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home › resources › ICUU Sunday materials › WORSHIP MATERIALS TO AID IN AN ICUU SUNDAY SERVICE 1. A comtemporary reading and situation (Kenya)
THE RIDE FROM HELL We had to leave by 8 a.m. in order to make services at two different congregations. Arrangements had been carefully made the night before. People were anxiously awaiting our visit. It would be the first visit ever by a "masungu" to either congregation, part of the growing Unitarian Universalist community in southeastern Kenya. The group is currently seeking membership in the International Council of Unitarians and Univeralists. Rev. Patrick Magara, now called Bishop, and wife Alice "planted" their first UU congregation in 2001, in the small village of Etono in Kisii District, two hours from the City of Kisii. There are now 12 congregations and eight groups that are not yet large enough or active enough to be considered congregations. The people are poor, yet as UUs who believe in one God, they see their Unitarian duty as caring for some 600 children orphaned by AIDS, mediating family diputes in a region where wives are regularly beaten and children mistreated, and providing medical care in a huge region that has no doctors or functioning clinics. We finally get arway at 9 a.m., already an hour behind schedule We pile into the old, beat up, filthy cab of an abused mini-truck that looks like it has seen many road mishaps. There is seating for eight on benches along either side of the cab. Over 20 of us pile in, including Randi, a UU from Los Angeles, and Fulgence, president of the only UU Fellowship in the small African country of Burundi. They will catch the public bus in Kisii for the grueling six hour drive to Narobi and then home. We arrive at the bus stop two jaw-jarring hours later. Rural roads here are little more than scraped earth, seriously rutted by regular rains that errode the earth, carving ditches and trenches. In Kisii I must stop at the VISA machine. Money vanishes at an astonishing rate because nobody else has any. The truck and driver alone will cost $100 today and then there is food, gifts to those we are visitng and a thousand other incidentals nobody can predict. Now we are off again, to the first congregation. It is the newest, located in a small, very rural village called Kebirigo. Several months ago Bishop Magara's eldest son, Justin, initiated a mass conversion from Pentacostal speaking in tongues and writhing on earthen floors, to Unitarianism, offering a single God and hope. The road to Kebirigo is mean, deteriorating with each mile until it becomes impassable. We walk the final distance, meeting Sampson at the top of high rolling hill. A path leads into the exquisite valley below, a patchwork of manicured, lush fields. Kisii Region is noted as the backbone of Kenya because tea is grown here and it is a primary export. Traders and government officials have grown wealthy from tea harvests but the people who grow and pick the tea make a paltry 10 cents (US) a kilo for their labors. With Sampson leading the way, the old Reverend, the even older white woman [i.e. Janice, herself] and a host of others begin the trek downward. It is raining but it lets up before we are badly soaked. The narrow trail is muddy, slippery and rutted. An hour later we reach the community center, constructed of mud bricks with paneless windows. Excitement is high even though everyone is hungry after waiting three hours for the tardy visitors. For most, it is their first view of a white woman. An abbreviated service is led by Justin, the Bishop speaks about hopes for a future school, Dominic, a physician who chairs the UU Medical Program, talks about the hope of a mobile clinic, Alice talks about her Alliance for Women and how they are raising money, the "masungu" [Janice herself] says we are brothers and sisters in religion. Then the hike back up the hill in intermittent rain. At this point the old battered truck is looking better and better. It is now mid-afternoon and we are suppose to be at the second congregation by now but first, another drive which is far worse than the previous ride. At one point the road is entirely washed away so we backtrack but the truck cannot make it up the muddy hill. We all get out and hike. We nearly arrive at the next stop but the truck can go no further. We walk. Encharo is a UU village, a huge congregation that was started in 2004. They proudly show off their building effort, an open air framework of poles with a tin roof. There are crude benches and a table. The sun is sinking. People are starving but their hunger does not dim their excitement. Children sing in English, elders beam with pride. Again, an abbreviated service and then a walk to a nearby house in the pitch black for a meal of maise and greens. It is now pouring. We climb back into the truck for a final drive over a little used, horribly rutted and mud-slippery road to Justin's home where a second meal awaits us. This is definilty the worst. The truck is unable to climb muddy hills. It slips off the road on curves. Men in their Sunday best climb out and right us. Cab windows fly open. Rain pours in. We bounce off one another, bang against the cab walls and ceiling, and are deafened by the howling wind. Twice the motor dies and once it requires a helping hand under the hood. Later, when we are safe in a bed, my bedmate Alice shouts out in her sleep. The next morning she says she was dreaming of the ride. The Rev. and I joke about dropping dead from the beating our bodies took. I am limping from way too much banging about, my sandals have disintegrated. The morning is exquisite. The rain has cleaned and the land is clean and fresh, the fields alive with greeness. The family we are staying with is well off. They have a cow, goats, chickens and ducks grazing in the emerald yard. They offer us sweetened milk tea and then we are off, headed for Kisii and then Etono. It is another grueling four-hour, bumpy ride but there is no rain. Only flat tires. The old truck has become a chariot, carrying us home, the driver a saint. We made it! While Unitarian Universalists in the Kisiis District are extremely poor, their strong assets are hope and care which they shower on anyone in need, UU or not. They daily live their pledge of "love, peace, justice and unity."
2. An historical note from Earl Morse Wilbur p.486-487: "Before taking final leave of our subject, it is proper that we should give a brief retrospective glance and ask how far this history has succeeded in accomplishing its purpose. As stated at the beginning, the undertaking was not to present a history of Unitarianism as a doctrinal system, but to trace the development of three controlling principles that have characterized the movement, namely: complete mental freedom, unrestricted reason, and generous tolerance of differences, in religion. The movement began by calling in question the authority of the creeds that restricted the thinking of men in religion. But this step did [not] allow complete freedom to religious thought; for men abandoned the authority of the creeds only to substitute that of Scripture as supreme. The Socinians in Poland came to realize that in at least some cases even Scripture had to be submitted to the test of reason. In England, indeed, this transition came slowly, and it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that Unitarians, following the leadership of Martineau, reluctantly began to abandon scripture as the prime source of religious truth; and the Americans, stimulated by the influence of Emerson and Parker, took the same step, and the leaders of their thought have now for two generations ceased to seek for proof-texts as authority for their religious beliefs. Acceptance of mutual tolerance as a guiding principle in religious thinking has been last to be achieved. Of course it is inevitable that free minds guided by the individual reason and conscience, and influenced by different factors, should often reach differing conclusions, and it is natural that having reached them they should conflict with each other. Hence have arisen most of the quarrels that have distracted Christendom. Now there are but two ways in which such conflicts may be resolved. The parties may abandon the hope of mental freedom and submit to the judgment of another, or else they may waive the effort to think alike as futile, or at all events as incidental, while they agree nevertheless in working for the ends they have in common. This is the way of tolerance, in which men, though disagreeing in incidental matters, allow each other equal liberty of belief, and unite happily for practical ends which they have in common. "Freedom, reason and tolerance then are not the final goals to be aimed at in religion, but only the conditions under which the true ends may best be attained. The ultimate ends proper to a religious movement are two, personal and social; the elevation of personal character, and the perfecting of the social organism, and the success of a religious body may best be judged by the degree to which it attains these ends. Only if the Unitarian movement, true to its principles of freedom, reason and tolerance, goes on through them and finds its fulfillment in helping men to live worthily as children of God, and to make their institutions worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven, will its mission be accomplished." —Earl Morse Wilbur (1947)
3. A web reference to brief "historical" biographic short pieces that might be
useful for your RE programme:
4. Thoughts from non-Unitarians:
B. From the list of suggestions written by King Steven I (Hungary) to his son on
wise kingship: written about 1050:
5. A Responsive Reading written by John Clifford 6. There is a real wealth of items about and from our ICUU Member Groups on the ICUU website. 7. Any address could well include reflection on our unity with diversity; our expanding sense of community; our commitment to helping each other and others; and look forward to the Council Meeting and associated Gathering of Internationally minded U*Us in Oberwesel (a central German Youth Hostel) from 2-6 November 2007. 8. Chalice Lighting Words: And, of course, in most of our congregations around the world the service has a chalice-lighting towards the beginning. Words for this change every month and are on our website. |