Minister: Rev. Eric W. Breeze

Secretary: Wm. S. Stephen

Treasurer: R. H. E. Inkson

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FOREWORD

Monty Python's film, 'The Meaning of Life' concludes with the following advice: "Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations." There is a bit more to living a worthwhile life than that, but it is a very sound reflection on a very difficult topic, one which exercises our thoughts in this issue with the Rev. Eric Breeze's "The Meaning of Life" and Jay Lessels "Forty Two" and lurks behind our story "Man's Chief End." Gladys Minty, in her article "Paint Me Happy" shares with us her enthusiasm for the work of the Unitarian water-colourist" Helen Paterson Allingham and gives us an excuse to embark upon our 'first essay in colour'.
S.U.F. member, Liz Foxbrook, in response to our story "Family at War" (October 2004 Link) recalls the trauma of being evacuated to Canada in 1940, in "Fleeing the War" demonstrating that the scars of war last a life-time and that terror, misery and rejection are the common lot of refugees.
The current interest in the rapid economic development of China is sustained in "Experiences of China" by S.U.F. member, John Robinson, who gives an account of his recent visit there to undertake some scientific work. John is a keen observer and gives us a very perceptive description of the birth of a new super-power which will increasingly influence and perhaps eventually dominate our way of life in the years to come.
The Tsunami catastrophe on Boxing Day last year has made many religious people think seriously about God's role in the life of Nature and humankind. Alistair Bate's address, "Why do Bad Things happen to Good People" looks at how various religions and traditions approach this problem. 

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THE MEANING OF LIFE

by Rev. Eric W Breeze

What is the meaning of life? Indeed what is life all about? Or we could ask, what is our life all about? In the Unitarian and Free Christian Denomination we often talk about the 'celebration of life', but which aspect of life are we referring to? There have been many people throughout history who have tried to answer such questions. Is it the life of the Universe/ Cosmos, the wonders of Creation, the life of the Earth; is it life as seen under a microscope; or is it our own personal life?

These are not easy questions to answer for it all depends on which approach one takes - the mystical, philosophical, scientific, religious, or, could it be just trying to find the meaning of our own lives. Or if we like, we could simply consult our dictionary for the answer. But somehow I don't think we will get an answer as to what the meaning of life actually is in the pages of a dictionary. Some of us may turn to certain inspirational or spiritual works for an answer, such as we find in the writings of Rabindranath Tagore. He writes:

Perhaps we will find an answer from mysticism or philosophy. Again it really all depends on what we are searching for and what approach we take.

From the standpoint of the perennial philosophy the life of existence is only a partial reality and is the manifestation of a 'Divine Ground' of existence - the 'Transcendent Mystery' - the 'Ultimate Truth'. It is difficult to talk about life in this sense without going to the Source the Being - the Ground - the Cause of Life itself The perennial philosophy teaches that without this Ground of Being there would be no life. So the question we ask, which viewpoint do we then take? And could this be the same life as that expressed by Tagore? Is that stream of life the 'Divine Ground' of existence?

According to Bede Griffiths, 'The ultimate meaning and purpose of life cannot be expressed, cannot properly be thought. It is present everywhere, in everything, yet it always escapes our grasp. It is the 'Ground' of all existence, that from which all things come, to which all things return. . .' This of course is the world of the mystic - but it seems to be just as valid as that of the scientist.

We could take the view of the astrologer and gaze at the stars, and ask, what is this vastness of life? How did it all begin? Who can not be overwhelmed by the wonder and the miracle of the Universe, and the secrets that it holds for us? And yet we are continually finding out more about this vast array of stars, planets and galaxies every day. We may not be able to travel to such places, and yet through the advance of technology we can almost touch them. And when we stand back and try to take it all in, we realize just how small we really are. Again we ask, is all this that same stream of life?

For the religionist, it may be the scriptures that one turns to for an answer. We may take comfort from the words found in The Prologue of The Gospel of John: 'In him was life; and the life was the light of men. '(John I: 4) Perhaps this is the meaning of life for us? - That is, in the one who says, 'I am the way, the truth and the life.' Or, still considering the religious view, we may look to such figures as that of James Martineau for insight and inspiration. He writes: 'Let any true man go into silence: strip himself of all pretense, and selfishness, and sensuality, and sluggishness of soul; lift off thought after thought, passion after passion, till he reaches the inmost depth of all; remember how short a time and he was not at all; how short a time again, and he will not be here; open his window and look upon the night, how still its breath, how solemn its march, how deep its perspective, how ancient its form of light; and think how little he knows except the perpetuity of God, and the mysteriousness of life...' 

The personal view may-just be in trying to live each day in the best way we can, and the possibilities that life has for us. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: 'Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.' The meaning of life then for us depends, on the approach, the viewpoint we take. But like everything in life, how deep are we prepared to go, for what we put into life, we surly get out. The question we must be willing to ask however, is how real is the life we are now living, for that determines the meaning of life for us. The ultimate question may not be answered in any satisfactory way; however, the fact that we are living conscious beings should stand for something.

So which view do we take? We make our choice and take our pick. And we haven't even scratched the scratch on the surface. Could it be that the 'celebration of life' embraces the totality of all those different approaches or viewpoints? Just a thought. Somehow I think that we have to conclude with Bede Griffiths and say that 'the ultimate meaning and purpose of life cannot be expressed, cannot properly be thought.

' The thing is - what is the meaning of life for us? 

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COLLECTING THOUGHTS

DAYS

By Philip Larkin

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PAINT ME HAPPY

The story of a fulfilled life.

by Gladys Minty

Although she died almost eighty years ago, Helen Allingham's work, seems to be as popular as ever, if the number and variety of its reproductions are anything to go by.
I recently received from a Unitarian friend the Helen Allingham Calendar for 2005, and have seen in the shops over the Christmas period boxes of notelets, greetings cards, a jigsaw puzzle and a tea tray all portraying her paintings of country cottages. One of her works, The Hillside, appears in the National Gallery of Scotland's current exhibition, It's a Gift.
Artists who lead public taste by revealing a new way of seeing the world win critical acclaim; those who discover for themselves an aspect of popular taste, rarely find themselves so celebrated. "If the artist is popular, then he/she can't be up to much!" I was once told by a college lecturer.
Helen Allingham gives the lie to this opinion. She was a consummate artist who understood what people wanted to see hanging on the walls of their own living rooms. Hers was the aesthetic of John Keats's poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" "Truth is beauty, Beauty truth." a principle that was no more popular among the artistic movers and shakers in her own day than it is now. Helen Allingham was dedicated to the ideal of Beauty, and the Truth expressed by Beauty, which is not always the same as historical authenticity.
Born in 1848, in Derbyshire, Helen Paterson's Unitarian credentials were irreproachable on both sides of her family. Unitarian ministers featured prominently on both sides of her family and they had connections to many leading Unitarians, such as the novelist Mrs Gaskell and her husband the Rev. Henry Gaskell, the Rylands, the Martineaus and the family of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Priestley, the most distinguished Unitarian of them all. Although Helen in adulthood attended church only occasionally, she adhered strictly to the Unitarian values she had been taught as a young person and enjoyed the friendship of the leading Unitarians of her time, particularly the Martineaus who were her close neighbours in Hampstead.
She arrived in London, in 1866, as a self-confident, independent and ambitious 18 year-old to continue her studies at the Royal Academy of Art. To pay her way she obtained commissions from various engravers, took up book and magazine illustration and became the " very first female reporter and artist on the staff of the Graphic periodical, a position she won on merit in competition with several men. Her duties required her to attend newsworthy events, theatre shows, flower shows, fashion parades, royal and official ceremonies, provide a prose report and lightning sketches of the scene and portraits of those involved. She quickly earned a reputation for accurate reporting and rapid, perceptive sketching. She was also thrown in the way of many eminent people, royalty, politicians, performers, writers, artists, critics, socialites and academics and made friendships that lasted a lifetime.
By the age of twenty-five she was making a good living and supporting her mother and sisters, her father had died several years earlier, of diphtheria while trying to relieve his patients of the symptoms of the disease. She also acquired a husband, William Allingham, who was exactly twice her age, a literary journalist and poet of sentimental and airy-fairy verse, of which little has survived into the present time apart from "The Fairies" in the "Oxford Book of English Verse."

They were married in Little Portland Place Chapel (Charles Dickens' Church) in August 1874 by the Editor of the "Daily News" who was also a Unitarian Minister.
Writing in his Diary, William said,
"We have a great many friends in common and trust under Heaven to be in everyway good to each other and to keep our friends." And indeed they had a very happy marriage, produced three children and what was particularly important to William, retained their friends. William had a talent for making friends and seemed to be on visiting terms with all the great literary and political figures of his day, Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, Sir Lesley Stephens, (Virginia Wolf's father) Gladstone, Disraeli and his own personal guru, Thomas Carlyle. In his Diary, which Helen published after his death, he recorded the conversations he had shared with these great men.
Gladstone thought Disraeli "Hellish, both in and out of Parliament!" and "Carlyle visited Browning's mother, a Scotchwoman, to talk Scotch to her."
In spite of their exalted circle of friends, Helen was not tempted to join the Bohemian set or figure as a socialite; instead she settled down to a very conventional, middle-class existence, devoting herself to her children, her domestic routine and providing for her husband and family. (William's literary hack work was poorly paid.) In 1876 she became an Associate Member of The Royal Watercolour Society, a rare honour, as the Society did not usually admit women artists, was exhibiting at The Royal Academy Summer Show and was highly regarded as an established landscape artist. Her life was full, happy, busy and rewarding.
Although "Helen's work reveals a very wide range of subjects, she is chiefly valued as a painter, of" country cottages, country gardens, country crafts and round-eyed, bonneted, little girls. She discovered her work was satisfying a need for reassurance that in a world of steam engines, factory chimneys, grubby streets, and soot-laden skies, there still existed somewhere, the promise of fresh air, bright sunshine and the steady beat of Nature's patient rhythms.
Her vision of the countryside was criticised as pandering to nostalgia, to wishful thinking and day-dreaming.. She sacrificed truth to achieve a heart warming picture. She portrayed a smiling, happy land that existed in her own imagination and was a reflection of her own contented life and so on. Certainly her watercolours show bright, noontide skies in high summer; her figures are either slender young women in fragrantly laundered clothes, posing elegantly by the washing-line or with a hay-rake or in the kitchen garden among the cabbages, or apple-cheeked little girls standing soulfully by the garden gate while rabbits or kittens or farmyard fowls disport themselves in the lane. Her red-tiled cottage roofs and crazy chimneys are raised on a plinth of crumbling masonry, gnarled beams, latticed windows, embowered in luxuriant foliage. Her orchards are laden with blossom, her hillsides are clothed in scarlet foxgloves and her meadows are spread with ox-eyed daisies. In her gardens, drifts of white, blue, yellow, orange and red flowers with jewel-like precision, are displayed against sombre green shrubbery which merges into the shadow of sheltering trees. The genius presiding over many of these compositions, is clearly her friend, Gertrude Jekyll, the famous garden designer, with whom Helen collaborated on a number of projects.
Helen pursued the picturesque, knowing full well the reality of rural life. For many years she and William lived in a remote corner of Surrey where she spent her summers tramping around, searching out and painting these ancient cottages, most of which were hundreds of years old. Like her friend, Thomas Hardy, the novelist, she was trying to record a way of life that had all but passed away, but poetically rather than scientifically. The sense of wonder that they existed at all moved her to paint them. She knew well enough of the dank, dim interiors, of the grinding poverty, the filth, the chronic diseases suffered by the cottagers and the feelings of unhappiness, neglect and discontent that blighted their days. This was a miserable state of affairs common to both country and city, and not a thing to be celebrated in watercolours but to be roundly condemned by every right-thinking person. Who wanted misery to decorate their walls? Helen had no doubts about her purpose, it was to identify and record what was beautiful and life-enhancing, and in so creating an image of a smiling land, she hoped her work would bring joy to those who saw it.
Such was the demand for her cottage paintings, she could barely keep pace with it, and eventually in 1903, with the writer and painter, Marcus Huish published a book, "Happy England" containing 81 of her watercolours, a risky venture, as colour printing was then in its infancy. It is, however, a beautiful, book containing cottage scenes, quiet country gardens, calm, angel-faced children, bosky landscapes, and delicate floral compositions. She is at one with her subjects and her craft. Her paintings have a freedom and an ease of execution that demonstrate her technical mastery and hint at the sheer pleasure she derived from being out of doors, looking at the glowing countryside, and loading her brush with colour, recreating it on her paper.
"Happy England" went through several editions and is still sought after, as it is by far the most comprehensive record of her finest work. Arthur Paterson's "The Homes of Tennyson" (1905) and Dick Stewart's "The Cottage Homes of England". (1911) were also based on Helen's work.
The innocence and quietism of Helen's vision seemed irrelevant to the society that emerged traumatised from the First World War; perhaps people felt ill-at-ease living with her charming country scenes after the stark reality of the Western Front and so missed their healing, spiritual quality. Her popularity declined in the 1920's but she kept on working and teaching until a few days before her death at the age of 77, in 1926. Her vision has endured, however, into the 21st. century and in its many guises brings pleasure to us city dwellers so well sealed into our concrete towers by double-glazing and wall insulation that not a breath of the great out-doors can reach us.
Photographs taken at different stages of her life, all show the same elegant lady, of upright bearing, clad in dark, fashionable clothes, her eyes fixed on the far distance and her face relaxed in that self-composed and serene expression that characterises the faces of her cottage children.
These are the portraits of a fortunate woman, perhaps, but a determined one, and certainly not a complacent one. She had an extraordinary gift which she exploited to the full to give pleasure and enlightenment to others and in so doing created for us a perception of nature which is both sensual in its beauty and spiritual in its tranquillity. Her faith in her vision and her trust in life are wholesome antidotes to the pessimism, hysteria and nihilism that seem to dominate post-modem art. Is our world so awful that it is beyond any hope of redemption? Is the land of smiles a mere fantasy long passed away?
In the words of her friend, Robert Browning, Helen Paterson Allingham lent her mind out so that we could see transcendence in the commonplace and beauty in a fulfilled life.

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FORTY - TWO

By Jay G. Lessels

Ask a computer about the meaning of life, the universe and everything, and according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, after seven and a half million years of working, it answers, "Forty-two". 'Deep Thought's' reply is unsatisfactory to anyone who is not a computer, but no doubt unnerved by the impertinence of the query and intimidated by the probable consequences of the answer, the authors were rather imprecise in framing their question. What, then, do we want to know when we investigate the point and purpose of existence? Why are we here? What purpose do we serve? What makes life worthwhile? Why is there something rather than nothing?
Some would say we are wasting our time even thinking about such things since they are beyond the range of human perception and too complex for human comprehension. We're here because we're here. Anyway, life is not a thing that could have a meaning: life is life. It's not a philosophy, but something to be got on with as painlessly as possible. Others, however, aware of their own mortality and the on-going process of change and decay tha:\at may bring suffering and disappointment as well as joy and fulfilment, for their own peace of mind, anxious to find some reassurance that their existence has, after all, been worthwhile. In addition, they may want to feel that there is much more to existence than eating and sleeping, that there is something significant, even transcendent perhaps, in the experience of being alive.
There are two ways to approach the search for meaning, one is religious and the other rational and the differences between them may be of interpretation and semantics rather than substance.
Many religious people draw comfort from the conviction that a benign intelligence created the universe and everything in it, and presumably had a purpose in doing so. What this purpose may be remains a mystery but as the Creator is well intentioned towards his creation, (Otherwise why create it?), the final outcome of existence will be good rather than evil. Furthermore, since there is an intelligent design clearly visible in the workings of the universe, there must also be a divine intention shaping each human life, thereby giving it value and significance. Their faith also allows them to believe in an ideal, transcendent world in which all their suffering and unhappiness will be recompensed.
The rationalist takes issue with this, claiming that the work of Darwin and modern cosmologists reveal that the universe and everything in it, including us, has come about by blind chance. A spontaneous explosion of matter some 15 billion years ago set the whole thing going. Our solar system appeared 5 billion years later and the eventual development of single cell creatures on earth and the operation of the evolutionary process produced our species six hundred thousand years ago. Since none of this was intended, then, it follows that human life has no significance or value for the natural processes that brought it about. We are creatures without a purpose, temporarily existing in a pointless universe.
Most people, however, would find this a very bleak prospect indeed. We like to feel that our unique personality and our brief period of awareness of living are both worthwhile to ourselves, to other people, particularly to family and friends, and also in some transcendent way which we cannot define. In our consciousness of being alive, of being able to comment upon and to pass moral judgements on what is happening to us, in our knowledge of what it means to be vulnerable and finite in a universe which we can't control, we value ourselves as creatures of mind and aspiration which transcend the mere physical and mechanical. Some may claim this is proof of a spiritual dimension, others may say it is a natural function of an extremely complex brain, but whatever the explanation, we look for meaning that is more profound and permanent than sensual gratification.
Setting aside discussion of determinism and freewill, what we make of life is entirely our own responsibility. Humankind may not be the measure of all things, but whatever meaning we find in life we must generate within ourselves, whether it has a religious or rational emphasis.
Where then is such meaning to be found?
Some of us may find satisfaction in setting ourselves challenges to excel, to be first in our field, to serve a cause, or specific goals such as earning enough money to build a villa and retire to the South of Spain, but once we have achieved our goal, what do we do then? Short-term goals can motivate us until they are achieved but that done, something else has to be found to take their place. The sense of achievement they produce is extremely gratifying but may be short-lived. This may not in the end turn out to be the most meaningful way to live.
The same may be said for attempts to forget our troubles, to "get away from it all" by "seizing the day" or concentrating upon pleasurable activities or indeed taking drugs. It is great while it lasts, but it is a way of avoiding the question of what makes life significant, rather than facing it. It seems unlikely that by the single-minded pursuit of self-indulgence we can bestow meaning on our life.
Happiness, however, is a long-term condition, while pleasure is fleeting, and the Greek philosophers, Epicurus and Aristotle both thought that it is an important ingredient in whatever gives life meaning. For Epicurus the main goal of living was to achieve personal tranquillity and contentment and avoid anything that might disturb them, while Aristotle was convinced. that the fundamental purpose of all human effort is to achieve happiness, a state that we all treasure for its own sake.
It is possible to argue that happiness may depend upon the individual's personality, some people seem to be generally more contented with their lot than others. It is also a broad, general term, and some forms of it may be as trivial as any sensual pleasure and other forms may be achieved at the expense of causing harm to innocent people. There is ample evidence to suggest, for instance, that some torturers at least, gain enormous satisfaction from seeing their victims suffer.
Aristotle had thought about this. He advised his followers to examine their lives carefully because "The unexamined life is not worth living". and by this he implies that a happy, meaningful life includes a strong moral element. It depends upon our living our lives according to our highest nature as rational beings. This implies a discipline, living a decent life according to certain values, Truth, Justice, Freedom, Compassion, and developing loving, sympathetic and harmonious relationships with other people.
Paradoxically, in order to achieve complete fulfilment, we must be prepared on occasion to value virtue higher than the pursuit of happiness, as when we may place the welfare of others above our own.
Love and happiness are often associated, although true love is not dependent upon happiness and may persist long after any joyous feelings have melted away. All of us would like to love and be loved in return, as love is an essential part of our nature. For most of us enduring, loving relationships are the most cherished of life's gifts and achieving and sustaining them confer value and meaning upon our existence. Both the religious and the rational lobbies agree that the moral approach, living our lives according to the highest ideals of our race, being true to what is finest in human nature, is more effective than any other in achieving a sense that our life is worthwhile. Where this happens in the individual, the religious person may say it is the result of divine guidance, while the rationalist may claim that a well developed moral sense is an innate feature of the human make-up.
Suggesting that the meaning of life is dependent upon our own behaviour, may seem to be denying the drama and mystery that surrounds speculation about the purpose of existence. This matter:-of-fact approach may be as disappointing as 'Deep Thought's' "Forty-Two" but it in no way limits the sense of awe that we feel when we confront the phenomenon of the Universe with its infinitude of riches, the human mind with its endless possibilities, and of existence for whatever reason we value it.

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FLEEING FROM THE WAR

By Liz Egeback Foxbrook

Just like Bill, I was within a few days of my 6th birthday when something dramatic happened in my life. I was 'evacuated' with my mother, sister and baby brother to Canada (June 1940). We were part of s stream of people who left the cities and even the country, fleeing from the bombs of war. The first evacuees moved out of the cities at the beginning of September 1939. They were 1.5 million, mostly children. This was the official government evacuation scheme. Previously, in the months before war was declared, 2 million other people had privately evacuated themselves to friends, relatives or other accommodation. About a million more were officially evacuated in September 1940 and then there were those who went to Canada, Australia etc. Allowing for those who were evacuated twice, there was a grand total of 4 million, all of whom must have been marked by the experience. To quote Richard Titmus (1):
"To be torn up from the roots of home life and to be sent away from the family circle, in most instances for the first time in a child's life was a painful event. This was no social experiment, it was a surgical rent only to be contemplated as a last resort. The whole of a the child's life, its hopes and fears, its dependence for affection and social development on the checks and balances of home-life, and all the deep emotional ties that bound its parents, were suddenly disrupted."
Comparisons have been made with the experiences of children, for example, ''who suffered machine-gunning and dive-bombing in France, or of those who stayed behind in Britain to face bombing in the cities. Nothing certainly can have been worse than the concentration camps. But it is possible to compare a sudden and relatively short outburst of violence, experienced corporately within the security of the family group, with what happened slowly and over more than five years in many cases, and conclude that the psychological effects of evacuation would in fact be more severe. Even for those who were evacuated with their mothers it was the same; the mothers taken from their environments, friends, work and husbands, were as lost as their children, were different persons". (B. S. Johnson, 2)
My first recollection of Canada is of a huge, dark room with tall, dark people, long, dark faces, blankets, strange, huge beds, and I seem to be very cold, while my mother's face is anxious for the frightened children who don't cry. Within a couple of days we were living in the ground floor apartment of a duplex, very modestly furnished since we had to depend on Toronto friends for everything, food, clothing etc. for what turned out to be four years. My father was not, of course, able to buy dollars and he had to be trusted to repay the money at the end of the war.
I can remember very little of the years in Canada, except very short fragments. In fact I can remember nothing at all of the six years before I went there. So my entire memories of the years before I was 10, which I can visualise, can be related in a few minutes. The cold was one thing. (I am sure we did not have the right clothes for the bitter Canadian winter). Not being accepted by the other children, not getting a Valentine in school (the children gave them to each other anonymously, of course, in the classroom). Both of these things still hurt. We evacuees couldn't speak the language properly, we could not enter that magic world among children where togetherness is achieved by a common and very special child language, a speech that demands instant understanding on the part of the children or they are doomed to remain outsiders Children are excessively conservative and will tolerate no divergence from the pattern of the majority. We refugees lacked the background to all this. We hadn't heard the fairy stories, the folk lore of the young of that land. We hadn't played their games, played with their sort of toys, played in their sort of weather. Trying to make up for this, I can remember such things as getting my hair pulled dreadfully hard after I had said that I didn't feel it if it were pulled. My sister does not seem to have been so traumatized by these experiences and she remembers much more than I do, so I know of things that happened without having the actual memories of them.
In June 1944, after four years away, we were at last able to go home. Huge suitcases were filled and we began the long journey. We travelled for two days and a night on trains through Canada and down through America in a sealed train. We never entered U.S. only passed through it. There were hours to wait, sitting, standing, looking at luggage, sitting in the vast departure halls, so tall they seemed to reach up to the sky. The ship, when we found it, was like a massive prison. It was a troop-ship and was so filthy that the mothers had to scrub it from top to bottom before they would take the children aboard. It was packed with women and children falling over each other, trying to find their berths. The berth seemed to be piled up on top of each other, too little room to sleep, yellow lights, people pushing around, no place to sit, always children crying. And then I was sick, for days on end. , "Sea-sickness," said the doctor, "just feed her, force her to eat." But it wasn't sea-sickness, it was jaundice, and I spent the rest of the voyage in the ship's hospital.
There was the same nightmare at the other end of the journey; too many stopping places, strange hotel rooms, new faces, a strange father. And the doodle-bugs started when we were on the way back. Once again all the problem of going from one country to another, different money, strange food, different customs, and a feeling of not belonging, not knowing.
For many of the children the return was evacuation all over again. Again a feeling of being a refugee. And in our case we now had Canadian accents, which was resented deeply by some adults and ridiculed by children. Not fitting in at all. But this time we became acclimatized more quickly, and even managed to cope with such problems as ice-cold classrooms and dormitories, of not knowing anything about the war, of not having a real past as far as the other children were concerned. We just had to live through it again. Just press on.

(1)"Problems of Social Policy" Richard Titmuss, Longmans, 1950. (2) "The Evacuees" ed. B.S. Johnson, Gollanz,1969. 

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By John Robinson

Until the Autumn of last year a brief stop-off in Hong Kong en route to Australia had been my only previous experience of China. Although this gave me a glimpse of the Chinese entrepreneurial flair (body size measurements and orders for suits taken from sightseers as they wandered along Hong Kong's crowded pavements) and technical skill (hand-made suits delivered to their hotels the same day), it was not at all like what I experienced during the two weeks that I spent in the 'real' China, last October. This time, I was the one providing the technical skill. Ironically, my job was to avoid the use of what I knew, from my visit to Hong Kong, the Chinese were very good at, i.e. 'stitching'. No, I wasn't there to teach the Chinese how to produce the 'stitchless suit'. Rather, my job was to show them how their surgical procedures for transferring sheep embryos into surrogate mothers and the associated stitching involved could be replaced entirely by a simple fibre optic technique requiring only a couple of minutes work and no stitching.

My trip was organised by BESO (British Executive Services Overseas), a development agency that provides voluntary professional expertise to organisations in developing economies throughout the world. It involved an eleven hour flight from London to Beijing, followed by a three-and-a-half hour flight to Orumqi in North West China. A three hour car journey to Shihezi (a city in Xinjiang province similar in population to Aberdeen) and another two hours North by car to State Farm 150, where I was to carry out the assignment, meant that I was located quite close to the Kazakhstan border.

Coping with the language barrier

None of the workers on the farm spoke English but the client organisations (the Shihezi Personnel Bureau and the Agricultural, Forestry and Animal Husbandry Bureau of Shihezi) provided a superb translator, Zheng (John) Kangsheng, the Headmaster of Shihezi's new private bilingual (English and Chinese) school. The fact that such an eminent member of their society had been relieved of his Headship duties to be my translator made me nervous. It attached a level of importance to my assignment that up to then, I hadn't considered. Zheng was superb not only as a translator but also as a person. During our first meeting, which was evening dinner, he asked me to make him a list of the technical terms and phrases that I was likely to use. After dinner I produced a comprehensive list and gave it to him before retiring for the night. At breakfast the next morning I felt well rested, fresh and ready to go but Zheng looked tired. Now and then he would ask me to expand on the meaning of a word on my list. It was then that he revealed he had worked on the list until 4 am to ensure accurate Chinese translations!

Learning about the area

As the days passed it became clear that Zheng's dedication to his task was typical of the Chinese; a conscientiousness based on a determination to succeed. Evidence of that determination is everywhere. For example fifty years ago Shihezi city did not exist. That whole North West region of China was virtually a desert. Now, as a result of drip irrigation, it has been brought into crop production, mainly cotton, but also forage crops such as maize and alfalfa for animal feeding. The transformation required foresight. It also required the discipline and determination of a manual work force. Almost 90% of the four-and-a-half thousand hectares in State Farm 150 are in cotton. It is all hand picked. The last of the year's four harvestings was underway when I was there and the rush was on to complete it before the snow came. Already they were experiencing quite hard night frosts, but day temperatures were still as high at Aberdeen's in mid summer. Given their much-nearer-to-the-Equator latitude (44°N compared with Aberdeen's 57°N) the coldness of those early mornings in October surprised me. It reminded me of just how lucky we are in Scotland to have the Gulf Stream. Also it explained why everyone, irrespective of age, or sex, in that part of China was wearing long johns!

The cotton crop fascinated me and I yearned for the opportunity to join the pickers and learn more about it. Each morning at first light the pickers congregated at the village pick up point and were transported to the picking fields on trailers drawn by little two-stroke engine tractors. It was so reminiscent of how Autumn potato harvesting used to be organised here before the advent of mechanical harvesters. Likewise, just as the other role of the tractor and trailer in potato harvesting was to transport the crop to a central collection point so too they transported the harvested cotton to the gin mill. Here, the reputed yield of 10 tonnes per hectare is separated by machine into the one-third by weight cotton fibre, two-thirds cotton seed. The cotton seed is then crushed to extract the 15% oil for use in cooking and the food industry. The oil extracted residue contains over 40% protein and is a very valuable animal-feed supplement. Meantime the fibre is machine pressed into bales for ease of transport to the spinning and weaving mills. In view of the three very valuable products that it provides and the large labour force available for its harvesting it is not surprising that cotton plays such an important part in China's economy. There is even a cotton-picking school holiday to boost the workforce; the Xinjiang Province equivalent to our erstwhile potato-gathering holidays.

Seeing it their way

Although the main reason for my trip was to provide and teach the technical procedures involved in fibre-optic assisted embryo transfer in sheep, it is important to appreciate China's perceived need for this technology. It is based on their increasing affluence (economy growing at over 9% per year) and the associated increase in the demand for meat and dairy products. In Xinjiang Province they see the importation of animal breeds, renowned in other parts of the world for their high levels of production, as the way to achieve greater efficiency. I am dubious, but in this instance my role was not to reason why, more a question of do or die! They had already embarked on their plan and in order to swing the emphasis in their sheep industry away from wool and more towards meat, they already had in storage, sheep embryos imported from Australia. It was these embryos that I would be transferring into their ewes. From an animal welfare and disease-prevention perspective one couldn't criticise their approach in that on both counts the transport of embryos is preferable to live animals. Given Europe's history of Scrapie, BSE and Foot and-Mouth Disease neither could one criticise their sourcing of genetic material from elsewhere.

Preparing for action

For a successful embryo transfer programme the embryo recipient ewes have to be at exactly the same stage of their breeding cycle when receiving the embryos as the donor ewes were at when the embryos were harvested. The programme to achieve this had to be initiated three weeks in advance of the actual embryo transfer date. Thus a considerable amount of organising, via e-mail, had to be done before I left Aberdeen. Even more preparation however had to be made when I arrived. Very little of the promised equipment was in place and with the programme pre-set there was little time left. Frantic telephone calls to the nearest Agricultural and Veterinary Research Station and the State Veterinary Centre, only made possible by the patience and technical excellence of my translator, Zheng, provided a glimmer of hope. These establishments were in Shihezi, a four-hour round trip by car. I would have to go there, see what was available and hopefully with the bargaining power of the Head of the Shihezi Agricultural, Forestry and Animal Husbandry Bureau by my side, borrow the necessary equipment. The first day for transfers was Friday; it was now Tuesday afternoon. Still ample time I thought; no need to panic; that was only until I was told we couldn't go to Shihezi until Thursday as the Research Stations were involved in an internal review. Wednesday was therefore spent visiting two large Dairy Units, each with between four and five hundred cows, but my mind wasn't there; it was full of questions and uncertainty. What if, we can't get the necessary equipment for the embryo transfers? What if I can't find a technician with enough skill to thaw out and 'guard' the embryos before transfer? It all looked so easy from Aberdeen, but I should have know there would be problems. Why hadn't I taken essential equipment with me? Yes, but clearly I couldn't take everything I needed. After all I had taken thawing solutions for the embryos, also embryo transfer catheters. Had I forgotten already the problems I had at Beijing Airport getting these through customs? No, I must adopt a more pragmatic approach. Perhaps lack of equipment would place additional demands on my manual dexterity, so why not improve it by using Wednesday meal times to master the art of eating with chop sticks? I did.

I enjoyed Thursday in Shihezi. It gave me an opportunity to meet with researchers and their students, discuss their work, see their equipment and acquire, albeit from what I suspect were mainly their discards, an appropriate microscope and fibre optic equipment. They did not however have a key piece of equipment, atraumatic grasping forceps, but suggested I could manage with an alternative set which they were happy for me to have. The Director of Research even announced that he and some of his students would be coming along the next day to watch. I felt honoured. The meeting at the State Veterinary Centre was also productive, although an exhaustive search still failed to come up with a more appropriate set of forceps. Again the Director said he too would be there the next morning and would bring a technician with some experience in handling embryos and another who was keen to learn the transfer technique. A couple of hours later and back at the Farm, I could relax; well, at least a little. I had even acquired a much needed supply of coffee, the first I had seen since arriving at Farm 150. There was still the niggle of the forceps but I reckoned I could manage. Also we were too late back to have everything set up and ready to go for the next morning (Friday) deadline, so I was still left wondering if the equipment would work.

The cameras roll

The next morning, we had no sooner begun to set up the equipment than the television cameras and press arrived. Soon, there were so many on-lookers, it was difficult to get things organised. As we moved into action there were lights flashing everywhere i.e. everywhere except in the fibre optic light source, where, from my point of view, was the only place that light was needed. The light from there was so poor it was impossible to continue. Attempts to enhance illumination to a workable intensity caused the special light bulb and its in-built spare to fuse~ bringing proceedings to an abrupt end! In the discussion that followed, and in which I played little part, it was concluded that it would take some considerable time to locate and purchase the special replacement light bulbs. This gave me the opportunity to suggest that, at the same time, I could perhaps go to the hospital in Shihezi, which I reckoned would surely have the special forceps that make fibre optic embryo transfer the very slick procedure that it is. Although things hadn't worked out as planned the press and TV had got all they needed and dispersed. For me, it was a two hour drive back to Shihezi and the hospital, this time with the Head of Shihezi Personnel Bureau, whom I sensed represented the ultimate in bargaining power. She certainly made things happen. Within seconds of entering the hospital we were in the Director's office. From there, like a little dog on a lead and struggling to keep along side her, I found myself outside one of the operating theatres and scanning a range of fibre optic instruments and their associated forceps neatly laid out before me on a draped trolley. Nearest to me, and afterwards I thought perhaps deliberately ,so, were the sorts of forceps that we used to use. The nurses even lifted them up, demonstrated how they worked and seemed keen that I agree they were what I was looking for. They weren't, but just then I spotted at the far side of the trolley the forceps I was after. I picked them up and being so elated I almost ran off. The nurses' head shakes and hands clinging to the forceps were well ahead of my translator in telling me that I would have a fight on my hands to get these. They were special and they knew it. From then on I was merely a spectator. It was over to the Head of the Shihezi Personnel Bureau to negotiate with the hospital Director. It was only after numerous telephone calls and the eventual assurance that another pair was available, that agreement was reached for us to borrow them, but only after a signed agreement which I presumed must have authorised some form of payment.

The day was well spent by the time we arrived back at Farm 150. In many countries that would have been it for the day, but not in China. They were determined to keep the programme on course; they were also excited about the quality of the new fibre optic light bulbs that they had secured when I was in Shihezi. A quick test showed that they were certainly an improvement; I could probably manage but it would still be a struggle. Around an hour later, which was the time it took me to thaw out and rehydrate the embryos before transfer, the assignment was truly underway. By late evening the planned number of transfers for that day was complete; I even managed to eat the supper that followed, solely with chop sticks!

Mixing work and pleasure

We continued with the transfers over the weekend and through the following week. On most days the work was completed by mid-afternoon, i.e. when all the animals programmed for use on that day had received their embryos. Yes, there were hiccups. For some reason, unknown to me, the fibre optic light bulbs gradually blackened with time and the light faded, making their replacement essential. My Chinese masters assured me however that I had no need for concern, they had made a bulk purchase of bulbs and I was in no danger of running out. Time was spent teaching the techniques and that was a pleasure as the Chinese are so keen to learn; they are also very adept with their hands.

Mid-afternoon finishes gave time to do other things before darkness at around 8 o'clock. A few hours strolling over the sand dunes at what is known as the Camels' Ring on the Golden Sands (a reference to the sound of the Camel bells), was very relaxing. So too was cotton picking and a conducted tour of a cotton gin mill Having a headmaster as translator no doubt explained my visit to the local secondary school. Given my interests in biology, I am sure that it was not just by chance that I found myself in the third year biology class. With around 60 pupils in the class one could sense immediately that there was no pupil misbehaviour to distract the teacher. The pupils exuded enthusiasm for what they were being taught, took great pride in their textbooks and were clearly grateful for the opportunity to learn. Their questions reflected an unexpected level of maturity. What is the British Education System like? Why did I choose my career? Was there another career that I would have liked to follow? How did I train for my job? Before leaving I requested permission to ask just one question; it was, what is most important to you, growing up in this relatively remote part of China? Instantly, and in unison, they replied 'our education'! With an 8 hour school day and only time off on alternate week-ends (Friday to Sunday inclusive) education is certainly a priority. 

Leaving Farm 150 for the last time

Despite our short working time together, I had grown to admire and respect all those with whom I had worked on Farm 150. Within their pleasant and courteous manner was a determination to succeed. I was truly sorry to be leaving them. At the celebratory meal on my last evening, there had been so much toasting to the success of the project and to everyone's health, the next morning's drive back to Shihezi was a very quiet affair, for which my translator seemed very grateful. My only concern was that our driver, who had also been with us the previous evening, was sober and awake enough to drive. Road building in that part of China is progressing apace but as yet many stretches are without white lines or crash barriers despite sheer drops on either side of 10 to 15 feet in some sections.

Back in Shihezi there was still work to do, with a mid-day de-briefing to the host organisations on how the project had gone. That behind me there was an opportunity to see Shihezi,. courtesy of two of Zheng's young female teachers from the bilingual school They were in their early twenties and spoke perfect English. They typified the emerging China. Unlike their parents who never had the opportunity to learn English, they were taught it from an early age. As we strolled through the main square, watched all ages exercise to music, bought and scattered grains for the doves to eat and, via the museum, got a brief glimpse into China's past, there was an opportunity to chat about more general issues. I got the feeling that the museum was chosen, not because my two young hosts were interested in China's history, they were too excited about its present and their future, but because I was old and of similar age to their grandparents; history would be of great interest to me. They were uncomfortable when talking about the Cultural Revolution and were quick to change the subject. None of us like to admit to a mistake, and I was left with the impression, on this and a number of other occasions, that the Chinese find it particularly difficult to do so. With very little evidence of religion and no apparent time set aside for it either at school or work, I broached the subject but was told that it was only for old people. When I raised it later on with Zheng his reply was 'we don't bother about religion John'. The smile that accompanied his response made  me feel as though I had asked him if he believed in fairies!

Time was now fast running out but there were more work-related activities to complete. Also I was hoping for the opportunity to see more of China. The following morning's visit to the State Veterinary Centre which I thought would just be an opportunity for me to see their facilities turned out to a 'Dimbleby-like' Question Time, the panel being two veterinary surgeons (one from Edinburgh and the other from Canada, who were there on separate assignments) and myself. Our three translators acted as joint chairpersons directing questions to whoever they considered most qualified to answer. We even had good audience participation with representative from all sectors of the agricultural industry. This was a tough technical session with questions stretching our combined knowledge base. Not knowing all the answers has had the benefit of establishing a post-assignment written dialogue with individual advisory and research staff as well as the host organisations. The afternoon was taken up by yet another debriefing with the heads of all the organisations involved. This essentially was to provide a preview of what would be in my written report to be submitted to them, via BESO, within a couple of weeks of my return to Aberdeen. It was also to give them the opportunity to discuss a feeding and management strategy for the embryo recipient ewes which, in order to ensure success for the project, needed to be implemented immediately.

Dinner that night was a mixture of emotions but my abiding one will be sadness at saying farewell to Zheng. Without him my trip would have been futile. For someone who had never been out of China his fluency in English was unbelievable; but so too was his modesty. Where else, I wondered, could one find such a high profile Headmaster whose most sophisticated form of transport is a bicycle of a vintage that pre-dates Granville's, in 'Open An Hours'. Zheng may not believe in a next world but he is certainly giving a lot to this one.

 Sight-seeing and shopping

Despite our late-night celebrations it was an early start the next morning (Saturday) with the Canadian's translator taking care of us. The morning drive through Shihezi's industrial complex gave a flavour of the rapid growth of China's industries; little wonder China is currently using almost 40% of the world's steel production. One gets the feeling that the same must be true for concrete and tarmac. Everything is on such a large scale. Access roads, into and through the industrial complex of this new city, are vast compared with, for example Aberdeen, which you will recall from my earlier comment, is of similar population. But, it is not all tarmac, concrete and steel; Shihezi would be a strong contender for 'the city-in-bloom' contest with exactly the same species of flowering plants as we have here. Compared with Aberdeen, however, there were not nearly as many roses, yet for the large flower beds fronting the entrances to buildings in the industrial estate, they seemed an obvious choice and a business opportunity perhaps for Aberdeen rose growers!

In view of our agricultural interests our visit was to a factory producing plastic tubing for drip irrigation. Using a mixture of new and recycled plastic over 40 machines were extruding the tubing. Annual production from this factory alone is sufficient to irrigate over one third of a million hectares of land.

Unlike the wide open spaces of the industrial estate, Shihezi's shopping areas were a clutter of trading stalls, with people milling around all over the place for what appeared to be every day food items and other essentials. Loud playing music made communication between shopper and trader, via a translator, difficult; at least that is my excuse for not buying my wife jade which apparently is much sought after by Western visitors. It seemed to me that the desire to purchase the stone was more driven by its reputed endless number of Chinese good luck charms than its aesthetic features.

The afternoon drive back to Orumqi and flight to Beijing did little more than confirm just how arid and unproductive the North West of China would be without irrigation. There is ample evidence however, in the form of visible salt deposits, of the damage caused by the flood irrigation systems that preceded the current drip irrigation. Although salt levels in the water are relatively low the large amounts of water used in flood irrigation and the associated high level of evaporation cause significant amounts of salt to be deposited.

With a recent Sunday Times Travel Supplement recommending three days in Beijing as one of the best new stopovers for those visiting Australia, what, one may well ask, could I hope to do in the one remaining day of the trip. A lot, as it turned out. A perk from BESO to the many volunteers that it is now sending to China is a day trip involving three places of interest in and around Beijing. Now finding myself to be one of three UK volunteers completing assignments simultaneously and booked into the same hotel, indeed also booked to return to London on the same flight, it was soon obvious that if we could agree on the same tour BESO would arrange for us to have a chauffeur and translator, all to ourselves. Without discussion we were in agreement that the Great Wall was a must. That pleased me for, having travelled all the way from famous Stane Dyke country, it would be a shame not to see their's! Within minutes we agreed that the other two sights would be the Temple of Heaven and Tiananmen Square.

The Great Wall runs West from Shanhai Pass (East of Beijing) for more than 4,000 miles. We joined it at Ju Yong Goan (Ju Yong Pass) about 80 km from Beijing, one of the sections preserved for sightseers. Whether it was because of the mistiness of the morning and the general poor visibility or whether my expectation was too high, I found it disappointing. In an attempt to capture some of the wonder that makes it one of the world's seven, we climbed it for just over an hour by which time the rising temperature and thousands of sightseers were making it an even less attractive place to be. Indeed, while in no way belittling the effort of the many generations involved in its building from approximately 200 BC to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) I found the subsequent visit to a nearby Cloisonne factory more stimulating. The conducted tour provided an opportunity to see pictures of the Great Wall being hand crafted with copper wire and coloured enamel in a fascinating art form that dates back to the middle of the 15th Century.

To appreciate fully the history and significance of the Temple of Heaven and its ancient juniper and cypress gardens would require much longer than the couple of hours we had to spend there. Built during the Ming Dynasty it is where, in ancient China, the Emperor came to pray. A ring of nine stone slabs surrounds the Emperor's Praying stone signifying the ancient Chinese belief that nine was the most powerful digit. Surrounding concentric rings contain stone slabs in multiples of 9, up to the final ring which contains 81. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, the most important building in the temple grounds, is a triple-eaved wooden palace about 40 metres tall and 30 diameter. It sits on a circular stone terrace edged with a white marble balustrade of carved dragons and phoenixes. With thousands of noisy sightseers milling around, the original historic significance of the Temple of Heaven was lost. Indeed, it seemed to me that the associated erosion caused by so many visitors to such an important historic site was in danger of destroying it altogether.

Surprisingly, indeed perhaps ironically, given history, Tiananmen Square (~ 900 x 500 metres) was far more peaceful than the Temple of Heaven. Whether that was because it was now late evening I don't know, but here visitors leisurely wandered around while the locals flew kites of all shapes and sizes. The granite Monument of the People's Heroes built in 1952 to illustrate the development of modem China is in the centre of the Square. To one side is the Tiananmen Tower, built during the Ming Dynasty, in much the same style as the Temple of Heaven. Directly opposite is the Mao Memorial Hall wherein Mao's body lies in a crystal coffin. On another side is the Great Hall of the People built in 1959 for the China National People's Congress meetings and the longest building that I have ever seen. Facing it on the final side is the China National Museum built in 2003 and now displaying the time countdown, second by second, to China's hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Between visiting The Temple of Heaven and Tiananmen Square, a selection of China teas in Beijing's Dr T's Tea Rooms provided much needed refreshment. It was also very informative; for the first time, I found out that there is more to tea making than adding boiling water to tea bags! With teas that were claimed to regulate blood pressure and lower cholesterol, others to eliminate worries, and yet others to cure insomnia, anaemia and a .'hangover", I though why, on earth, do I drink coffee! The tea-drinking experience was also made more entertaining by the use of a cup with a dragon design on the outside that immediately transformed into the Great Wall when the hot tea was poured. That wasn't the ( I limit of the cup range; equally diverse transformations were available for, The Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace, The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Temple Lama and, obviously purpose made for grandchildren, Chinese Pandas.

Concluding thoughts

Coming at a time when UK politicians are enthusing about the opportunities presented by China's growing economy I feel privileged to have been there. My experience of the Chinese I§ that they make things happen. I think it was Aristotle in the Fourth century BC who said, everything has a purpose and purpose makes things happen. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century argued that God established what this purpose was. Despite their dismissive attitude to formal religion the youth of China have, within themselves, a clearly defined purpose to make things happen in a way that will improve the living standards of all Chinese people. In doing so they will place enormous demands on the earth's fossil fuel reserves. Last year China increased its imports of oil by 30% yet, despite their very economic use of electricity, there are still severe power shortages. Our politicians may see China, with over one fifth of the world's population, as a major export market for motor cars or the saviour of Rover Cars. But have they stopped to consider the longer term demand that this and the many other changes that are currently occurring in China will place on world oil demands? Will America be happy for China to have access, in its rapid development, to the cheap oil that the US has enjoyed for decades. For China to achieve its goal, George W Bush and his successors may have to replace a lot of what they currently portray as their God-given right to the world's fossil fuel reserves with a little more Unitarian tolerance, reason and freedom. 

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COLLECTING THOUGHTS (2)

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PEOPLE

Congratulations to our founder, the Rev. Dr. Colin and Mrs Sheila Wicker on the occasion of their Golden Wedding Anniversary last month.
Colin and Sheila were married at All Saints Church, Hamer, Rochdale, Lancashire, on 19th February, 1955.
We trust that the golden couple had a very pleasant day with their children and grandchildren.

Our S. U. F. Minister, the Rev. Eric Breeze, will shortly leave Scotland to take up a new challenge south of the border. Certainly, by the next edition of The Link, Eric will have departed. We have featured Eric's work in the past six issues of The Link and we have been grateful for his support of and interest in the work and future of the S.U.F. We part from him with great reluctance as his encouragement has been important in helping the S.U.F. Committee to give of their best and to feel that their efforts are worthwhile. However, we appreciate that the demands of his career must be answered, and we wish him every success in the posts which he will shortly take up.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Internet, and a Unitarian, was honoured in January 2005 by the Daily Telegraph as "The Greatest Briton of 2004", at a special ceremony at the Royal Courts of Justice, London.
The General Secretary of the General Assembly sent the following to the Daily Telegraph:
 The Unitarian Community congratulates Sir Tim Berners-Lee upon his recent award as Greatest Briton. Sir Tim is an active member of a Unitarian-Universalist congregation in Massachusetts, his present domicile.
When being awarded the KBE last July Sir Tim, referring to the World Wide Web, expressed the hope that "we learn to use it as a medium for working together and resolving misunderstandings on every scale".

Amen to that sentiment.

Jeffrey J. Teagle,
General Secretary,
General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. 

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''WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE ?"

by Alistair Bate

The question we are considering this morning, "Why do bad things happen to good people ?" is in fact the question that matters most of all, to most of us. After all, we are good people. Humanity is, I believe, more basically good than bad, most of the time. So why do we have to suffer?

Most religions have tried to address this question and to be honest most are still struggling with it Each individual and each generation have to address this question anew for themselves.

As I am sure you know, Buddhism, as one of the world's great religions is based on the four noble truths taught by the Buddha; the reality of suffering, the cause- of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the way to the cessation of suffering. These are excellent insights into the nature of and solution to personal suffering but they do not engage with the question of why there is suffering in the first place. This would be one of those undetermined questions, like the existence of God, which the Buddha so scrupulously avoided.

The Judeo-Christian tradition, on the other hand, has spent considerable theological energy on trying to engage with this question and over the centuries a variety of solutions have been put forward, few of them to my mind satisfactory

 If theology had been able to satisfactorily explain the presence and purpose of both moral evil and of personal suffering there would be few crises of faith such as that articulated in our first reading this morning.
Any atheist scepticism about creation, and miracles pales into insignificance when we are faced with the greater scepticism caused by the theological conundrum of how a God of love can permit suffering. As Allen Laing says, "How could a loving God create a world in which hurt and suffering, wars and disaster, occurred with such painful regularity" ?

In theology this problem is called the Theodicy question. The word, 'Theodicy' comes from the Greek for justification. In other words, by asking this question, we are asking God to justify his actions. My theological dictionary states that the core of the question is this, "Either God wishes to prevent evil but cannot, in which case He is just but not omnipotent. Or He can prevent evil but does not want to, in which case He is omnipotent but not just". The bottom line then, is that God cannot be both loving and Almighty at the same time.
Understandably orthodox theologians have been reluctant to concede either God's omnipotence or his nature as Love, as both are based on the foundational documents of scripture. As religious liberals we have no high view of the authority of scripture so we are free to explore any and all possibilities, but before we do so let me just explore with you some of the strategies theologians have used to get around the theodicy problem.

From Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity inherited a dualistic conception, the idea that there is a good principle and an evil principle in conflict in the world. Only good comes from God, the power of light, evil comes from the anti-God, the power of darkness. In orthodox Christianity, however, God has to permit Satan the lordship of this world otherwise He would not be omnipotent.

Another strand in the tradition is called the monistic conception. By affirming with the writer of Genesis that "God saw ALL that He had made and behold it was very good" some monists deny the reality of evil. A similar strand of reasoning is prevalent in Hinduism. Tome, this solution to our question is the least worthy of respect. While physical reality may not be the only reality it would appear to be the most provable. Natural disasters, illness and death are very real phenomena.

Many of you will be familiar with the story of Job, in the Hebrew Bible. A good and just man named Job, who had never hurt anyone, lost, one by one, his family and all his possessions, and finally his health. His friends, offer various explanations for his suffering, none of them any comfort to Job, for they are not prepared to admit that what has happened to him is unfair. In their eyes God must have had some good reason for inflicting such suffering. Perhaps Job was secretly sinful and really deserved to be punished, or perhaps these trials were a test of faith, only visited on those who God knew could bear them and ultimately benefit by them?

Such reasoning is common today. I have a nephew with learning difficulties. His parents seemed satisfied with the explanation that God sends special children to those he knows will care for them well. However, such reasoning does not bear close scrutiny. What kind of loving God would send an innocent child into the world at such a disadvantage, knowing that he may be taunted by schoolyard bullies and possibly never have the consolation of adult intimacy and a family of his own? And children with learning difficulties are actually born to all manner of people, the good, the bad and ugly. There is no evidence at all of God using any discrimination.

Theologians have been slightly more sophisticated than Job's comforters. Some, like St Augustine, have argued that God permits moral evil for the sake of the freedom of the human will and uses physical ills to punish and educate humanity. I do not argue too much with the necessity of preserving our freedom to make moral choices, but I cannot take on board the idea that natural disasters and disease are God's means of punishing and educating mankind. Such a God would be exceedingly cruel, though of course, Augustine would say that sometimes a parent has 'to be cruel to be kind'. This type of argument has been in the news recently as certain Muslim fundamentalists after the huge loss of life in Banda Ache, blamed their coreligionists for the Tsunami disaster suggesting that God was punishing them for lack of strict Islamic observance. Thankfully, the best Western theologians abandoned this line of reasoning after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake in which thousands of innocents lost their lives. However, while persistently hanging on to the idea of Divine Omnipotence theologians have been unable to give us a satisfactory explanation of the problem of suffering. The book of Job, itself the most thorough exploration of this subject in scripture, concludes hazily with the solution that it is wrong for us to question God. 'Ours is not to reason why'. ..... Such a solution will simply not do in our day and age. We live in a more just society than ever before. We expect fairness in a way that our ancestors didn't and our idea of God, as our highest ideal, needs to conform to this newly emphasised value.

As I said before, God can't be both Omnipotent and just One quality must give. It is unthinkable that we should acknowledge a Supreme Being who is unjust in his dealings with humankind, so in my view and the view of Rabbi Harold Kushner, it is a strict adherence to God's omnipotence, his Almighty-ness, which must be conceded. This is in effect a resurrection of the old idea of dualism, and it is hinted at in the Book of Job. Rabbi Kushner writes, the most important lines in the book may be the ones spoken by God in the second half of the speech form the whirlwind, (40: 9-14) Have you an arm like God? Can you thunder with a voice like His? You tread down the wicked where they stand, bury them in the dust together ... Then I will acknowledge that your own right hand can give you victory.
Kushner goes on to say, "I take these lines to mean "if you think that it is so easy to keep the world straight and true, to keep unfair things from happening to people you try if'. God wants the righteous to live peaceful, happy lives, but sometimes even He can't bring that about. It is too difficult even for God to keep cruelty and chaos from claiming their innocent victims. But could man, without God, do it better?

The speech goes on, in chapter 41, to describe God's battle with the sea serpent Leviathan. With great effort, God is able to catch him in a net and pin him with fish hooks but it is not easy. If the sea serpent is a symbol of chaos and evil, of all the uncontrollable things in the world (as it traditionally is in ancient mythology), the author may be saying there too that even God has a hard time keeping chaos in check and limiting the damage that evil can do." ..........

In the Book of Genesis we are introduced to the idea of God as a spirit brooding over the waters of chaos, out of which he makes our world. The story does not tell us that all of the chaos was vanquished for all time. Rather God made US to be co-creators with Him in establishing order over chaos. We are God's hands to moved rubble and save lives. We are God's mind to find cures for horrible diseases. There are some Leviathans, such as the natural moving of tectonic plates over which neither he nor we can ever have any control, but what we can Know is that it is not his will that we suffer. In our struggle to live peaceful, happy, healthy lives God is with us as companion and friend to guide and support, but there are some things over which even he has no control.

Here is another image which might help you to understand my point. Just as we each have a body and in some sense are a body. So God's body is the universe and emergent out of this is the Divine mind. Most of the time we have control of our' bodily functions. If we tell our arm to be raised it rises. If we put food into our stomachs our digestion kicks in and in a miraculous way converts this energy into the substance of our being. But sometimes we get sick for no obvious  reason. Our control over our bodies is not absolute. So, I would suggest, God's control of His body, the Universe, is also mostly predictable, but not absolute.

I hope now that you will see that Allen Laing and Richard Holloway and others who question, need not lose their faith. When bad things happen to good people, as they do every day, we can be assured that God as our Highest Ideal and the Companion of our Heart, did not will it or allow it, but is right there by our side to help us through. Amen.

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FOLK TALE

A young man and a girl were sitting behind me on the bus, enjoying a discussion about the most recently opened Aberdeen nightclub. They were indifferently impressed by it, but the girl generously admitted that she had arrived there after a hard night's drinking and probably her judgement was somewhat impaired. All she could recall was seeing a "dark room full of chairs and tables" before she collapsed unconscious. !
When asked which night-club she had chosen as the venue for her eighteenth birthday party next month, she replied that she was undecided because they were all so dull and boring. In the old days, when she first went out clubbing, three years ago, everywhere was "magic", really "cool". She got a "real buzz" from the music and "the scene". every Saturday night. Now "the scene" has changed. There's no "zing". "Everywhere is the same, just loud music, a bit of dancing and a lot of booze!"

(Expletives deleted in the interests of brevity.) 

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MAN'S CHIEF END

"Man's Chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever". Joe was standing on top of the wall, his hands folded in front and his head tucked to one side as he imitated Miss Carle's simpering, deferential tone when she read out of the "School Bible" or spoke to the Headmaster. Joe's antics were ignored. We were huddled at the foot of the opposite wall, stupefied with boredom. After five days in a classroom beleaguered by fractions and prepositions and the principal products of the British Empire, not to mention "Man's chief end" and the umpteen tribes of Israel, Friday night was to be our redemption, but here we were sitting in the ruins of the old post office, staring at broken up masonry, our high hopes for the evening shattered in pieces. We had hoped to waylay Davy Doig, the soutar, as he cranked his one-legged bike home from the Alexandria Bar. Usually well-oiled, he would throw his loose change to us and we would go to the chip shop, but so far he had not appeared.
"What does it mean?" mused Ian," 'man's chief end'."
"It's pointless hanging about here," grumbled Charlie, pulling his bag of marbles from his pocket. "He's not coming. Let's at least do something."
The setting sun was gilding the chimneys on Davy Doig's cottage. It was late May. The sky was pale blue. The air was so clear it seemed to sparkle. Down on the shore the incoming tide was snoring contentedly among the pebbles; up here on the brae, the savoury breath of the chip-shop in the next street teased us mercilessly.
"I'm starving," moaned Andie.
"Look out!" yelled Joe, jumping off the wall, "Here's Sonny D."
Normally at the approach of Wilson Davidson, we withdrew discreetly, meeting again later in Andie's bike- shed. However, with boredom and hunger gnawing at our bones, we were in dire need of distraction, and so we...
Sonny D. vaulted over the windowsill, neatly side-stepped a clump of nettles and immediately took charge.
He was in one of his dangerous moods, excited, fiercely energetic, challenging "Right, I'll take on the lot of you!" He started dancing around like a boxer throwing punches in our direction. A purple bruise shadowed the left side of his face from eye to jaw. His lower lip was swollen and there was dried blood on his chin. He had appeared in the local police court earlier that day to receive a municipal caution to which his grandfather had clearly added his own domestic chastisement.
We ought to have scattered while we had the chance. Sonny D was bright but erratic, impulsive and reckless, He was brilliantly creative and from time to time included us in his crazy schemes which usually ended disastrously. On one occasion he had us marooned on a rock by the incoming tide as he tried to discover whether the setting sun or the rising tide were moving faster. We were on the rock holding up a yawl's mast to throw a shadow on to the beach while he observed whether the encroaching tide could cover up the lengthening shadow before the sun disappeared below the horizon. He got his answer; we got half drowned. He was older than we by a few years and at fourteen had recently decided to quit school, but without informing the authorities.
We cowered away submissively as his flailing fists came ever nearer. A fierce emotional tempest was raging within him, generating more energy than he could control. He seized the clump of nettles with his bare hands, ripped it out of the earth, twisted it into a rope and lashed it against the gable wall until the stems were smashed and shredded.
"Right then, it's 'Follow the leader'. Come on!" He grabbed Charlie's bag of marbles, dashed up the rough set of steps we had made to get to the top of the wall and launched himself over the five foot gap on to the roof of Davy Doig's cottage. He scrambled up the red pan tiles to the roof ridge, stood upright and started to lob the marbles into the chimney at the far end. Not one missed. "I'm the King! Come on, follow the King!" He hurled a handful of marbles down at us and then squatted by the skylight, peering into the loft below, suddenly oblivious to our presence.
Charlie, in pursuit of his property, bounded up the steps to the top of the wall, but as he prepared to jump Andie shouted, "Here's Davy. Davy's coming!" Distracted, Charlie misjudged his leap, and only his arms reached the roof. The rest of his body crashed against the wall of the cottage and he dropped to the ground. We ran to him. Davy approached aboard his bicycle, his lame leg hanging limply at one side, while the other leg by means of a wire and leather arrangement strapped to the pedal drove him forward on the up as well as the down stroke.
Charlie was winded and his nose was bleeding. He had also scraped his knees and elbows, but otherwise seemed to be uninjured. Davy, under the influence, but still rational, got Charlie into his cottage to clean him up. We crowded in after him, down three steps to a little hallway and into the living room.
The full force of the setting sun greeted us. Dazzling, yellow light ricocheted around the room from wall to ceiling to floor. We were moths caught in a glowing bowl. Davy's little room was lined throughout in pitch-pine, polished and varnished as bright as a mirror, reflecting the sunset streaming through the windows. Above the fireplace on the gable wall, at the sea end, he had made a carving of our bay as seen from off-shore, the beach and rocks at high tide, the braes with the cottages and their tall chimneys dotted about like the notes on a printed stave. On the wall opposite the windows he had carved the herring fleet silhouetted against an enormous sinking sun that radiated ripples of light down to the floor. And strangely, as if sailing into the room through the hallway partition, the prow of a sailing ship and above it the merest sketch of a sail, with "1940" deeply cut into the peak of the bow and a single slashing stroke across the whole carving. The four of us stood, awe-struck, each reassessing our opinion of Davy and our impression of the evening, when our host and Charlie entered, followed by Sonny D, who had quite dropped out of our thoughts. His eyes were still bright with excitement. The anger had evaporated but he was still gripped by powerful feelings.
"Come see this!" He was ablaze with impatience. "Look. Look, up there!" He dragged Andie, who was nearest, into the hall and pushed him up the ladder that led to the loft. "Wow!" Andie's yelp of surprise filtered down to us and we all ran  into the hall, pushing & shoving. At last I stood at the top of the ladder looking in amazement at a fleet of model sailing-ships fully rigged, sailing westward across a floor of molten gold, their bright pennants and parchment sails shining through a blizzard of dust motes lit by the evening sky. Each ship had been precisely place, the tallest in the centre and the space between each model relative to its size and the height of its masts to achieve a symmetrical and balanced design. I realised this was not a random collection, but a carefully ,constructed work of art which seemed to portray a reassuring vision of a stable and ordered universe as a counterweight to the anarchic world outside. While I was moved by the beauty of the work, I was overwhelmed by the discovery that it existed at all .
"Don't touch that! Put it down! Don't touch anything in this house!"
Davy's raised voice greeted me as I returned to the living room. Deeply upset, he was half-standing, supported by the arms of his chair, glaring at Sonny D. who was holding the model of a sea-plane in one hand and stroking the slender torpedo shaped fuselage with the other, his eyes shining with admiration.
"Right oh. But show us how to make this. I'd like to This...this is a real topper! " There was longing and wonder in his voice as he reluctantly replaced it.
"Could you make one that can fly? That would be wizard! I'll bet you could. Go on show us. You could, couldn't you?" His voice became urgent with that wilful edge that usually preceded his bullying. "Look, you're not doing anything else. Getting drunk. We want to learn. You've got time to show us! Right!" He was no longer pleading but commanding. His strength grew with his determination.
His frame became rigid and he glared at Davy as if he were his enemy.
"Away you go out of this! The lot of you. Here, away to the chip shop." He poured a heap of coins into Andie's hand. "Now, away to your own gate end !"
"Right. Right. Right. But I'll be back tomorrow. Right? You can show us, tomorrow! Right?" That was a decision, and possibly a threat.. Scared now, we sprinted away as fast as we could.
Davy lay back in his chair. Usually three whiskies and three pint chasers, were enough to ensure a pleasant somnolence, but not tonight. The encounter had unsettled him. That Sonny D. He was determined. Quite a handful. He had done no harm to the sea-plane, after all. He had seemed strangely taken with it. Maybe he could .. 
It was the only time he'd tried his hand at an aeroplane, Alex had pleaded with him, "Let's try an aeroplane, Uncle. Planes are the things of the future." It had been a bomb from an aeroplane that had killed him at Dunkirk. Six years ago, almost to the day. Alex had been an apt pupil. He'd had an eye for line and balance and an instinctive understanding of the nature of wood. He looked at the angry gash across the carving at the end of the room. That had been their latest project, the "Cutty Sark" sailing into the room, a work in progress, to be continued when Alex came home on leave. On the day his sister received the telegram, he'd driven his chisel into the wall and dragged it down slantwise against the grain ripping open a deep furrow in the polished pine. He'd not held a chisel since. What would be the point? He'd spent his life working as a carver in the boat yards and making models of fishing boats until the war and now he was reduced to repairing shoes to make a living, carving leather, or what passed for it these days.
Carving had once consumed his whole being. The mere sight of the tools, their sharp edges gleaming had fired him with anticipation. The scent of the wood and the touch of it beneath his hand filled him with joy. It had been his defence against the world and had reconciled him to his disability. Creating the carvings on the cottage walls, with young Alex growing up by his side, learning to handle the tools and absorbing his love of the craft, had been the most fulfilling years of his life. He had a sense of purpose, an energy. He felt a self confidence, a certainty that this is what he was and this is what he did. His hand drove the chisel edge, his mind guided the line. He was the carver drawing order out of nothingness and he was proud of it.
All that had changed, that awful morning he drove the chisel into the "Cutty Sark". A beautiful, shining young life pinched out by a chunk of metal flying through the air. Where was the sense in that? Beside himself with rage and grief, he'd have attacked all the others as well, had not Rachel, the telegram still in her hand, wrested the weapon from his grasp. She had revered and cared for the carvings ever since, obsessively dusting and polishing, cherishing their link with her son and a happier past. But for him, they had lost all significance. That morning he had seen them for what they were, mere scrapings and scratchings on wooden boards. Worthless. Any value they had was what he had imposed upon them. But that had been a vain illusion, an absurdity. In this transient world, there was no intrinsic value in anything and there never had been.
The familiar nausea gripped him, whenever he recalled that day and the crushing insight that self-awareness is a blip in this nothingness that is the only reality. For Rachel's sake, he would continue working, eating, sleeping, but would reject any impulse to believe that existence was anything more than an empty sham. His disillusionment was to be absolute.
Now something had happened. A change, maybe. That lad- Sonny D, they call him. Talk about cheek! But, there was a force in him, an energy that burst out. He'd been like an explosion. Now feelings, memories, longings were spinning around in his mind, and deep in the vortex hope was rising.... The clangour of the shop bell brought Davy through from his work room, just as he was preparing to close for the day. Saturday afternoon he devoted entirely to his cronies in the Alexandria Hotel. Sonny D. marched in and placed a large card-board box on the counter, while we observed from the doorway. "Right. I'm late, I know. I had to raise cash to buy this." (The investment included our pocket money.) He started to open the box.
"I, we, want you to show us how to build this. It's a seaplane. A model. But it'll fly. It's called the "Solent Goose." His words were slurred because his mouth was still badly swollen but his tone was sharp and urgent.
"Look. Away ye go, the lot of ye. I'm closing. I've got things to do. I'm not spending Saturday afternoon with the likes of you!" Davy protested as he hung up his apron.
"You see all the stuff is here, the plans, the balsa wood, the glue. The pub can wait. Show us how to build it." By now the counter was strewn with the contents of the box. Sonny D. unfolding the plan of the fuselage, went behind the counter and into the workroom where Davy had retreated. "Well, just tell us how to get started. That can't take a minute."
"A minute? A minute? It'll take you weeks to build a thing like that, laddie." Davy took the plans and turned them to the window. "You need patience for this kind of thing...and concentration...you have to have the right feeling for it and, well commitment.. .D'ye know what that is? Och, it's impossible." He folded the plan again, but kept it in his hand, "Ye' re too... too hasty. Ye can't settle to anything I'm told."
"Right. I'm in earnest. Honest. I want to make this plane and the models you have in your house. They're the greatest things I have ever seen. But I want to make them work. This plane will fly!"
Davy limped back to the counter and picked up a shiny new scalpel with a brass handle and a steel blade. He tested the balance. He drew his thumb lightly across the edge, "Razor sharp. This is not a toy, you know. This is a proper tool."
We waited as he inspected the contents of the box, lifting up the sheets of balsa wood, feeling the texture between his fingers. "Difficult to cut against the grain, this stuff. You'll have to be very careful." We nodded, wisely. "You see, with a thing like this you can really try for perfection.... That would be your aim, d'you see. Perfection. Aye. That's what you'd go for." He fell silent and then noticing us again, "Cut out the pieces exactly with no ragged edges and fit them together absolutely accurately...and you could get as close to perfection as anyone ever could. That would be worth doing, wouldn't it. Eh?"
We nodded.
"Over to the window sill then and spread out the plan. We'll go for the fuselage, first."
Intended for displays, the shop windowsill was long and wide and being well lit, made a perfect work bench. "Get the stools from the back-shop, and we'll make a start." Over the next few weeks, Davy and Sonny D. spent their evenings, cutting, assembling, gluing on the windowsill while passers-by and customers watched as the bits of wood arranged themselves into wings and floats and a tail. Davy's cronies saw less of him at the Alexandria and Sonny returned to school as an alternative to work which would have left him little time for the Solent Goose.
The early days of their partnership were stormy. Sonny D's restless mind was accustomed to racing ahead to the next project and the next, scarcely wasting a passing glance on the present. Davy's absorption in the present, as he patiently strove for perfection, drove him wild with frustration. He wanted to get his plane air-born within the week.
"Get a grip of yourself. Think about the job on hand. You've got to respect the thing you're working on. It's not enough to bring it into being, you must make sure it's perfect otherwise what's the point? And that takes time and patience. Now, go for precision, take your time, enjoy using your tools and get the feel of the wood. We know where we are going and we'll get there soon enough.
"Sonny D. strove to find meaning in the instant and significance in each stroke of his knife until at last he kept time with his companion's patient rhythm, and in seeking after perfection, each found a new reason for living.
At sunset, on the last Friday of the summer holidays, we all met at the brae-head by Davy's cottage to launch the Solent Goose on her maiden flight. Over the past two weeks of test flights, the plane had mysteriously acquired a personality and became referred to as "she" rather than "it" and now, tonight, "she" was ready to make her debut.
Sonny D. held her at arm's length, her silver and gold paintwork glowing in the evening sunlight, the leading edges shining like sharpened steel. Davy spun the propeller to start the model diesel engine that was to power her. Sonny raised her above his head, the engine fired and she lifted off as sweetly as a falcon from the fowler's wrist. Immediately, she became a silhouette against the sinking sun, then a single black line wavering and melting away and then nothing at all. Aghast, we turned to Sonny D. accusingly. She was supposed to fly in a circle. He was to have set the rudder.
"Great. She was great, wizard. Did you see how she took off? Not a quiver. Now, she has the whole sky to herself. She can go where she pleases. That's freedom." He turned to Davy, his eyes shining, his face beaming in triumph. "There now, you see, that's perfection!" He was delighted with his coup and our dismay. That was Sonny D. for you.
Glumly we returned to Davy's cottage, for biscuits and lemonade, our pocket money having quite literally vanished into thin air. "I' m sorry as well to have lost the Solent Goose. That was wrong of you to do that, Sonny D. We all had a share in that plane." Sonny D was looking at the 'Cutty Sark'.
"You've filled in the gash! You're going to finish it! Can I help? You could teach me to be a carver!" His tone became subdued. "Aye, right, but it was finished. It's flying That was the point, wasn't it? Now now... we can finish the 'Cutty Sark.' Davy continued, "Can you follow this? He's right, in a way. We made the Solent Goose out of wood and paper and glue. We added value to the stuff we used by changing it into something worthwhile. And that was good, in itself. But we also added value to ourselves by changing ourselves. And we are a lot better of it. The Solent Goose did its work. It helped us to look beyond our emptiness for something worthwhile in our lives. Now we can start to live again thanks, to our sea-plane."

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