CONTENTS

FOREWORD
PASTORAL GREETINGS
SPRING FAIR
CONGREGATION GIVING
WOMEN'S LEAGUE PROGRAMME
FRIENDSHIP
EVOLUTION _ A QUESTION OF CREDIBILITY
CHALICE SCHOOL OF MEDITATION
RETURN TO MAIN PAGE

FOREWORD

Recently there have been more strident demands from various sections of the community to restrict the scope of the Human Rights legislation because it is subject to abuse by unscrupulous people considered by the general public to be unworthy of its protection. Dilution of the Human Rights legislation, however, should be opposed strenuously, because it is an important safeguard of the rights of the individual against the importunities of the State. Human nature as we know can be very contradictory. We are a gregarious species which prefers to live in close-knit, well-ordered communities to maximise security and comfort. At the same time, however, each one, of us is conscious of being an individual, quite separate from the community, and capable of resenting any intrusion into our own private affairs by that community. Our needs and wishes do not always coincide with those of the majority as apprehended by the State, which, being much more powerful, is likely to ignore the preferences and needs of the individual, irrespective of how urgent these may be. The distribution of resources by the State is usually based upon the utilitarian principle of ensuring the greatest good of the greatest number. This is a compromise which allows the majority of citizens to receive at least a proportion of what they need if not all of it, and it is tolerated because it seems to be the fairest method of distributing scarce resources. This is the basis, upon which our welfare system works. Our Social Service and our N.H.S. were originally inspired by compassion, by a sincere desire to achieve a decent standard of living and expert health care for everyone, irrespective of wealth or status.

However, welfare bas to be paid for: "'To each according to his/her needs; from each according to his/her means!'. We the tax-payer foot the bill, and we the tax-payer demand value for money - or at least the politicians do on our behalf: The consequence is, however, that 'Value for money' . rather than Compassion becomes the principle upon which care is administered to us. The greater the number who benefit from a specific sum of money the better we are pleased. However, not every welfare need costs the same. Certain needs may be very expensive indeed and priorities, based upon statistics rather than compassion, are devised to ensure best value for money: This may mean that individuals whose needs do not coincide with current priorities may well be ignored. Recently, the newspaper, have reported a series of welfare catastrophes involving individuals who have been betrayed by a system which is influenced by financial considerations rather than: by compassion.

Compassion is an instinct that makes us act in the interests of the person who requires our aid, rather than our own. Utilitarianism makes us spread our compassion so thinly over the maximum number of people, that it loses much of its energy. Increasingly as the State takes upon itself every more responsibility for intervening in the lives of individuals, we as individuals pay less attention to caring for others. We say to ourselves it's the job of the welfare services to look after. the homeless or the infirm or the lonely etc. and so as a society we become less and less compassionate and so individuals fall through the system and eventually feature as the principal victim of yet another tragedy.

Compassion, as much as enlightened self interest, is the cement that keeps a community together. Human Rights legislation .and the Welfare State, were founded on compassion which was to be extended to each individual according to his or her need and not according to what the State considered his or her needs ought to be. Let us, at least, acknowledge the role of compassion in all our human relationships.

Wm. S. Stephen (Editor)

Email: william134@btinternet.com  or editor@aberdeen-unitarians.org.uk

Tel: (01224) 317450

Back to contents

PASTORAL GREETING

Several of our members are unable to join our regular Congregational activities. Some are recovering from operations or injury, others are too infirm to go and about and there are those who are low in spirits because of protracted illness. To all our friends who are not able to join us of a Sunday morning, we send our best wishes. You are in our minds and hearts, and being so, are present at every one of our Church gatherings.

Back to contents

SPRING FAIR

We anticipate a busy year ahead, so our first major fundraiser is to be earlier than usual. Our Spring Fair will burst into life on Saturday 26tb April, at 10.00am. For the entrance fee of £1.50, in addition to the justly famed Terrace Cafe catering, patrons will have the chance to purchase the delicious produce of the Cake and Candy Stall, an opportunity to browse and buy the stock of the Book Stall, or seek out rare bargains among our Bric-a-brac display, or, for a minimal investment, test their luck at the Bottle Stall, Wheel of Fortune and Raffle. Rhona Stewart will be delighted to receive offers of help and donations for the various stalls. On Sunday l2th, Rhona will receive bottles for the Bottle Stall. The Fair will be set up on Friday 24th from 2.00pm - 4.00pm. Please attend the Spring Fair on Saturday 26th and bring as many other people with you as you can. Never have we been more dependent upon the charity of other people.

Back to contents

CONGREGATIONAL GIVING

Over the past few weeks we have collected another £360.00 for the Diabetic Association and have decided to donate from our Charity Fund £100.00 to Dee View Court, the Sue Ryder local care centre. The average weekly giving to our Church over the past year has been £5.00 per member. We thank everyone for the generous support they give to our Church and to the charities we help to fund.

Back to contents

WOMEN'S LEAGUE PROGRAMME

Back to contents

FRIENDSHIP

By Bill Stephen

Last week, Anita and I attended a performance of Franz Schubert's song cycle, 'Die Winterreise', or the 'Winter Journey'. The poems, twenty-five in all, written by Wilhelm Muller, portray a journey made by a young man who has been jilted by the girl he loves. He wanders through a bleak, ice-bound and snow-clad landscape, overcast by dark grey, storm clouds and swept by biting winds which tear at his clothing and scour his face. His journey is painful, wearisome and soul-destroying, as everywhere he goes people reject him, children run away from him, dogs bark at him and beggars shun him. He is a solitary . figure, nameless, rootless, abandoned in an empty universe, on a road to nowhere.

These songs, of course, depict a spiritual journey, rather than an actual one, as the poet tries to express the crushing pain of the lonely, the unloved, the exiled, beyond the reach of human compassion. The figure of the rejected lover, black against the snowfields, stumbling over the uneven track, is Everyman, trapped in a temporal eddy, in a pitiless universe, aimlessly drifting to and fro, to and fro, between the polarities of life and death. The vast featureless emptiness in which he wanders is his own soul and the relief for which he is seeking is companionship and love. All of us are alone in that no one else may feel our pain or share our heart-beat. Therefore, we need to feel wanted, to be connected to something that is aware of our existence, otherwise our being here has no meaning. The love or concern or compassion of the other, be it an other human being, a God or a creative spirit, gives our being here significance.

The counterpart of the Winter Traveller in real life, is anyone of us who may be self-absorbed, self-centred, self-conscious. Having been rejected once, he or she may find it impossible to reach out again to other people. Perhaps he is so afraid of another rejection, he cannot any longer trust other people. He feels vulnerable. He cannot lower his defences and admit another person into his private space. The risk is too great. He asserts his independence. The need for relationship, he thinks, is a form of weakness. He appears arrogant but is only shy and diffident and desperately anxious to be loved, but being deeply embarrassed by this feeling of dependence upon others, he .....or she..... cannot make the first move. The world is full of such lonely people who cannot overcome the barrier of their own diffidence to reach out to others.

Emerson wrote, 'It is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship.' Friendship is built upon trust. I suppose you may argue there are degrees of friendship, degrees of involvement with other people, from a casual acquaintance, to a colleague at work or team-mate, or neighbour or fellow-member of a society, to a close and valued friend, and that degree of friendship is related to the degree of trust. Of a close friend one anticipates trust, loyalty, honesty, support and concern, qualities which are reciprocated in ourselves towards our friends. Friendship of this quality is also a form of faith, as Emerson says. We feel a surge of joy that another person drops all their defences to allow us access to their private world. This is the friendship that supports happy marriages, this is the friendship that Ella Wheeler Wilcox says ensures love will last no matter how many trials and agonies it may have to bear.

"Love, to endure life's sorrow and earth's woe, needs friendship's solid mason-work below."

Sociability, a kindly smile and outstretched hand are all to be warmly recommended, but they do not necessarily imply commitment. Friendship, at the level of which Emerson and Ella Wheeler Wilcox speak, is a firm promise of mutual involvement, that will withstand whatever catastrophe a malign fate may engineer.

As members of this congregation we represent a wide variety of spiritual experience. What brought us together initially was the opportunity to express our beliefs freely and honestly in a tolerant and supportive environment. What unites us in our diversity, however, in addition to principle, is friendship, mutual dependence, mutual trust, mutual support, mutual concern, respect and responsibility. We value each other, because we see the good in each other; and while seeing our mutual strengths we also acknowledge our vulnerabilities. This friendship is a valuable commodity; indeed, it is essential to our survival; and should be carefully nurtured by us all. Some weeks ago, at a S.U.A. - sponsored meeting, it was suggested that this close relationship might act against us, as strangers might feel there was no place for them in such a close-knit community. However, I hope that what visitors, upon joining us for worship, are aware of is a warm, friendly atmosphere which might encourage them to stay instead of driving them away. Certainly, we should feel obliged to extend our mutual regard to anyone who enters our doors.

This morning, these reflections on Friendship, have been prompted by the sad fact that two of our friends are to leave us, two people whom we were delighted to welcome to our congregation, who became firm friends, who participated fully in the life of our congregation, contributed to our wellbeing and happiness and in the process became deeply lodged in our hearts. Friendships grow imperceptibly, binding us ever closer together, establishing a union that is transmuted into a seamless whole, as our mutual dependence becomes ever stronger, and then when a parting is inevitable as nothing remains the same for ever, the separation, as now, feels like a tearing apart.

But today we are celebrating Friendship. We have made friends, and friends we shall remain, in spite of separation and distance. For we are with Emerson. Our friendship is sincere, unselfish, giving willing of ourselves in trust and faith, a source of inspiration that has given and will continue to give us great joy and meaning to our lives.

The Winter Wanderer faced a bleak and friendless future; we have each other and in the continued assurance of each other's companionship, we shall walk forward in the light.

Back to contents

EVOLUTION

A QUESTION OF CREDIT & CREDIBILITY

By John Robinson

In the whole of the field of Development Biology two publications rank, in terms of their contribution to knowledge, far above all others. They are Charles Darwin's book on The Origin of Species, published in 1859, and Watson and Crick's scientific paper on the structure of DNA published in 1953. Darwin's book provides the observational evidence for evolution and Watson and Crick's paper the chemistry that makes evolution possible. Ironically for both discoveries there were other contributors whom many commentators now feel deserved much greater recognition than has been accorded to them. In the case of the structure of DNA it was Rosalind Franklin for her X-ray diffraction images of DNA which were influential in guiding Watson and Crick to its double helix configuration. For Darwin's Origin of Species it was Alfred Russel Wallace for his independent observations and writings on evolution by natural selection.

In this the bicentenary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book on The Origin of Species, the focus of attention is understandably on Darwin. While not wishing to detract, in any way, from the genius of Darwin, I have found it interesting to compare the lives of these two outstanding naturalists, Darwin born in 1809 and Wallace fourteen years later.

Unlike Darwin's comfortable and affluent schooling Wallace's was harsh and hampered by financial constraints. He was the eighth of nine children and when he was only thirteen his parents were forced, through lack of money, to end his education at Hertford Grammar School. As an interim move he went to London to live and work with an older brother, John, an apprentice builder, and at the same time attended lectures at the London Mechanics Institute. A year later he moved to Leicester to live with his oldest brother, William, and to train as an apprentice surveyor in William's business. Towards the end of his apprenticeship WiIliam's business was failing leaving Wallace unemployed. Hired by the Collegiate School in Leicester to teach drawing, surveying and map making he spent his evenings self educating in Leicester library. Like Darwin he read and was enormously influenced by The Principles of Population Growth by Thomas Malthus. He also met the then nineteen-year-old naturalist, Henry Waiter Bates, two years his junior, who enthused him in one of Darwin's childhood passions, the collecting of insects. But the direction of Wallace's life was soon to change again. The death of his brother William saw him reunited with his brother John in what turned out to be an unsuccessful.. attempt to rescue William's business. Unemployed for a second time he managed to secure a position with a civil engineering firm that was designing part of the railway network. This job gave him the outdoor environment to pursue his recently acquired passion for collecting insects. As always however, he maintained strong family links, eventually foregoing his job in order to rejoin his brother John in. the setting up of an engineering firm. They tendered for, and won, a contract to design a building for the Mechanics Institute at Neath in Glamorgan. Their design so impressed the founder of the Institute that he offered Wallace a lecturing post in engineering at the Institute. Back in the academic world and living with his brother John and their mother in Neath, he kept in contact, by letter, with Bates, the young naturalist whom he had met in Leicester library. With a growing desire to follow in the footsteps of travelling naturalists such as Darwin, he and Bates set out on Darwin's equivalent of the 'Beagle'; theirs amusingly was called the 'Mischief', to explore Brazil and the Amazon rainforest. Unlike Darwin who, through his social status and academic training at Cambridge, had a close friend, the Reverend John Stevens Henslow, Professor of Botany at Cambridge, who recommended him to the captain of the Beagle as a suitable candidate to join his expedition, Wallace and Bates had no influential backer. They had to be their own men.

For four years Wallace concentrated on the Rio Negro and the Amazon, collecting specimens, making notes and from time to time sending specimens back home, in much the same way as Darwin was doing, but not as in Darwin's case to eminent experts for comment, but rather for sale to collectors as he needed the money. For a period he was joined by. his younger brother Herbert, but Herbert became ill and had to return home where he died soon after from Yellow Fever.

Wallace's own return journey was typical of the adversity that had always been part of his young life. After a month of sailing, fire broke out and he and the crew had to abandon ship with the loss of all the specimens he had on board and most of his notes and sketches. After ten days drifting in an open boat he was picked up and brought back home. With. nothing except the money from the sale of the relatively small number of specimens he had shipped back earlier and the insurance from his lost collection at sea to live on, and his memory to go by, Wallace set to and wrote six scientific papers on topics that ranged from The Monkeys of the Amazon to The Amazon's Palm Trees and their Uses. At this point he made contact with Darwin before embarking on an eight-year exploration of the Malay Archipelago, now Malaysia and Indonesia. Here he collected over a thousand species which had not been documented by science~ It was on this expedition that he wrote down his ideas on evolution.

Although overawed by the social and scientific status of Darwin, his once brief meeting with him gave Wallace the confidence to write to Darwin. First he sent Darwin his paper entitled 'On the Law that has Regulated the Introduction of New Species'. This immediately showed Darwin the closeness of their independently arrived-at, but unpublished, theories regarding evolution. But it was not until Darwin received another essay from Wallace in 1858, entitled 'On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type' and with it a request that Darwin review it and pass it on to his eminent geologist friend, Sir Charles Lyell, with a view to publication, that Darwin became alarmed. Wallace had arrived at virtually the same conclusion regarding evolution as Darwin had spent twenty years formulating but hadn't yet published. Not only that, but Sir Charles Lyell was impressed beyond measure by the depth of Wallace's thinking and the clarity and beauty of .his written word. Darwin's delay in publication, whether it arose from a drive for perfection or a fear that his theory would infuriate religious leaders, left him vulnerable to being pipped at the post by Wallace. What should he do to avoid this happening? Well, it was Sir Charles Lyell and the eminent botanist of the day, Dr Joseph Hooker, later Sir Joseph Hooker, who came up with what they considered to be a fair solution to Darwin's problem, namely a joint publication by Darwin and Wallace, in the form of a paper to be presented at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London. The paper would contain private correspondence by Darwin to close colleagues regarding his theory of evolution along with Wallace's essay. Wallace was so flattered by the idea of a joint authorship with Darwin that he instantly and gratefully accepted the arrangement. With both Darwin and Wallace abroad and unable to attend the meeting it was left to Lyell and Hooker to present the paper, on their behalf, on 30th June 1858. The event went unnoticed; indeed the President of the Society remarked later at the AGM that the year had not been one with any striking discoveries.

Seeing Wallace's ideas on evolution gave Darwin a new sense of urgency to publish and the following year his book on The Origin of Species came out. The reaction of the Anglican clergy could not have been more hostile. The biblical description of creation had been shattered and it was not until September last year that the Anglican Church finally decided that now, the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, is a fitting time to apologise for its misunderstanding of Darwin, for getting its first reaction to his theory of evolution wrong, and for encouraging others to misunderstand him still. Meantime, the scientific world is awakening to the fact that it too got it wrong in so far as Wallace's contribution to the theory of evolution was much greater than it gave him credit for at the time.

Despite the closeness of Wallace's thinking to that of Darwin's, there were differences that are now regarded as important and had these been given recognition at the time they would have stimulated fruitful debate and led to enhanced understanding. In contrast to Darwin, Wallace excluded observations for domestic animals, arguing that they were neither subjected to natural selection nor the laws governing the survival of the fittest which are central to the theory of evolution. I'm sure that in relation to dog breeding and showing the RSPCA would agree that Wallace got it right. Secondly, despite the title of his book, Darwin was vague on his definition of a species whereas Wallace was more definite and it is upon Wallace's definition that the present-day concept of a species is based. Thirdly, unlike Darwin, Wallace never accepted that an adaptation to an organism that was acquired during its lifetime could be passed on to subsequent generations. Apart from the recently-observed phenomenon of epigenetics involving the modification, in the early life of the embryo, of imprinted genes by environmental factors, time again has proven Wallace to be correct.

But so much for the science; how did their observations on evolution affect the religious views of these two great naturalists. One gets the impression that in Darwin's case it left him confused. After all he had, from the age of eight when his mother died, boarded at an Anglican public school, and later on he had opted out of medicine at Edinburgh University and gone to Cambridge in preparation for a life in the Anglican Church, yet he himself accepted that his observations on evolution implied a materialistic rather than divine explanation for his existence here on earth. On the other hand, in words which in parts are not dissimilar to biblical text he states in the final sentence of The Origin of Species, 'There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one'.

Unlike Darwin, Wallace separated the material component of evolution which is all about the moulding of the structure of life forms, from the spiritual, which for him involved the moulding of intellect. In the context of evolution being driven by natural selection, Wallace could not accept that the evolution of the human brain to its present capabilities was solely the result of natural selection. To him, there was no evidence that the understanding and reasoning power of the human mind, its wit and humour, its mathematical, artistic and musical genius and its depth of emotion had arisen solely from natural selection pressures imposed on humankind. It was Wallace's view that something 'in the unseen universe of spirit had interceded at least three times in history.' The first was the creation of life from inorganic matter; the second was the introduction of consciousness and the third was the creation of the higher mental faculties in humankind. In Wallace's view the human mind had attributes which were not derived, through the pressure of natural selection alone, from animal ancestors. Also, for Wallace, even if one dismissed his concept of spiritual evolution, material evolution was merely a process, but how was the process created?

One hundred and fifty years ago Darwin's Origin of Species rocked the Anglican Church. It even moved his great friend and mentor at Cambridge, the Reverend Professor John Stevens Henslow, the founder of Cambridge University Botanic Gardens, the man who had been instrumental in stimulating Darwin's interest in evolution, and who had used his influence to get him a place on the Beagle expedition to comment after reading the book, 'but I wonder if that's all that there is'.

In the heretic to hero arguments that accompanied the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, Wallace's contribution and his religious views were respectively ignored and dismissed. Yet here was a man who, at the time wrote these words: 'I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions. To the mass of mankind, religion of some kind is a necessity. But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth, or believe that those will be better off in a future state who have lived in the belief of doctrines inculcated from childhood, and which are to them rather a matter of blind faith than intelligent conviction'. Wallace's quest for scientific truth and his theory regarding evolution had not shattered his particular faith; he was a spiritualist. Yet it was his spiritualist ideas that drove eminent scientists at the time to withdraw their support for him. As for the leaders of the Anglican Church, they branded Darwin an atheist, but it would appear that to them Darwin, the atheist, was more acceptable than Wallace, the spiritualist! With the benefit of hindsight it is now clear that Wallace deserved more credit for his contribution to evolution than was accorded to him. At the same time, by ignoring Wallace and by reacting in the way it did to Darwin, the Anglican Church lost more credibility than it needed to.

Back to contents

Back to contents

	CONTENTS FOREWORD PASTORAL GREETINGS SPRING FAIR CONGREGATION GIVING WOMEN'S LEAGUE PROGRAMME FRIENDSHIP EVOLUTION         A QUESTION OF CREDIT AND CREDIBILITY PAST SERVICES (AUDIO) CHALICE SCHOOL OF MEDITATION RETURN TO MAIN PAGE