be self-evident. And, as those of us who are out of it have learned, when it comes to most of the really important truths, no other kind of evidence is usually available.”

The Human Fault

September 30, 1993

In July, near the Mission Church of San Juan Bautista, I stood looking down the hillside at the ground under which the San Andreas fault was tracing its way North and South. Unpredictable earthquakes caused by this geological fault-line have resulted in terrible losses of lives and property. This week on another fault-line, the earthquake in India has caused the death of possibly 30,000 persons. No geologist has ever suggested that there is any possible way of taming the deep-lying tectonic plates, whose shiftings cause the devastations. Perhaps some day predictability may become somewhat accurate – but so far this is very much a “perhaps.”

In recent days, the events in Somalia and the Balkans add to a human history of hate, wars, power, corruption, and greed have led me to speculate that there may be a human fault-line which has killed more people than earthquakes. While I cannot accept the concept of Original Sin in its Christian theological framework, there are faults in our human motives and functioning that cannot be dismissed by any shallow affirmations of the 19th century principle: A belief “in the progress of Mankind onward and upward forever.”

Emil Ludwig (THE MEDITERRANEAN, p.85) quoted Goethe: “The Greeks were lovers of freedom, yes, but each one only of his own. Therefore in every Greek there was a tyrant who merely lacked the opportunity to develop.”

Recently, I have been re-reading Reinhold Niebuhr – MORAL MAN AND IMMORAL SOCIETY. While some of the topical issues he addressed are dated, (he wrote in the early 30s), his conclusions are formidable, even though I cannot share his Christian theological commitment. He wrote (p.9),

“As individuals men believe that they ought to love and serve each other. As racial, economic and national groups they take for themselves whatever their power can command.” I believe the truth of that observation is self-evident, historically and currently.

Why are we humans like that? Why do we tolerate, even advocate, actions and attitudes as members of a group acting collectively, actions that we would spurn as both unethical and inhumane in individual one-to-one situations?

Is it because Western Civilization has been and is male-dominated, patriarchal? Riane Eisler offers this theory in her book, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE (HarperCollins, 1988). She rejects as over-simplified the prevailing view among archaeologists/anthropologists that pre-history was matriarchal and historical times, patriarchal. Eisler coined words to illustrate her position:

“gylany” and “androcracy”
Gylany = Gy (woman) An (man) L (linking)
Androcracy = man-ruled

Her theory is that pre-historic artifacts (the “Venus” figurines, cave-drawings, shards, shreds of oral traditions) point not to a matriarchy but to an equal partnership between women and men. This partnership created social milieus where war, violence, exploitation, and acquisitive greed were not the norms, but rather there prevailed peace, understanding, sharing, generosity.

I am not sufficiently informed to agree or disagree with her. She makes large inferences from limited evidence. But, so have the archeologists and anthropologists who would disagree with her. Whatever an “expert” would would pronounce about the nature of pre-historic authority, power and values would seem quite circumstantial when based on available artifacts, art, and imprecise or ambiguous oral traditions and folk-tales.

However, based on its written record, history plainly points to male-dominated civilizations. That patriarchal chronicle is a story of violent aggression, duels for power, treachery. The evidence is there no matter where one seeks knowledge, particularly in the three traditional religions of Western Civilizations, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Can it be only a minor co-incidence that these religious and secular cultures are and have been, male predominant and authoritarian; and the female subordinate and required to be obedient and subservient to authority?

A reputable scholar of world religions, Huston Smith, asserts, “the only large persecuting religions have been in the West.” (ESSAYS ON WORLD RELIGIONS, p,85). There is abundant evidence to support his observation. James A. Haught brings together the constant cruel excesses in his book, HOLY HORRORS (Prometheus Books, 1990).

The Crusades were expeditions of devastating mass cruelties. The Christian Crusaders killed as many, probably more Christians than they did Moslems. In the Rhineland, Christians who did not go on the crusades stayed home and slaughtered Jews. The Inquisition was authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1252. Savage instruments of torture were applied to co-erce confessions of heresy – the rack, the thumbscrew, the “boot”. Plus of course, innumerable executions of innocent persons by burning them at the stake. Haught quotes Lord Acton (Edward Dalberg), a Roman Catholic, “The principle of the Inquisition was murderous.... The Popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.”

The list could be extended to agonizing length: The persecution and execution of thousands of women as “witches”; The Thirty Year War; Catholic Spain warring against Protestant England (and vice-versa), the slaughter of the Huguenots in 1572; in England, the savage deigns of Henry VIII and Queen Mary, just to name two of the many monarchs whose heritage was war, summary beheadings, suffering.

The Moslem culture was not much gentler. The Moslems conquered from India to North Africa and Spain. The “Assassins” were Moslem zealots and murderers. In the late 19th century, the Mahdi (self-proclaimed) led Moslems in a jihad and destroyed an Egyptian army of 10,000; massacred the defenders of Khartoum, among them the British General, “Chinese” Gordon. In recent years in Iran, members of Baha'i have been exiled and others tortured and executed.

In the last 2000 years, the followers of the Jewish religion have been persecuted and murdered, not persecuting and murdering. However, if one reads the Jewish Scripture (Old Testament), particularly, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, that patriarchal religion was no model of peace or generosity.

I believe Riane Eisler makes a sound historical case in portraying patriarchal religions and governments as warlike, cruel, and domineering. They have never achieved professed goals of peace or justice. No Utopia has been achieved; the world is still a most insecure planet for the human family. Would you argue with Shakespeare when he has King John say (Act IV Sc.2),

“There is no sure foundation set on blood,
No certain life achieved by others’ death.”

The sacred books have been foundations for patriarchal (“androcratic”) religions. Eisler comments: (p. 181) “Both traditional and modern totalitarian regimes require the constant study of holy or officially sanctioned scriptures – be it a Bible or a Koran, or a MEIN KAMPF, or QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN MAO. These provoke all the answers: the ultimate ‘truth’. And serving the same purpose as the rigid religious censorship of androcratic, prehistory, all the mass media are rigidly controlled in modern totalitarian regimes.”

But would the world be a better place if matriarchy (Gylany) had been the rule in the millenia of recorded history? We can never know if “chalice” civilizations had prevailed that the great dreams of justice, peace, and equality would have become realities.

In the absence of such knowledge, there can be references to legends and historical happenings that Riane Eisler seems to ignore or dismiss. We all have difficulties with data that does not mesh with a system, philosophy, or theory we are advocating.

Consider the legend of the Amazons, the warlike women of Greek legend. Governed by a Queen, the story is that female children were maimed by having their right breasts cut off in order to use the bow with greater dexterity. The Amazons invaded Attica. They entered the Trojan War to assist Priam. The legends also tell that their Queen Penthesilea was killed in combat by Achilles.

In Judges [5] we read of Jael, a courageous and tricky woman who dealt with Sisera, the enemy of the Hebrews:

“Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him milk,
she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.
She put her hand to the tent peg
and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet;
She struck Sisera a blow,
she crushed his head,
She shattered and pierced his temple.
He sank, he fell,
he lay still at her feet;
where he sank, there he fell dead.”

Quite a woman, huh? But hardly the “Chalice” type!

Do you remember the story of Boadicea (Boudicca), the warrior Queen of the Iceni during the Roman rule of Britain? In 50 A.D., the Iceni revolted when the Roman governor ruled that all “suspects” be disarmed. When King Prasutagas of the Iceni died, his spouse Boadicea succeeded him. Then Romans plundered the royal household, flogged Boadicea, and her two daughters were raped by Roman slaves.

Led by their Queen, the Iceni and some allied tribes revolted. They ravaged the homes and lands of Roman colonists; then attacked and burned Colchester, a Roman stronghold. After they took that city, the Iceni slaughtered all the inhabitants. Although the revolt persisted, soon the Roman talent for military organization and strategy prevailed. The Iceni were defeated. Tacitus reported that 80,000 Britons were killed. Queen Boadicea poisoned herself and her secret burial place has never been found. On the Thames Embankment there is an heroic statue of Queen Boadicea on a war chariot, lance in hand, controlling two rearing warhorses, symbolizing her strength, energy, beauty and power to command and lead.

There are many other woman leaders whose lives and actions do not seem to fit any “Chalice” theory, of a peaceful sharing culture. A short list would include:

Queen (Bloody) Mary
Queen Elizabeth I
Catherine de Medici
Catherine the Great
Margaret Thatcher

Perhaps if there had been an historic matriarchy or “gylany”, maybe around 1950, a fellow (Bernie Friedan?) might have published THE MASCULINE MYSTIQUE.

So, here we are in the waning years of the 20th century: a fragmented world, divided [into] “haves” and “have-nots”; hate and aggression still too prevalent for any of for any of us to take our ease in Zion. Neibuhr’s MORAL MAN AND IMMORAL SOCIETY is factually evident in too many political/social/economic situations to be easily dismissed by either bland optimism or apathetic neglect.

The human venture has muddled through the centuries enduring great agonies and “bearing a great burden of grief”. Perhaps that is the continuing lot: to suffer and persist. But there could be moral change if ethical behavior spread from individuals and small circles to larger and larger groups. Not only might one be a moral individual but one could attempt to teach by precept and example thereby making wider and more inclusive the circle of caring.

And much gratitude to Riane Eisler and Reinhold Niebuhr and the prophets of all centuries who lead us to think on these things.

“Contaminated” – Aren’t We All?

August 18, 1993

“My views, like yours, are contaminated by my origins.” So wrote Robert Evans, a Canadian health economist. (HEALTH OF NATIONS, p. 3)

The purpose of this brief essay is not to discuss the particular issue of the Canadian vis-à-vis the United States approaches to the health of its citizens, but rather to emphasize to myself (and to you), that there are few, if any debatable issues where any of us can be completely objective. According to George Will, hotel executive Conrad Hilton, when asked in a TV interview if he had one vital message for Americans, said, “Please – place the curtain on the inside of the tub.” Mr. Hilton was “contaminated” (or to use a less pungent word, influenced) by the problems of the hotel business, and understandably so.

I had to recognize my own “contamination” the other day in the check-out line at the super-market. Just ahead of me was a woman with three small children. I could not avoid seeing her purchases on the moving belt: a twelve-can case of carbonated cola, a jug of fruit punch, NOT fruit juice, two large boxes of famous brand sugared cereals. She paid with food stamps.

I was irritated and hope I kept a poker-face. I had to recognize that I was “contaminated” by the personal experience and belief that oatmeal at 1/4th the cost is much to be preferred to the highly-advertised sugared cereals. I eat oatmeal every morning. It costs 4.4 cents an ounce. The sugared cereals with the colorful logos cost 18 to 20 cents an ounce. But I like oatmeal; not everybody does. How can I justify promoting my taste over that of others?

I see no reason why carbonated drinks are allowable purchases with food stamps. Such are not nutritional foods. How many kids get a hyper “sugar-high” from over-consumption of such drinks?

Of course I am aware that if carbonated drinks and high-cost cereals were disallowed as food stamp purchases, there would be at least two quick and loud reactions. The purchaser would claim this was discrimination against poor people and a violation of her freedom of choice. The executives of the cola and soft-drink companies along with the large cereal company executives and their lobbyists would make the halls of Congress ring like Big Ben with their protests. They would condemn any regulation which would prevent or deter their selling their products at a profit. But the fact that food stamps are considered a necessary benefit, paid with our taxes, raises the question: Should our taxes be higher because of the corporate profits made from non-nutritional drinks and overpriced cereals?

If I am honest, I must recognize that I am “contaminated” by early experiences, particularly the difficult 1930s when so many of us were radicalized in varying degrees. I have enough understanding of Who I Am to recognize many of my faults, so what right have I to judge others? In ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL (Act IV, sc. iii) Shakespeare has the 1st Lord say, “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.”

Yet if we are to be responsible persons, we must make judgments and promote our views even when we concede that we are “contaminated” by our personal history and evolving convictions. It would be great folly to become immobilized on such grounds. As Henri Amiel, the French essayist observed, “The man (sic) who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.”

200th Anniversary of Universalism – Why Celebrate?

August 8, 1993
Jacksonville

(From A SHORT HISTORY OF UNIVERSALISM, Howe):

“On September 4, 1793, a group of people who called [themselves] Universalists gathered in the village of Oxford, Massachusetts, [for] a day of preaching, prayer, fellowship, mutual support, and organizational business. Those present called their meeting a ‘General Convention’ of the ‘Universal Churches and Societies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and New York,’ and although they could not have known it at the time, their meeting marked the beginning of a new denomination.

“...Thus, from an obscure and homely beginning was born an organization that would endure as a separate entity for the next 168 years and that finds embodiment today as an integral part of the Unitarian Universalist Association.”

[In 1993] we celebrate the 200th anniversary of that meeting at Oxford when Universalism became a denomination. But as a theological proposition, universal salvation is as old as the Christian movement itself. Such early Apostolic Fathers as Origen and Clement of Alexandria openly taught that a God of justice and love inevitably would save everyone and that there would be “a final harmony of all souls with God.”

Not until the 6th century of our common era was universal salvation anathematized and declared heretical by a church council called by the Emperor Justinian. Much time could be spent on varieties of Universalist thought which arose from time to time and always declared and condemned as a heresy. The idea of universal salvation could never be squelched because it occurred again and to people that if God is good, he must be at least as good as a parent on this earth. God, the reasoning went, God must be as good and just as an earthly father or mother. And, what father or mother would condemn their child to burn in Hell forever? - no matter what that child had done.

In order to limit my remarks, I will speak of John Murray and Hosea Ballou, and then attempt a brief summary of Universalism in the 20th Century.

In 1770, Gloucester, Massachusetts was a seaport in touch with the world. Before the advent of railways, seaports were always centers of liberal thought, the first places to receive new ideas. In 1769, a man named Gregory, whether officer, sailor or passenger on a ship, no one knows, but he brought to town a book on universal salvation by James Relly. The arrival of this book in Gloucester was the beginning of organized Universalism in America. The printed page preceded the spoken word. There were converts to Universalism three years before John Murray. John Murray, in England had become a Universalist under the teaching of James Relly. In face of woeful difficulties – death of his young wife, bankruptcy, ostracism because of his preaching universal salvation, Murray had boarded ship to America to begin a new life, determined that he would preach no more. Perhaps you have read of the dramatic story of his landing on the New Jersey shore, and the call to preach again under the inspiration of Thomas Potter. Preaching as an itinerant, he was soon condemned as a heretic and disciple of Relly. Preaching in Boston, and castigated in the paper by an orthodox minister, the Gloucester people read the story and invited Murray to preach in Gloucester to the small group of Universalists. (Today, we would call that group a Fellowship.) He was well-received. For the next twenty years, with the exception of eight months service as a chaplain in our Revolutionary Army, Gloucester was his home, and he was minister of the first organized Universalist church in America, The Independent Christian Church.

These were not easy years. As Universalism grew, opposition became bitter and determined. Murray was threatened by mobs. [CJW note: stones thrown at him on the street] [Lightly crossed out: When the Universalists withheld their attendance and support from 1st Parish Church, 31 men and women sign[ed] the Articles of Association.] A small meeting house was built.

Then there was a famous lawsuit – the members of 1st Parish Church sued to force the Universalists to pay taxes to the established church. The lawsuit was protracted, but finally the Universalists won after a second trial.

The Charter of Compact agreed to by these early Universalists is well worth study, even with the somewhat archaic language, particularly the 9th Article: Whereas the privilege of choosing and professing one’s religion is inestimable: And in order to maintain that privilege unimpaired, in case any person associating with us should suffer persecution from the undue exercise of power, we do agree and resolve to afford him all legal means of extricating him from difficulty, and of enjoying that freedom which is held forth by the Constitution.”

Led by John Murray [CJW note: and lay people] in those difficult years, with their courage and sacrifice, they helped pave the way for all religions in this nation, and Massachusetts particularly, to enjoy freedom from interference by intrusive government.

[CJW note: Gloster Dalton – red sheet]

The other great name in early Universalism is Hosea Ballou. Born in 1771 on a farm in New Hampshire, he was the eleventh child of a Baptist minister. Although the family was poor and education sketchy at best, Hosea had an eager and inquiring mind. Baptized in January through the ice of a river [CJW note: would turn me off!], he did not find the Calvinism of the day acceptable. He studied the Bible and came to the conclusion that there was no hell after death and God would save all souls. One time in the lamp-light, [when] his father asked him what book he was reading, Hosea replied that it was a Universalist book. “Get that evil book out of the house,” his father commanded. So Hosea hid it in the wood-pile. His father found it there – it was the Bible.

At age 20, Hosea Ballou managed to attend an academy for a term – and studied so hard and made such progress that he was given certification to teach in the common school.

He attended the gathering of Universalists at Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1791. He heard the leading Universalist preachers and was stirred to preach the same gospel. After many efforts he acquired the presence and ability to preach effectively.

In 1793, he attended the General Convention again in Oxford. In a legendary story, a leading Universalist preacher [CJW note: Winchester] took a Bible, and pressing it against Hosea’s chest, pronounced him ordained. From then on, after brief pastorates elsewhere, he was minister of the 2nd Universalist Church in Boston for the rest of his life.

One of the main reasons why Hosea Ballou ranks with Murray as the pre-eminent names of American Universalism is the theological position Ballou established. In 1805, his most famous book A TREATISE ON THE ATONEMENT was published. Ballou attacked the doctrine of the Trinity, and under the power of his logic, most Universalists became unitarian (with a small u) years before the American Unitarian Association (AUA) was organized in 1825.

Parenthetically, it might be observed that Universalists and Unitarians took different organizational paths. The AUA was in 1825 organized as an individual membership plan. As a denomination, Unitarianism did not take form until 1865 with the Conference of Unitarian Churches. Universalism started as a denomination with organized associations limited to travel by horse and buggy. Then as transportation improved, State Conventions were organized. Even when national organization was achieved with the UCA, the State Conventions maintained their autonomy, corporate status, funds, power to ordain ministers and were well entrenched before Universalism organized on a national basis. [CJW note: there were no such comparable organizations in Unitarianism.]

In the 19th century, Universalism grew and hundred of Universalist societies were established. Some statistics indicate that at one time Universalism was the 6th largest denomination in the U.S. (But church statistics were and are notoriously unreliable.)

Universalism was torn and fractured by a bitter controversy in the 1830s and 1840s between the “Restorationists” and the “Death and Glory” advocates. Today, when to almost everyone of us particular theology is not that important, that controversy would seem most unprofitable, irrelevant, even comic. But in those years theological debate got as much attention as professional sports do today.

The Restorationists believed that sinners deserved some punishment after death for the evils they had committed in this life. Then, after a period of repentance and punishment, they would be restored to God’s love forever. The Death and Glory advocates (Hosea Ballou was one) simply proclaimed that when one dies, immediately one is transformed to Glory – to be in the presence of God forever. This was a most costly controversy in terms of growth and influence because it was so divisive.

In the 20th century, much of it within my personal memory and experience, Universalism had lost much of its power. Most of the mainline Christian churches had quit preaching Hell and brimstone. (The revival of fundamentalism in recent decades, particularly in the southern states, would hardly have been predictable in the 1st half of this century.) There was not much agitation among us over the growth of scientific thought, including evolution theories. The higher criticism of the Bible made both Unitarians and Universalists aware that scripture was not the inerrant word of God, but rather the religious literature of Judaism and Christianity. Heaven and Hell became more referred to more as allegory or metaphor rather than reality. [CJW note: that’s the hell of ... or as one minister - self]

Universalism in my experience went through many of the same conflicts and controversies as Unitarians in the first half of this century:

We experienced the same bitter conflict between theism and humanism as did the Unitarians.

We each debated whether or not we were a Christian denomination.

Both Unitarians and Universalists began to talk merger. Due to the Depression and other factors, 35 churches were already merged on the local level as Unitarian Universalist years before the two denominations consolidated in 1960.

Why did some of us become Universalist ministers in the 30s and 40s? Not because of the old “No hell” Universalism, although some felt the old beliefs still relevant. Rather, it seemed to some of us that Universalism was THE BIG IDEA: The worth and dignity of every person had become the main plank in our religious platform. Not that we expected that millions of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists would become Universalists. [CJW note: Atwood quote] Rather, respect for the right [CJW note: freedom] of others demanded that we acknowledge, advocate, and protect the right of all persons to choose the faith that would sustain them. That was the Big Idea. [CJW note: Imperialism of any kind was out – was a bad idea. Plus appreciation of their ideas.]

Dr. Levi Moore Powers from 1913 to 1919 was minister of our Gloucester church and one of the famous preachers of his day – courageous and unafraid to criticize the establishment forces. In a sermon preached about 1919, he said, “The only adequate faith is that which will make the world brotherly, and that is a genuine belief that we are brothers, all children of a Father who has no favorites. Billy Sunday says that belief in the Universal Brotherhood of man is ‘bosh’ and ‘tommyrot’ and those who live by the faith Billy Sunday preaches reward their faithful servant by giving him fifty or one hundred thousand dollars a year for proclaiming his ungodly gospel.

“But we have not so learned Christ. There is an Eastern proverb which says, ‘I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi and they were all my brothers.’ That old heathen was more of a Christian than Billy Sunday. Universalism teaches that every man we meet on our journey from the cradle to the stars is our brother, and when we are big enough to understand our own faith, and great enough to live it, the future will be ours.”

I am not a Christian theist as was Levi Powers. Today we use more gender-free language. After all, he spoke those words more than 70 years ago. Yet, if we sensed more deeply and proclaimed more fearlessly that every man and woman we meet on our journey from the cradle to the stars is our brother or sister, and when we are big enough to understand our own faith and great enough to live it, the future may not be ours, but it will be the way, perhaps the only way, as we join millions of others of whatever differing faiths who share, that this pained conflicting world may be saved from destroying itself.

How My Affiliation With Unitarian Universalism Has Impacted My Life

June 13, 1993
Location Unspecified

Dorothy asked me to take 15 minutes to describe how Unitarian Universalism has impacted my life. Can’t be done – to do that subject justice, I would have to write a book. But I’ll try to give you at least some notion.

For four years of my life I was a Unitarian; 47 years as a Universalist; 32 years as a Unitarian Universalist. I was brought up in a Universalist church; taught Sunday school while still in high school; at age of 16 I was Youth Sunday preacher to a large congregation who were most kind to my youthful and brash extravagance of rhetoric. You see, that Universalist church was not only a shelter when I needed it; it was also a free forum where I could express radical ideas about religion without any necessity of leaving the church or being put down. In the 1920s to early 30s, that one Universalist church had five young men enter the ministry – Owen Whitman Eames, Wallace Fiske, Frederic Harrison, Robert Sterling, and a few years later, yours truly as one of the so-called “second career” people. Years later, while living in a southeastern Massachusetts town, I was recruited for the Universalist ministry by two students from Tufts Theological Seminary (Tufts was established by Universalists), but I went to St. Lawrence (also established by Universalists). I have been twice married; once (in pre-consolidation terms) to a Universalist and once to a Unitarian.

[CJW notes: There was an active youth group – which related to county; 200 turnout at monthly meeting; Potter; my one and only stay ... “the Valiant”; Fred & Al; CHM – Theol Dist Pres n Exec; I rebelled against the central authority of the UUA]

How has Unitarian Universalism impacted my life? What you see (and hear) is what you get. [CJW note: tear-jerker ballad - “You Made Me What I Am”]

But to add to that, one of the major ways that Unitarian Universalism has influenced me is that I learned to wrestle with the large questions of life: Who am I? What can I believe? What must I do? I was not always on top; my shoulders have been pinned to the mat often enough. But I have tried and still try to deal with the big ideas. Even though I am now a Unitarian Universalist, in the following remarks I will use the word Universalist, because, as mentioned, most of my life has been in Universalist churches. It is also my way of reminding persons that the neglect of Universalism, in many ways, ignoring half our heritage, pisses me off and is a constant temptation to wave goodbye. But I never claimed to be an unemotional creature. [CJW notes: ident. conv.; is a dis to a great heritage]

One of the ways I have learned to deal with the large questions could be condensed in the title of a pamphlet written by my friend, teacher, and fellow Universalist, the late Angus Hector MacLean, distinguished professor of religious education at St. Lawrence: “The Method is the Message.”

One of the most frequently asked questions of my life has been, “What do Universalists Believe?: The theological origins of Universalism – that all souls would be saved; there was no Hell into which sinners were cast forever – this theological basis did not have much relevance in the 20th century, because persons did not believe in Hell after death (there were sufficient hells on earth). [CJW notes: before ... television; the fund of ... small churches stopped preaching]

So, I would answer something like this: Universalists do not believe alike; in many ways we differ. The proper question is “How do Universalists arrive at their beliefs?” From where I stand, one can assume that a Universalist accepts the body of tested truth accumulated and continuously refined by the historian, the geologist, biologist, astronomer, physicist, social scientist, and practitioners of other authentic learned professions. The Universalist believes reason to be a guide, and validates propositions through experience and experiment. The Universalist places freedom and the worth and dignity of all persons as the highest values. The Universalist still looks with hope on the nature and destiny of the human venture, in spite of calamitous and cruel events.

[CJW note: all theologies to be an interpretation of experience, not a divine revelation]

Sometime about 1926-29, my minister, ... Milburn, placed in my hands an essay written by Professor John Erskine, then a distinguished professor of literature at Columbia University. I have never entirely forgotten it – the title was, “The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.” With provocative wit he wrote of the need to combine intelligence with other desirable qualities of life using as a text Kingsley’s lines, “Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.” Erskine criticized the all-too-common attitude that there is division between goodness and intelligence. In Erskine’s words, “stupidity is regarded as first cousin to moral conduct and cleverness the first step into mischief, that reason and God are not on good terms with each other; that mind and heart are rival buckets in the well of truth, inexorably balanced, full mind, starved heart – stout heart, weak head.” [CJW note: This attitude prevails; egg-head, ivory-tower; liberals = minions of Satan]

Of course the intention of my Universalist minister was to impress on this teen-age rebel that the application of intelligence to religion is necessary. Can a religion for our time be anything but a thoughtful religion? Should not religion make sense? I may not be all that intelligent, but I try. Erskine was right – at least I think I have developed a “Nonsense Indicator” which works at least some of the time. Speaking of time – mine is up!

What’s Tomorrow’s Surprise?

May 24, 1993

A strong motive for old men to keep on living is a zesty anticipation of what tomorrow’s surprise will be. This came home to me last night when I viewed a video borrowed from the Lakeland Public Library, Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM.

Guess what? Benny Hill acting in Shakespeare!!! To me that is comparable to seeing an old news film of Harpo Marx conducting a press conference; or Muhammad Ali announcing that he really wasn’t the greatest; or Pat Robertson stating on his “Christian” network that he truly believed in the separation of church and state.

The late Benny Hill became famous in the U.S. in the 80s with his Thames Television shows that never failed to feature his bawdy jokes, leering eyes on nubile, bosomy females, speeded-up films of his chasing such ladies or being chased by same; rudeness, vulgarity and irreverence being the common theme of all his shows. I have been told that every man enjoyed (sometimes secretly) Benny Hill and every woman detested him.

Be that as it may, in A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM, there was Benny Hill playing Bottom. There were the leering eyes, the eccentric body movements, the whole shtick. This BBC version was made in the 60s, when Benny Hill was largely unknown here, but probably a well-known comedian in the U.K. So the casting might have been a publicity gimmick.

However, one cannot assert that he was miscast as Bottom, given the nature of that role. The only other Shakespearean part I can envision for Benny Hill is Falstaff – the Falstaff of THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, not of HENRY IV.

Therefore, if today is dull and boring, don’t give up. Tomorrow may reveal an exciting surprise. If Benny Hill played Shakespeare, astonishing events may await us in this busy, dizzy world!

Little Lamb Who Made Thee

May, 1993
Brooksville

September, 1995
Lakeland

Re-write from 1982

Opening Words:

I am aware that I am speaking to many of you who are at least two generations following mine; I have grandchildren younger than some.

My purpose today is not to proclaim certainties when there are many doubts.

My intention is not to disturb your convictions, for if you have convictions, you can respond.

That which sustains me is not a metaphysical absolute or a religious creed, but the human values and human civility without which we could not gather in peace.

Here we have freedom to inquire into any and all the major and minor ideas and issues of the human enterprise. My purpose is not to impress you with my beliefs or my doubts, but to stimulate you to ask yourself, “what sustains me?”and attempt an answer. If that occurs, my time will have been usefully spent.

William Blake
THE LAMB

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee.
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!

William Blake
THE TIGER

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

May Swenson
THE UNIVERSE
[not yet in public domain]

Phyllis McGinley
TIMES THREE
[not yet in public domain]

Sermon:

William Blake’s two questions, enclosed in his vivid, mystic images, emphasize the dilemma one finds when attempting to deal with the question of a Creator. Blake deals with the creator of the gentle lamb with the answer that the creator incarnated himself as a little child, God becomes child. But Blake with his image of the fearful, savage tiger, he does not answer – leaves only the question. The question: can a good creator who makes the gentle lamb also bring into being the fierce tiger? That poetic economy expresses the quandary, ever-present, when an effort is made to discover what God is, what God does, or even if God exists.

I trust my remarks will show a certain modesty. Although the libraries are abundantly shelved with books on the subject; and sermons from most pulpits, are replete with pronouncements pleadings and persuasions about God, talking about God reminds me of a sentence I once read defining “journalism”: “a profession whose business it is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.” The last line of Phyllis McGinley's poem applies, “God knows which God is the God God recognizes.”

[Crossed out: It is also a “given” in a Unitarian Universalist society that when the minister talks about God, there will be a mix of reactions – the bored (what's he talking about THAT dull stuff for?); the hurt (he’s attacking my cherished belief); the patriotic anger (“this country was founded on God, and he’s trying to shake the foundation”). It may or may not come as a surprise to you, but ministers receive many criticisms as well as some compliments. Which reminds me of a minister’s story about the time he was ordained: An old lady, a family friend, asked him, “Was it your own idea or were you poorly advised?”]

Let’s begin with definitions – “a good dictionary is one of the best lie detectors.”

An atheist denies the existence of any god or gods.

An agnostic holds that it is not possible to acquire with certainty knowledge of whether or not god(s) exist. As originally coined by Thomas Huxley, the word “agnostic” indicated a suspension of judgment about ultimate issues.

A Deist believes that there is a god who created the universe, analogically like a clockmaker who makes a clock, winds it up – and departs. Such a god is not the source of goodness, not a moral being, and has no communication with human beings. Many times referred to, as Jefferson did, the God of Nature.

A Theist usually believes that God is a personal both above and within the Universe and who has moral relations with persons.

A Humanist is even more difficult to define briefly. She/he may be theist, deist, agnostic, or atheist as far as the idea of God is concerned, but holds that the proper focus of religion should be fixed at human life on earth; life here and now. To repeat the familiar and classic definitions of humanism: “man is the measure of all things.” (Protagoras ) – “the proper study of mankind is man” (Pope). In another sense, the Humanist may believe that the only source of human knowledge is from human perception, individual and collective, natural only, never supernatural; that beliefs in god(s) are the product of human culture and heritage, individual and social; that religious beliefs are always relative, never absolute.

Usually, the questions about God can be roughly divided into those who have different answers to such questions, as, is God a human-like Creator dwelling in a supernatural realm? Or is God an impersonal force? Others answer in terms of verbal or artistic symbols which point to the mystery in growth, change, creation, destruction.

There seems to have been a history of change in the idea of God. Long before history was written, human worshiped the gods of the seasons. In autumn, vegetation and foliage withered, fruitfulness was ended. When spring came, the earth revived. The mysterious process of seedtime, growth, and harvest stirred deep religious feelings. The spirits of corn and wild were worshiped as gods, who, through will and whim, sustained humans. The Greeks called the mystery, Adonis; the Babylonians, Tammuz; the Celts and Scots, John Barleycorn – and such are only a few of the names of the dying-rising savior god of vegetation, who was a “hero with a thousand faces,” as Joseph Campbell described in his book of that name.

The belief that God created man in his image is a foundation of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Although most persons are relatively uninformed about the sacred writings of the Jewish and Christian traditions, nearly everyone would know that somewhere in the book of Genesis, there appears the statement that God made man in his (God’s) image. (1/26, “let us make man in our image after our likeness.”) The implications of the plural “our” seem not to bother believers, even though it is a contradiction of “one god.” I go along with those scholars who believe that ages ago, prehistoric, God was both male and female (androgynous); or that, in some cultures, two gods, one male, one female, shared the powers.

In the Western world, our roots are mainly in Indo-European stock of peoples, even though the origins of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are Semitic. Historically, God has been masculine, bearded, with European facial, skin, and hair characteristics, generally. That is what God is, because we are his image, or so it is widely believed. After all, that is the way Michelangelo painted God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Would there be the same picture if we were African, Polynesian, or American Indian, untouched by Western Christian culture? Of course not. More than 2500 years ago, Xenophanes, poet and philosopher of ancient Greece (540-500 BCE) observed the religious scene of his day. He noted that the gods and goddesses of his land were Greeks of beautiful body, possessing the qualities of strength, courage, and intellect which were valued and admired by Greek people. As Xenophanes, long ago, came to know Africans, he discovered that their gods were black of skin. The gods of Asians were cast in Asian mold. So Xenophanes, long ago, came to the conclusion that man creates his gods in man’s image. If our culture had been maternal instead of paternal, woman would have Created God in woman’s image.

As best as we can understand pre-historic peoples, the pressure of survival shaped their gods. The storm threatened, the drought would starve, the flood would drown. But a balance of sunshine and rain provided people with enough food to survive. Little wonder that the powers of nature stirred fear. The gods of sun, rain, thunder, vegetation, water were ritually worshiped with awe and wonder – and sacrifice.

Gods came to be worshiped because of other beginnings. Perhaps one person gave great and heroic service. Within a few generations because of impact and memory, the tribe promoted the hero to god-ship.

When one considers the ancient Hebrew legends and myths, Yahveh may have been a mountain god, originally, perhaps an active volcano. This may be the origin of the reference in the old scripture that the children of Israel were led by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. This would describe with some accuracy an active volcano being used as a distant point of guidance.

Then, gradually, the image of God began to display new attitudes and concerns. From scanty evidence at first, we can trace the growth to an image of God concerned about the poor, the oppressed, the sinful. The ethical prophets, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah Isaiah, proclaimed this image. The image becomes more and more inclusive and all peoples became included in God’s dominion. Everyone must answer for his conduct to this one eternal and universal Yahveh. One scholar (Welch – JEREMIAH) wrote, “the Old Testament prophets are terribly one-idea men. They all believe that Yahveh acts.” If the image of God in your mind is a uniting of creation and high morality, then you owe much of that image to the Jews. That image is their religion.

Centuries later, another Jew, Jesus, was emphatic in attributing additional form and qualities to the image. The image became like one’s father. Jesus lived in a social setting where the father of the family was the law-giver. But a good father was not only a firm ruler, he was also kind and just, who should be loved as well as obeyed. For Jesus the image became warm, strong, and affectionate, “Our Heavenly Father.” One wonders if Jesus had been reared in a maternal rather than a paternal culture he would have prayed to our “heavenly mother.”

Then the Christian church added to the image – rather, the theologians multiplied it. The Lord who was one became three, the Trinity. The person of Jesus as well as the Holy Ghost became part of a three-in-one image. In a cartoon strip which appeared in the Lakeland newspaper, a character referred to the Trinity as “three awesome dudes.”

Although most Christians still pray to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (or Spirit), the idea of God has changed. When tyrant kings were all-powerful, the image of God became that of the monarch. In the ferment of change when there were increasing constitutional liberties and in some countries increasing scientific knowledge of cosmology, biology and psychology, the image became the God “within”, the divine spark in the soul to which persons voluntarily could respond. God, for many, was no longer the arbitrary monarch, but rather, the pervasive Presence in all life.

Then in the late 19th century, theology was hit with a bombshell, with delayed fuses still igniting. Led by Freud and his successors, who analyzed human behavior, it was pointed out that we tend to make gods of our childish wishes that may have been unfulfilled and unforgotten, but repressed. The mixture of fear and love with which with which we reacted at depth to our fathers had been unconsciously projected onto the screen of religious faith – The “Fatherhood of God” strikes deeply within us and echoes those mixed feelings of fear, jealousy, love, and awe. The late Father Thomas Merton, the Cistercian monk who wrote such penetrating meditations, observed, “Our ideas about God tell us more about ourselves than they do about God.”

Then, too, the idea of a good loving God with concern for all his children has always been flush up against the wall of unmerited suffering. Not the evil that persons do to persons. The terrible tragedy in Waco cannot be blamed on any god – but on the madness some religions incite. But there is also the suffering that the forces of Nature inflict upon persons. Just recall the March 13th storm and less recent, but still fresh in our minds, Hurricane Andrew. [CJW note: Tornadoes annihilated 5000 Kobe, Japan, January; Okla. City] There are volcanic eruptions in the Philippines, recently, devastating green fertility to a dead, gray wasteland. How does one fit a good, caring God into such disasters which happen somewhere every month or so. One is reminded of Robert Ingersoll’s statement that if he had been God, he would have made health infectious instead of disease. Or as Shakespeare has Gloucester say to King Lear, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night –
What immortal hand or eye dare
frame thy fearful symmetry.”

Or, as poet May Swenson inquired,
“and what if the universe
is NOT ABOUT us?
Then what?”

[CJW note: Hume quote]

It must also be said, however, if the constant presence of disastrous evils creates a trackless wilderness when seeking a good God, one must also account for goodness – not only the gifts of Nature which have provided a world where we can live, eat, love, mate, and find shelter, but also a world where in spite of evil men and oppressive movements, there are good people, kind women and men, persons who give of themselves so that others may live and grow. Then, too, why are we conscious of anything at all, particularly loving and nurturing?

In recent decades, theologians, philosophers, scientists have been asking, is there a God beyond the god of fertile crops who must be appeased by sacrifice? Beyond the warrior gods? Beyond the gods of our wish projections? Beyond the father in heaven? Beyond the god who manipulated the three-story universe in the age before Copernicus? Is there a God beyond the gods of human thought and imagining? There are attempts: Tillich wrote of God as the “ground of Being” - not A being, but being itself (if you can under-that) – A Tao, a Way from which all beings and things emanate – which cannot be known – has no form or attributes – is unconditioned when all we know is conditioned – is infinite where all we know and can know is finite?

The late Eustace Haydon, who taught history of religions at the University of Chicago, commented, “Scientific philosophers and theologians who cannot still believe in the robust god of Christianity have in the last generation offered us substitutes for Him. They include the Impersonal Absolute, The World Soul, the grand Etre, The Spiritual Nisus of an Evolving Universe, the Unknowable, the Totality of Life, the Life Force, the Common Will, the Determiner of Destiny, a Growing God, a Cosmic Mathematician, the Principle of Concretion, the Utterly Other, the Imagined Synthesis of Ideal Ends, and many more.

But it seems to me that inventing a name, however intriguing, does not demonstrate there is an objective entity behind the name.

Now it may seem rude, but to me all these substitutes for the fading old gods are simply contrived name tags on that which cannot be named; putting labels on mystery which cannot be fathomed; asserting knowledge which cannot be verified and is, thus, speculation.

Where all this strikes you, I cannot guess. But the older I get, in matters metaphysical, the less help I get from theologians, scientists, philosophers. The poets, composers, artists, musicians, dramatists do not inform me of proper theological discourse (I’m glad of that), but I resonate to some of their creative imagery. I will never know all I am, but I feel that in me and in you, are the forces of what we call the Cosmos – gravity, atomic structures, electro-magnetism, positive and negative discharges of electricity, chemical synthesis and re-synthesis, growth, change, creation, destructions. But naming such processes do not fully explain who I am, who you are, who we are.

Sometimes I feel the mood which grasped Francis Thompson, poet-mystic, when he created the “Hound of Heaven.” Do you remember these lines from that poem:

“I dimly guess
what Time in mist confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists awhile unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.”

What the poet described as “the trumpet sounds,” Abraham Maslow called peak experiences. When this happens we have broken through the crust of Self. The interpretations we give these moments differ, not only because of unlike heritage and different experiences of each of us, but also, words are inadequate, for me at least, and I attach no deity-name to the experience. Alfred North Whitehead was more eloquent than most of us when he wrote (quoted by Margaret Isherwood, FAITH WITHOUT DOGMA), “this creative principle is everywhere, in animate and so-called inanimate matter, in the ether, water, earth, human hearts. But the creation is a continuing process, and the process itself is the actuality, since no sooner do you arrive than you start on a fresh journey.”

May I make a personal witness? I have pondered the great mystery for many years. Yes, I am an agnostic. I do not know the answer or even the proper questions. But in my ninth decade on this earth, I am more and more a SEEKING agnostic. It is not fear of death, even though I have lived at least 9/10ths of my life. I do not know that when I die I will meet a totally blank wall or a door opening to some uncharted surprise. Meanwhile, I try to travel with an open mind and a seeking heart. That is the “Triptik” for my journey till the day I die, reminding myself occasionally of the saying by the medieval woman mystic, Julian of Norwich, “all will be well; all will be well; all manner of things will be well.”

I’m Puzzled!

April 25, 1993

The other day, a flotilla of small boats left Key West for Cuba with cargoes of much-needed medical supplies, vitamins and food. Because Cuba is a Communist nation, the United States has maintained a thirty-year embargo on trade with Cuba. Any attempts to resume some kind of trading with Cuba arouses instant, angry and sometimes riotous protests, particularly in Miami where so many Cuban expatriates live.

I’m puzzled why we are unwilling to do business with Fidel Castro. It cannot be because he is a dictator, because the United States has always been willing to deal with and support dictators when it suited our interests. Joseph Stalin was our buddy in World War II. We have supported Somoza, Marcos, Batista, Cristiani, for example, all of whom were more cruel and self-aggrandizing than Castro.

Why are we so scared of Castro’s communist Cuba when we are snuggling in with the most powerful communist nation in the world – China? (Forgetting the horrors of Tienanmen Square.) More than that, we have granted China “most-favored-nation” status in the jargon of world trade.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has created crippling shortages in Cuba. Oil, needed for both transport and energy, is scarce; so are medicine and food.

Louis Friedman, a journalist, reports on a recent eleven-day fact finding trip to Cuba (“Human Quest” May-June, 1993), including a visit to Cuba’s Isle of Youth, where Cuba is educating over 100,000 secondary-school-age children from around the world.

(Some years back in Jamaica, in a difficult and potentially dangerous situation, I met a young Jamaican lady who escorted us down a mountain road. She was polite, well-spoken and a “very present help.” She had received her high-school education in Cuba on a scholarship granted by the Cuban government. I have wondered how many scholarships we offer to high-school age young people from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands?)

Louis Friedman also writes, “We visited the Jose Marti Pioneer Camp outside Havana, where over 11,000 child victims from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine have been treated (and are being treated) in the last three years. There are acute shortages of food and medicine at these facilities – and in Cuba in general.”

Why can’t we be more generous toward people who provide such humanitarian efforts?

Is our United States prosperity so great that we can reject and disavow Cuba as a trading partner? We even occupy part of their nation, Guantanamo. If we can talk of billions to aid the former Soviet Union, why are we refusing to do any business with Cuba? Commercial trading creates and maintains jobs, profits, dividends, does it not?

WE might benefit in other ways, too. I have read elsewhere that literacy in Cuba is 97%. Our education gurus might learn something if they checked-out the Cuban educational system. All Cubans are covered by a national health plan. Why don’t we find out how and why that works? In terms of our nation’s health, we need all the advice and wisdom we can get.

There is an old adage that as a boy, I heard frequently from my elders, “Don’t cut off your nose to to spite your face.” I believe that old, and somewhat inelegant adage is a sage way to conclude, “I’m Puzzled.”

A Reader’s Lament

February 15, 1993

Here I go again with a cultural complaint! One of my fears for the future is that an ill-informed public will be brainwashed, or should I say, eyewashed, by the by the God of the Tube (TV, that is). As I cut off TV nearly two years ago, I concede that I cannot claim to to be currently sufficiently aware to make objective judgments. Nevertheless, I believe that TV is still the “wasteland” that Newton Minow described many years ago.

This “musing” was sparked by observations made Cambridge historian, J. H. Plumb, in his book, IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY, published in 1973. He wrote of the momentum for knowledge that happened in late 17th century England. Dictionaries and encyclopedias were compiled and published. Lectures on science became popular and well-attended, less by the “Upper Class” and more by tradesmen, working-class people and business entrepreneurs. The period was one of growth for libraries and book clubs. Serious works largely out-numbered fiction.

Plumb pointed out that this surge of interest in popular learning worried the “high” Anglican Church because “popular education led to questioning accepted accepted beliefs in religion and politics. What began as scientific curiosity often ended in political and moral speculation.” The ruling elite were “horrified that miners were reading Thomas Paine. ...toward the end of the century there was an obvious connection between dissenters, liberals, and libraries.”

I resonated to the historian when he observed that in Birmingham, of the 19-member committee that ran the library, 18 were dissenters led by Joseph Priestley. The persons who organized the London Library had a strong liberal bias, were supporters of the American Revolution, and “sympathetic to the early aspirations of the French Revolution.”

Obviously, I am not non-partisan about libraries and books. Long before I was a teen-ager, several times a week I walked the mile or so to the Parlin Library. I devoured Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, TOM SAWYER, James Fenimore Cooper, Zane Grey’s gunslingers, Tom Swift’s marvelous inventions and the feats of Frank and Dick Merriwell. But also, I tried to understand H. G. Wells, Jack London, Tennyson’s IDYLLS OF THE KING, Dickens, even Gibbon (with little success, then). This strong appetite for books continues. My taste has been incremental for biography, history, and poetry. I’m always delighted to happen on an author whose works I had not known but now appreciate. This month it has been the poetry of May Swenson. Shakespeare is THE BEST. I try to read. all his plays every year. (Although it’s easy to skip TITUS ANDRONICUS and HENRY VIII.) Another “Buff” of the Bard urged me to pay more attention to the Sonnets; and I am trying to do that, too. Then too, I am a fan of well-written mystery stories – Agatha Christie, P. D. James, Ngaio Marsh, William Klienzle, many others. I like puzzles – maybe that’s why I majored in religion.

But even if you are not a bibliophile, think twice about over-dosing on TV. Schoolteachers tell me that 6th and 7th graders read little, if at all. There are some of that age who have NEVER read a book. But they may spend 15-20 hours a week glued to the TV fare of “sit-coms,” “re-runs,” sports, cartoons, “cop” shows, whatever. But from all I read in reviews and hear in conversations, there are few programs that have much relation to the real world in which we must all live.

Not only are our young beguiled, but countless adults get the “news” only from the TV. TV networks are owned by corporate conglomerates; and about 1/3 of the “News” time is used for “a word from our sponsors” or “now this” - advertising time. One cannot get the full story from TV news. There is bias: and left-of-center attitudes and proposals never get much hearing, even on Public Television. The voices of the highly-paid “anchors” and pundits may sound like what they are saying is the “gospel”, but believe me, it is not. One needs to read journals of differing conservative and liberal views, newspapers (there aren’t many) which comprehensively cover a story, or other sources which more fully describe facts and offer opinions and differentiate between those two.

I have more leisure than most people, so I don’t expect there are many who have my reading habits. (I’ve had a long life-time to develop that pursuit.) But can you zap the clicker, turn off the tube once in a while and read a book, take a walk, make a friend? If I had the opportunity to make a deal with a teen-ager, it might be, “for every four hours of television, read a book.” I’m bold enough to suggest that such is not a bad deal for persons of any age.

Of course, to repeat J. H. Plumb’s suggestion, there are still connections between dissenters, liberals, and libraries. But most of you know me well enough to realize that OF COURSE I’d welcome many more dissenters and liberals. Whatever the field of knowledge or organization, the interactions between conservatives, liberals, and, yes, radicals, are the sources of worthy changes.

If you have read this far, you will understand why I respond heartily to the fantasy written by Virginia Woolf:

“I have sometimes dreamt that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their awards – their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble – the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, ‘Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.’”

Joy To The World! – Not So Fast

January 1, 1993

The lovely songs, stories and memories have warmed our hearts and lifted our spirits (unless one is jobless, hungry, or homeless). But at this halfway point of the Twelve Days of Christmas, I wonder why amid all the joy, there is so little grief expressed for the innocent babies who were slaughtered (MATTHEW 2/13 ff):

“... an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod....

“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.’”

Along with the overdose of lilting, rejoicing, and carols, why has there been no sorrowful dirge, poem of grief, passionate rage against Herod? Why has this genocide been so little noted? I have leafed through books of Nativity poems and adoring homage paid to the Virgin and her son of divine conception. Why no lamentations about those Jewish babies in Bethlehem who were stabbed and gutted by Herod’s police? The Roman Catholic church does have an Innocents Day, December 28, remembering the children slaughtered by Herod, celebrating a “Mass of the Holy Innocents.” I am frequently critical of aspects of Roman Catholicism, but I give it a plus for remembering the children.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her protest against the exploitation of children in mine and mill during the 19th century Industrial Revolution, “The Cry of the Children,” concludes her poem with these lines:

“But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath.”

Immediately, some will respond that the Nativity stories were not historical events. For example, the the Apostle Paul, whose writings are the earliest of New Testament scripture, knew nothing of these birth stories. The accounts were late additions when the early Christian church was taking form and exerting influence. Whether called myth, legend or fable, such birth stories were a characteristic of many religions. In religious origins, Jesus was not the first or last “savior” to be born of a virgin, divinely impregnated, or to miraculously escape the murderous plots of a tyrant or enemy. Such nativity wonder-tales seem to be a necessary credential to be a founder of a religion. (Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Horus, Tammuz, Mithra, Zoroaster, Quetzacoatl) .

But, “so what?” you might respond. Christmas is a lovely and necessary fantasy in a grim and cruel world. Why not a suspension of belief when we are lifted from our prosaic lives to sing, share, re-tell the Nativity stories, make children excited and happy, feast and frolic; and bless our human venture with hopes and prayers for peace and good-will – celebrate what is not true but ought to be?

O.K., no argument. BUT, if one considers the whole story as written by the author of “Matthew,” which differs from Luke, then one can speculate about disturbing questions. Why did not the Angel warn other Jewish parents in Bethlehem of Herod’s plan to slaughter their infants? Before they fled, could not have Joseph and Mary warned neighbors, “Get out of town; the Gestapo will be knocking on doors.” Did the Christian plan of salvation require that all those Jewish kids be killed? If one celebrates the Christian Nativity as if it were true, do not ignore or dismiss the cruel murders of innocent infants. Herod was probably capable of such an outrage, but there is no contemporary record of it. Furthermore that story does cohere with Luke’s account. In Luke’s gospel, Joseph and Mary never leave Bethlehem and Nazareth.

Amid the odor of sanctity, I sense a whiff of anti-Semitism. Unless you consider that statement too outrageous to read on, consider the following:

Bible scholars do not place the date of “Matthew” earlier than 75 A.D., some as late as 100 A.D. (Morton Enslin) . From the time of Paul the Apostle, there had been a struggle between Paul and the Jerusalem followers of Jesus based in that city. The Jerusalem group believed Jesus to be the Messiah to the Jews. Paul and his group, increasingly “Gentile,” held that Jesus represented a new dispensation – the Gospel superseded the Law and the Torah and prophets (Old Testament), and had been replaced by the New Covenant (New Testament). Under the latter, Jewish ritual and law were no longer necessities.

This power struggle was more intense and hostile than commonly understood. When more of the Dead Sea Scrolls are translated, greater light will be thrown on this controversy. There are those who believe the translations have been deliberately delayed because they may provide much information and raise formidable questions about Christian beginnings. (For a full account, read THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS DECEPTION, by Baigent and Leigh).

Some scholars believe that “Matthew” wrote his gospel at Antioch. In the book of Acts we read, “They were first called Christians at Antioch.” In “Matthew’s” Nativity account, there is a religious/political “spin” on his quotation from the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah harshly condemned Judah and Israel for forsaking the Law, Covenant, and Commandments. He proclaimed that such faithlessness was the cause of the cruel trials, as Judah/Israel became the battleground between Egypt and Syria at war with each other. “Matthew” quotes Jeremiah (31/15):

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.”

But he does not continue his scriptural quote because Jeremiah went on to offer hope – not in a “New Covenant”, but in a return to the Law, Covenant, and Commandments. In “Matthew’s” gospel we find a most disastrous verse, which in the context of the times is highly unlikely to have occurred: When Pilate proclaims he is innocent of (Jesus’) blood, “and all the people answered, ‘let his blood be on us and our children.’”

Not only did “Matthew” ignore Jeremiah’s hope, but offers that very questionable verse, which appears ONLY in “Matthew”. That verse has been an igniting cause of savage persecutions of Jewish people, pogroms, vicious prejudice, segregation, and the Holocaust.

In any power struggle, usual elements are: who has power, who wants to grab it, no limitations on ways to to seize it or keep it; when useful, withhold or falsify relevant facts. There is no need to expand on tricks, dirty or clever, when there are bitter conflicts in religion or politics. Lord Acton, in ESSAYS ON FREEDOM AND POWER, covered that organizational disease brilliantly. Modern political contests are confirmations of his thesis, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Perhaps you are now casting me as the voice of Boris Karloff in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” or as an unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge. Bah Humbug? Not so. I believe the holidays most people call Christmas are necessary to our well-being and a needed respite from Winter gloom, cares, anxieties, and woe. The Puritans prohibited celebrating Christmas, even fining people who were caught observing the holiday because the Puritans insisted it was a “Pagan” celebration.

They were correct in that label, but wrong in forbidding the observances. Long before the Christian nativity myths, peoples celebrated the days clustering around the Winter Solstice with feast and frolic: Roman Saturnalia, the Druids, Norse, Teutons revered the mistletoe, the sacred tree (ever-green), and Yule log. Torches were lighted to welcome and encourage the return of light.

In the 4th Century A.D., and not before then, Christians established December 25 as the birthday of Jesus, coinciding with the birth date of Mithra, “the invincible Sun.” The motive might have been to identify Jesus as “the Son”, or to attempt clean up the wild-partying of the Saturnalia, or to give Christians a doctrinal reason to join the celebrations. Perhaps it was as simple as, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”. That identity was a bit like altering a date on a passport for expedient reasons.

This consolidating of cultic practices still goes on. I found it fascinating that in St. Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul II had erected a large, decorated Christmas tree next to the Creche. Could the rigidly dogmatic Pope unaware that he was attaching Nature Worship to the Nativity “miracles?” Some thoughtful Jewish people are dismayed that Hanukkah is considered by some as “Jewish Christmas.” Perhaps it is, in the cultural leveling, or erosion, that seems to be going on. A report in the newspaper included an interchange between two women. The first, because Christmas had no role or sanction in her religion, was reluctant to participate in any of the usual activities. “Come on,” said her friend, “Christmas is not a religious holiday at all.”

The truth or falsity of that judgment I leave to you-all. However interpreted, it is a glad and thoughtful time. The wheeling of the season to bring more light; the joy of remembering those we love and being remembered by them; the music – jolly, solemn, affectionate, deeply appealing (whatever the words); charities and human helping highlighted – yes, we need this Mid-winter festival.

Years ago, a university teacher said, “Christmas is a window through which we see a world that could be.” Can the “could be” ever become the “is”? Joy to the WHOLE world! And for all persons of the many diverse faith communities, a time to hope and work for a time when all of us understand each other more wisely and affectionately.

Introduction To Musings IV

December 1993

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!

I don’t know of many Winter Solstice cards with more pages than this one. My comments are not intended to challenge your beliefs, but to share mine. Remember that wisdom accrues by sifting claims and events through the grid of your convictions and the filter of your seeking minds.

In THE GOLDEN BOUGH, Frazier wrote of the ancient English tradition where the custom was to light the Yule log with a fragment of its predecessor, which had been kept throughout the year for that purpose. The retained fragments were also believed to protect the home against fire and lightning. There were also curative powers for the family and farm animals attributed to the ashes of the Yule log.

May the curative powers of this festive season sustain you all the year – lending light, spreading warmth, sharing memories, deepening love. Bless you and bless your home.

- Grandfather W

For Your Musings, As Well As Mine

December 1, 1992

These are concluding thoughts for this 1992 year. In order to get this year's musings to the printer in time for Holiday mailing, I have randomly chosen some items that to me are provocative. I may “muse” at some length on these in 1993, depending upon more data, experience and interest. Meanwhile, why not “think on these things.” I will do the same.

From today's Lakeland Ledger: “...many people in Polk County still seem certain they can’t ever get AIDS because they are heterosexual. This county has the highest percentage of heterosexually contracted AIDS cases in the nation. People still fail to realize it's not a ‘gay’ disease.”

The following items are “bits” from the Nov-Dec issue of THE FUTURIST:

LONGER WORKWEEKS: Nearly a quarter of U. S. workers with full-time jobs are working 49 hours or more each week, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. At present, 22.8% of the nation’s 87.4 million people with full-time jobs spend 49 hours or more on the job, compared with 17.7% in 1980.

CLEANUP: Cleaning up the hazardous waste already polluting the United States will eventually cost up to $500 billion. The market for cleanup, or remediation, services is thus one of the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy, outpacing even electronic information services and computer software....

POPULATION EXPLOSION (from an article by Robert S. McNamara, former head of the World Bank; former Secretary of Defense): A 2.6 fold increase in world population and an eightfold increase in consumption per capita by 2100 would cause the globe’s production to be 20 times greater than today. Likewise the impact on non-renewable and renewable resources would be 20 times greater, assuming no change in environmental stress per unit of production.

THE CASH-FREE SOCIETY: Imagine a society in which cash no longer exists. Instead, “cash” is electronic as in bank-card systems. Currency and coin are abandoned. The immediate benefits would be profound and fundamental. Theft of cash would become impossible. Bank robberies and cash-register robberies would simply cease to occur. Attacks on shopkeepers, taxi-drivers, and cashiers would all end. Purse snatchings would become a thing of the past. Urban streets would become safer. Security costs and insurance rates would fall. Property values would rise. Neighborhoods would improve.

Drug traffickers and their clients, burglars and receivers of stolen property, arsonists for hire, and bribe-takers would no longer have the advantage of using untraceable currency.

CRIME: Private homes in the future may be designed more for security than for show. Bulletproof siding for houses will be commonplace, and homes for the wealthy may have faked ramshackle facades or artificial trash piled outside.

GENETIC CODES: The mapping of the human genome may revolutionize dating, as prospective couples will wish to know each other’s genetic codes. (I’ll take romance!)

WORLD AFFAIRS: Powerful global corporations may someday inherit many of the responsibilities now given to nation-states, including instigating wars and petitioning for peace.

RELIGION: By the turn of the century, more than half the Christians in the world will live in Third World countries, and church leadership has begun shifting to those nations.... Christianity is declining throughout western Europe (one source predicts a 50% drop in church membership in Germany between 1980 and 2030), but parts of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are experiencing a Christian revival in the wake of communism’s collapse.

In the United States, ecumenical churches can expect continued decline due to the graying of their congregations and the secularization of the “baby bust” generation. Meanwhile, evangelical churches are growing, as their congregations “tend to keep a much larger percentage of their young than (ecumenicals) – plus they have a higher fertility rate....”

Some predictions are grim and alarming, some bright and hopeful. The future has always made shambles of the predictions of most “seers.” As Robert Theobald notes in “FUTURE VIEW”, “despair is destructive, however. I choose to believe that enough people will commit to changing the world to assure that we will succeed. I know that success is possible. The challenge is to you, the individual. We all make a difference by what we do and what we leave undone. You are inevitably one factor affecting the future; both your actions and inactions have have consequences. And we can all provide each other with the knowledge that will help us get out of the hot water.”

There Will Always Be An England!

November 3, 1992

[Quoted from 10/20/92 AP article “Bats! Britons aren’t blind to sanctuary issue,” by Graham Heathcote:

“In one corner: Catherine Ward, wife of a country clergyman who has bats in two of the five churches in his care.

“ ‘They are vicious little creatures: they bite....’

“She says bat droppings stain pews, tombstones, fabric, hymnals, and prayer books.
...

“ ‘A bat missed me by about a foot during evensong,’ complained the Rev. Henry Chapman....
...

“ ‘What with the heritage lobby and the bat lobby I sometimes feel that congregations are becoming an endangered species,’ wrote the Rev. Timothy Shepherd....

“ ‘We like our bats,’ wrote a bat defendant, the Rev. Nicholas Beddow....

“ ‘The drumming of little bat feet and wings gives a useful and gentle bass line to our singing,’ he wrote, ‘and on occasion they fly in to play a more active part of our worship.’” ]

My title above is, of course, stolen from “The New Yorker” magazine, which uses this caption to report odd and eccentric items from the United Kingdom.

In these days when so much of the news is full of polls, politicians’ persiflage, negative accusations, false or irrelevant, and hot-air balloons of promises and pledges, I found welcome relief in this Tampa Tribune story about bats in English churches.

I do not know enough about bats to take sides in this issue – admittedly less than world-shaking. I do have a conviction about baseball bats – a pox on aluminum bats.

But I have led church services for nearly half a century. Thus I believe Mrs. Ward (see story) has a legitimate complaint. It would not do much for congregations I have served if bat droppings splashed on they hymnal as we sang “Light of Ages and of Nations.” Furthermore, there is enough difficulty in keeping audience interest in a sermon, let alone having the hearers constantly alert to prevent a bat-shit missile from scoring a direct hit.

I would like to meet the Rev. Nicholas Beddow (see story) because he must be: (1) a nutcake who is about 50 pence short of a quid, (2) a splendid example of the wry, understated British wit, or (3) a possessor of extraordinary sensory organs. He must either be a delight or a nuisance to his parishioners. “The drumming of little bat feet and wings gives a useful and gentle bass line to our singing, and on occasion they fly in to play a more active part of our worship.” Come on, Nicholas!!

Why did I muse on this item? This is Election Day. After I voted at 8:10 A.M., and must wait for fourteen hours or so to learn the outcome, I’m possessed by a strange eerie feeling I’m sure many share. Thus the comments on bats are an escape, far removed from the politics of a U.S. Presidential Election. (Or are they?)

A Five-Letter Word

September 16, 1992

I was curious to confirm an anecdote by an English writer, so I did not pay much heed to my painful knees as we climbed the many steps up that picturesque promontory, Plymouth Hoe, overlooking the most historic of British harbors. Reaching the top and walking a short distance, there it was – the statue of a 16th century sea-captain forever facing the harbor he inscribed indelibly on history. Chiseled at the base of the statue was one five-letter word – DRAKE. There were no dates of birth and death, no brass plate listing his achievements, no indication that he was Sir Francis Drake, knighted by Queen Elizabeth, nothing to indicate that to the Spanish he was “the scourge of God.”

The writer who had stirred my interest noted that the reason for one word, DRAKE, was simply that no English man, woman, or child would need more than that five-letter word, because they all knew who he was, what he did, and why he was vital to England, not only keeping her safe from Spain, but also a prime mover in the establishment of British sea-power so important to the coming British Empire which produced the motto, a reality for centuries, “Britannia Rules The Waves.” Actually, the strategy of protecting the British Isles through sea-power began with Henry VIII who invested much money in ships.

Realistically, the writer’s explanation of the five-letter word is probably no longer accurate. Since World War II, the United Kingdom has experienced a large in-migration of persons from India, Pakistan, Thailand, the Near-East and other lands. Many of these thousands of immigrants probably need much more explanation than one five-letter word, DRAKE. So did I, although I knew of some of the exploits and adventures that carved Drake’s place in English history and legend. So I did a little digging in my favorite garden – history.

Francis Drake was one of ten children of a Puritan “hedge” preacher. In the short reign of Queen Mary (“Bloody Mary”) when Roman Catholicism was re-instituted and Protestants persecuted, the Drake family had to flee the home farm and possessions because Queen Mary would have burned the elder Drake at the stake if he had been caught. Then the family lived secretly on a rotting hulk on the Medway River.

Francis Drake learned the sea at an early age. When 10 years old he worked on river boats. He shipped out to sea at the age of 15. When he was 20 he commanded his own coastal sloop. Then he sold his ship and invested the proceeds with John Hawkins, his older cousin and famous freebooter. John Hawkins was a slave trader, buying slaves on the African coast and selling them to Spanish colonists in the Americas.

The historical context of that time was complex and muddled. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia, the most infamous of Popes) issued the “Bull of Demarcation” dividing all New-World discoveries between Spain and Portugal, forbidding all other nations any rights of discoveries, shipping and treasure. That “Bull” was global effrontery, of course.

(Such Vatican Global chutzpah still occurs. William Wilson, a Reagan-Bush appointee as an ambassador to the Vatican admitted “that in withdrawing U.S. funding for International Planned Parenthood, ‘American policy was changed as a result of the Vatican’s not agreeing with with our policy.’” Rather than go on for pages about that subservience of the Republican President to the Roman Pope, just a one sentence quote: “In view of the present rate of population growth, the attempt to export a Western standard of living to the rest of the world, even if, it was economically or politically feasible in the first place, would amount to a recipe for environmental disaster.” (Lasch – THE TRUE AND ONLY HEAVEN).

Back to our subject: Even though Queen Elizabeth had been excommunicated by Pope Pius V and “deprived of her pretended right to the Throne,” King Philip II and the Spanish interests gave tacit approval to the English slave-traders in spite of the “Bull of Demarcation.” In the ambiguous and complicated European mix of discovery, religious wars, treasure, commerce and shifting alliances, there was a time when Spain winked at English shipping because they feared the French freebooters. France, although nominally a Roman Catholic country, had a strong Huguenot (Protestant) movement. Furthermore, the Gallican Catholic church disputed Papal authority on a number of issues.

Drake was not interested in slave-trading. He [was in it] for loot, raiding the Spanish Main, capturing Spanish treasure ships bound for Spain. Spain protested vehemently about these acts of piracy, and Queen Elizabeth presented apologies. But that was just a formal gesture, because the Queen was a secret investor in the voyages of her Sea-Dogs. The wealth of this freebooting she needed to finance the Dutch in their war with Spain. Also, she loaned vessels of the Royal Navy to the freebooters, again sharing largely in the profits from the gold, silver and jewels Drake, Hawkins and the other captains brought back to her Realm.

Drake’s raids on the Spanish Main are too well-known to re-tell. But one example of his daring and innovative tactics was his raid on the Isthmus of Panama. He landed small forces, secured help from natives and captured gold, silver, and jewels being transported overland from the Pacific to the Atlantic. In modern times these methods would be called commando raids. Drake could not take back all the treasure he seized, so he buried tons of silver to make room for thirty tons of gold. Sadly for Drake, two of his brothers, John and Joseph were killed on this venture.

Drake never thought of himself as a pirate. In his unyielding Puritan faith he saw himself at war with Catholic Spain and the Pope. He was a blunt and decisive commander as well as master seaman, navigator and innovative warrior.

There was an unusual, unspoken affinity between Queen Elizabeth I and Drake. After the Panama and Cartagena raids, as Felix Reisenberg writes (GREAT MEN OF THE SEA, p. 6), “Drake was summoned to London for an audience with the Queen and her Court. Eager to voyage again, he told the Queen his dream of sweeping the Spanish towns along the Pacific coast. In the Court, the politicians shuddered. The Ambassador from Spain turned red.

“Queen Elizabeth admonished Drake: Spain was the ally of England, she reminded the captain. But when she presented him with a sword she said, ‘We do account that he which striketh at thee, Drake, striketh at us.’ The two redheads – Queen and mariner- exchanged an understanding smile.”

In 1577, Drake, aboard the “PELICAN” with three other ships, set sail for the Magellan Straits. The Queen had given her permission (but she did not consult or tell her closest councillor, William Cecil, Lord Burghley). There was no declared war between Spain and England. After all, King Philip II had been Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, although they had not seen each other for thirty years. But the Queen and Drake understood each other.

Drake, with his uncanny shrewdness, had chosen to sail into the Pacific because the Spanish had concentrated their naval might and defenses on the Spanish Main and Caribbean. On this history-making voyage, three of his small fleet were lost. Overhauling the “PELICAN” on a remote island, he renamed the ship, “THE GOLDEN HIND.” Sir Christopher Hatton, a favorite of the Queen had a golden hind woven into his coat of arms.

Surviving terrible storms in rounding Cape Horn, Drake looted and burned towns along the Pacific coast, seizing much treasure. The Spanish began calling him, “El Draque, the scourge of God.” Then sailing north, he went as far as Vancouver, turning back because of cold, mist and fog. Putting in at San Francisco Bay, he claimed the land for Queen Elizabeth, erecting a brass plate which was found in 1936.

Crossing the Pacific, Drake added spices to the cargo, returning to Plymouth Harbor nearly three years after the start of the voyage – the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. Drake’s first question: “Is the Queen alive and well?” The treasure on the “GOLDEN HIND” was valued at nearly 750,000 pounds – and the Queen’s profit from her secret investment was 163,000 pounds. The return for investors was 4700%.

Although war between England and Spain had not been openly declared, King Philip II began assembling the Armada in Cadiz. Drake believed that a swift strike at Cadiz could deter, even ruin the Spanish plans. There was a “peace party” among Queen Elizabeth’s councillors, and she withheld approving Drake’s plan. Finally, she gave a go-ahead and Drake rushed preparations. He had been warned that the Queen might change her mind. On board the flagship, “ELIZABETH BONAVENTURE”, Drake and his small fleet sailed out of Plymouth, April 2, 1587.

The Queen did change her mind; and a courier galloped to Plymouth only to find Drake long gone to sea. Was this another case of the intuitive relationship between the Queen and Drake? Did she know or sense that Drake would be at sea by the time her message revoking permission would reach Plymouth? She could, and did assure the Spanish Ambassador that she had tried to recall Drake’s orders.

Drake proceeded to the Spanish coast with his usual daring and skill. In Cadiz he damaged or sunk about thirty Spanish ships, ruined tons of supplies and generally harassed the Spanish. From the area of Cape Vincent where he made a temporary base, he raided Spanish coastal shipping, much of it with cargoes for the Armada. Most important of all, he captured shiploads of barrel staves, which he burned. Seasoned barrel staves to make tight casks for water, oil, vinegar, and wine were a naval necessity. Green or rotting barrel staves would leak. One of the major difficulties when the Armada did sail was leaky casks. Thus the water shortage was a major difficulty for the Armada.

Drake departed the Spanish coast, sailing westward toward the Azores. Somehow he had heard of the “SAN FELIPE” with a cargo of spices, oriental goods and other treasure. Drake located the “SAN FELIPE”. As historian Garret Mattingly observed, “No wonder the Spaniards thought Drake had a magic mirror in his cabin on which he could see the ships moving on all seas of the world.” Drake had no “magic mirror” – he was a superb navigator, and from his knowledge of winds, tides, and sealanes, [he] could plot the place where he would intercept the “SAN FELIPE.”

The captured cargo of the “SAN FELIPE” and the vessel itself, which Drake sailed to Plymouth, assuaged any anger, real or pretended, that the Queen might have poured on Drake. The cargo was worth 114,000 pounds. Merchant investors took their share, but the Queen’s share was more than 40,000 pounds and Drake’s, 17,000 pounds.

Because of Drake’s raids, the Spanish preparations for the invasion of England were delayed about a year. King Philip II was eager to get the Armada on the seas, more hasty than careful preparations would allow. Finally, in May 1588, the Armada, 130 ships, large and small, set sail. The ablest of Spanish sea-captains commanded the vessels of the great array. On board were 26,000 Spanish and Portuguese soldiers.

The Spanish plan to conquer England involved not only the soldiers aboard the Armada, but also the the battle-hardened army of the Duke of Parma, which had been fighting to conquer the Dutch. The Armada would rendezvous with Parma’s army, which would be on barges to be towed to the invasion landing in England.

The plan was a complete failure. The Armada experienced the most disastrous expedition in naval history. That most humiliating of Spanish experiences was caused by innovative naval architecture and battle tactics, the Dutch “flyboats” and the weather, along with the poor preparations of the Armada, the leaky casks causing continuous shortage of water, wine and oil. There were many other instances of sloppy logistical preparation.

Primarily due to the experience, skill, and influence of Sir John Hawkins, the English had developed a newer type of fighting ship – faster, smaller, more maneuverable with longer range guns and better trained gunners. The Spanish relied on the older type of naval warfare, which called for grappling with the enemy ships, then hand-to-hand fighting. But the English never let them get close enough to grapple. The English longer range guns with better gunners created havoc, death, and destruction. The Spanish were offended. They complained that the English were not “sporting.” (Just as the French were indignant that the English yeomanry with their long-bows destroyed the French at the famous battles of Crecy and Agincourt.)

The Armada sought safe harbor at Calais. But the English , when the winds and tides were favorable, sent “fire-ships” into the harbor – small vessels loaded with tar and gunpowder (A Drake tactic) forcing the Armada out of Calais, still hoping to meet the Duke of Parma and and his veteran army. Although the English fleet was commanded by Lord Howard, the Queen’s uncle, and the famous sea-dogs (Hawkins, father and son, Gilbert, Frobisher, [and] others commanded ships), all the fearful Spanish speculation centered on Drake. Where is Drake? What will Drake do next?

The Duke of Parma could not leave Holland with his barges of troops, because the Dutch flyboats guarded the canals and would blow the clumsy troop-laden barges out of the water if they ventured forth. It must have been galling to Spain that the Dutch were financed by Queen Elizabeth with the wealth captured by the sea-dogs from Spanish treasure ships.

The violent storm gave the Armada opportunity to escape total destruction by the English fleet. But reaching the North Sea, hoping to escape by rounding Scotland and heading home by the Irish Sea turned out cruelly. The storm wrecked vessel after vessel. Most of the Spaniards who did not drown were slain when they waded ashore. Only 60 vessels reached Spain; at least 10,000 men perished. Both the English and the Spanish called the storm, “the waves of God.”

One of the most well-known Drake stories tells how Drake was playing bowls on Plymouth Hoe when the Armada was sighted. As the story goes (and legends are usually larger than life), Drake remarked, “We have time to finish the game and beat the Spanish too.” The story may be true, but the reality was that the tide was running strongly into Plymouth Harbor with an unfavorable wind. Drake, a superb seaman, would sail when the wind and tide were right; and he did.

Both cousins, Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins died in the Caribbean in 1597; Drake of dysentery. Six years later, Queen Elizabeth I (“Gloriana”) died, ending the momentous Elizabethan Age.

Drake on his voyages had a drum in his cabin used to summon his officers for orders or to call the crew for one of his inspirational speeches (sermons, really). I have been told that in some Devon pubs when the pints of bitters have freely flowed, sooner or later, an old sailor will hold the folk in thrall reciting the poem, “Drake’s Drum.” The second verse illuminates the reason and tradition that the five-letter word, DRAKE, said all that needed to be said of the statue atop Plymouth Hoe:

“Drake he was a Devon man, an’ ruled the Devon seas,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?)
Rovin’ tho’ his death fell, he went wi’ heart at ease,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.
‘Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powders’ runnin’ low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven,
An’ drum them up the Channel as we drumm’d them long ago.’”