This is a comment on Linda Dove’s talk Our Branching Tree: Part 1: UU Roots.

From Susan Miller

I was fascinated by your history of early UUs.  I'd first heard of Arrius and Arrian churches on a  2018 visit to Austria, where I had spent the summer of '62 on an exchange program.  I was back in 2018, one of many re-visits to my Austrian family and village and old boy friend and his family.  On that visit, the old boyfriend and his wife and his visiting son and family took me up into the mountains between Austria and Slovenia.

In The Valley, there's a recently opened museum of old Roman artifacts dating to when The Valley town was a Roman camp.  They had brought me to this area on an earlier visit, around 2013 or so.  At that time, the reason for visiting it was an ancient pagan spring high up on the mountain, which had been later revered by Catholics in medieval times.  On this visit, I believe on a different area on that same mountain, we visited the excavated foundations of both Roman Catholic Churches and Arrian churches (the latter identified partially because they had no baptistery.)  

These foundations date back to late 400s-early 500s.

It wasn't easy to distinguish the Arrian from the Catholic churches, except that there were no baptistries in the Arrian ones.   I am assuming the one above was Catholic

And assuming these below were Arrian.  The churches I am assuming were Catholic had rounded walls on one end--perhaps the baptistery?  Or the altar area.

In the village below this hilltop site, was a new museum (I'd been here maybe 5 or so years before, and none of this was available at that time), showing how the area would have looked with the entire buildings.   Unfortunately, there were no guides at the site, nor anyone at the museum prepared to answer questions about this particular exhibit. 
I think these buildings represent the foundations in the photographs, those with the circular areas being the Catholic Churches, and the one on the right being the Arrian "double church" with foundations laid end to end. 

By Chris Edwards
August, 2020

Recently in our congregation, I heard a speaker defending a symbol from a northern European Pagan tradition which, he regretted, had been co-opted by white supremacists. He meant the swastika.

A symbol means no more and no less than the way viewers see it. What if your delicious “talisman of good fortune” (as an online article identifies the swastika’s ancient meaning) was another’s poison — could you live side by side?

Several other UU’s that Sunday wanted to support the swastika as a symbol of Nature, and I grant that in ancient history, it meant something like that in some parts of the world. But those who revere the swastika for that meaning today, or have even heard it once had that meaning, form a minuscule number compared to the millions in Europe who, within living memory, were tortured and murdered under the banner of the swastika, a symbol that has been dubbed in a book and film, “The Twisted Cross.”

Germany now makes it a crime to publicly display the swastika. We Americans remain more free-for-all about our own ugly past — the Confederate battle flag and other memorabilia of that “lost cause,” the fight to maintain slavery.

Growing up in Virginia schools, I was mostly taught a warm, fuzzy view of the “Stars and Bars” flag of the Confederacy. We were taught the Civil War was not about slavery, and could be proudly approached like the way we cheered our home teams. Later, gradually, many, perhaps most, of us learned with shame what those flags and statues meant to the people of color who would avert their eyes while passing them in their hometowns – reminders of grandparents or other forebears having been raped, whipped or lynched with no redress.

UU’s would not expect Black people to “just get over” Confederate nostalgic symbolism (I hope) – but I’m a bit weirded out that a significant number of UU’s may have warm, fuzzy feelings about the swastika. How could believers in each person’s “inherent worth and dignity” justify telling Jews, and other victims of Nazism, to “just get over” disgust at that “sacred” swastika?

(Two personal disclosures: 1, I revere Nature, but cannot understand the linking of human-made, and in our lifetime deeply tainted, imagery to love of Nature. Why do we need such artifacts to feel spiritually moved by a sunrise or a bird’s song – or for that matter, to work for alleviating climate change?  2. A beloved member of my family has Jewish ancestors. Ultimately, all human beings are related, correct?)

The following informative article about the swastika concludes that its meaning has lost any worthwhile public use, but should be historically contextualized: https://theconversation.com/how-nazis-twisted-the-swastika-into-a-symbol-of-hate-83020. I agree with preserving such information in context, such as in a museum . . . and hope never to see either a swastika, or a Confederate flag, in Unitarian Universalist displays about our faith!

Rev. Emma spoke at the Williamsburg UU on February 22 as a part of their Diversity / Welcoming Sunday program. She carried greetings to them from the folks at the Harrisonburg UU, and you can hear the return greetings here:

http://wuu.org/wordpress/?page_id=182

Scroll down to February 22, and click “Download Podcast”.

Emma’s reflection was entitled: “Diversity, By God (inclusivity is up to us)”. If you stick around for the entire Reflection, the reading she used is a favorite by Richard Rohr:

From Father Richard Rohr, O.F.M, in Where The Gospel Leads Us

God is clearly more comfortable with diversity than we are, and God’s final goal and objectives are much simpler. God, and the entire cosmos itself, are about two things: differentiation and communion. Physicists seem to know this better than theologians and clergy.

If this were cheap liberalism, I would be merely arguing for personal rights, economic justice, or sexual freedom. If this were mere ideology, I would need to line up my credible arguments and proofs. I have very few. I, like many of you, am only a disciple of the poor man from Nazareth. He has made me content with mystery. He has made me less afraid of chaos. He has told me that control is not my task.

He, like the cosmos itself, is about two things : diversity and communion. The whole of creation cannot be lying.

The fellowship recently voted on a new tagline for HUU to use as part of our identification. The majority voted for One Journey, Many Paths. What does that mean to you??

According to Wikipedia, a dialogue (often spelled dialog) is a reciprocal conversation between two or more persons. Want to continue a dialogue that was started during a particular service?

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