Three Poems by C. Taesler

Three poems by Clemens Taesler, pastor of the Unitarische Freie Religionsgemeinde in Frankfurt/M from 1918-1962, as published in Unter dem Lichte der Sonne (1958).

God in you
If the light of God is not in you,
how would you even detect it!
And if salvation is not in you,
how should God save your spirit!

The way to God
Should you seek to unearth the all-world-being,
You must consecrate your life with meaning!
Should you seek to find God in all creation,
God must first direct your worldly action!

Having God
As much sun as you place in your life,
That much of God you carry in your soul.

Translations mine.


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Ballou's Justice

In an anecdote relayed by Universalist historian Ernest Cassara, a skeptical hostess confronts Hosea Ballou in the kitchen. Asking the woman whether she is planning to mop up the floor just as it is, Ballou continues: “True. You do not require it to be made clean before you will consent to mop it up. God saves men to purify them; that’s what salvation is designed for. God does not require men to be pure in order that he may save them.” In contrast with Unitarian gestures towards ‘Salvation by Character,’ Ballou’s brand of Universalism places the agency for salvation not in humanity’s hands, but in God’s.

Ballou, thus, necessarily expands and explodes the idea of justice as well to accommodate a new divine judge. Deviating from the connotations of harsh retribution, wherein justice equates to fairness and mercy to deficient softness, Ballou enjoins the two. In so doing, he infuses justice with the virtues of forgiveness, reconciliation and compassion: “My opponent will say, the blessed are happified in consequence of the misery of the wretched. But what reason can be given for such an idea?” (Treatise, 141).

Thus, Ballou stands in a unique strand of thinkers ranging from the ancient Greeks (e.g. Aristotle’s ‘equity’) and later Seneca to Martha Nussbaum’s ‘equity tradition.’ Ballou, too, challenges us to redirect justice towards ‘moral outcomes’ and to understand human behavior as implicated in a complex narrative of effort in a world of obstacles.

Prophetically, he asks: “how would a judge appear who should manifest joy and gladness on pronouncing the sentence of death upon one of his fellow-men? Who would not turn from such a court with disgust and deep abhorrence?” (Treatise, 193)

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God - Clemens Taesler

A poem by Clemens Taesler, pastor of the Unitarian Free Religious Community in Frankfurt, Germany from 1918 - 1962:

God
Clemens Taesler

God looms eternally near and far,
above and within the world; –
he is its innermost intimate law,
all things he carries and holds.

God is the ever unmovable Being
becoming and passing on;
he is the line of reason
in every worldly concern.

God is the meaning in worldly fate
and radiates back in us
in all our yearning for the light
in all our sorrow-aged bliss.

Endless, eternal, unexplored, –
he nears our journey’s path,
when we try to unlearn our ego
in a precious loving-act.


Translation mine.


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Words

In her 1842 collection entitled Words in a Sunday School, Unitarian teacher Eliza Thayer Clapp instructs her female students that “words are very important things” (136). Sikhism, as well, recognizes the power of language: even as countless names prove insufficient to fully capture the entirety of God, "words are required to describe God’s virtues and to praise them" (SGGS 4.7). In the Western imaginary, following Wittgenstein, language exists relatively, amounting to a game in which we all participate, with nothing real or fixed behind it. And yet, in Vedic tradition, there exists no qualitative or ontological difference between the signifier and the referent (i.e. the word and the thing it represents). To recite a mantra, for example, is to actually summon the gods.

What would it mean for our speech if we were to adopt such a mindset - if we were to see words as very important things? Might we replace hurtful slurs with verbal gestures of love? Might we summon tenderness over bigotry?

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Prayer for Academic Beginnings

Oh gracious living, loving, laughing God,
Great Spirit of Life,
You who are known by so many names,
And yet by no single name fully known-

Ours is a petition for nothing less than transformation.

We come bearing textbooks, steeped in study,
Overcommitted, overindulgent, overexpectant;
We come with cares and concerns,
Joys and sorrows,
Twitches, tremors, tosses and turns.

Surprise us, o God, with the miracle of new joy;
Open our eyes to the pregnant promise of new hope;
Attune our minds to the profound prospect of new faith;
Awaken our souls to the purifying potential of new love.

Call us, o God, to our knees.
Call us, o God, to break bread and praise life.
Call us, o God, to serve one another and this world with humility and grace.

As Your wind lifts up the birds;
As Your sunlight colors the seasons;
As Your rainfall nourishes our gardens;
Grant us Your strength, Your light, Your sustenance;
So that love may surround us
Everywhere, everywhere,
We may go.

Amen.

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Freedom From Religion?

With all the blogosphere hubub surrounding the recent advertisement in UU World for the Freedom From Religion organization, I couldn't help but take a look at the spread myself. While I wholeheartedly welcome humanist, even atheistic, perspectives, my issue with the advertisement derives from its rhetorical campaign not against God, but against religion itself. A Freedom From Theism or Freedom From Peeping Tom in the Sky organization would be welcomed by some in our denomination - which is fine. However, the notion of a religious magazine publicizing an organization committed, at least in name, to the eradication of religion seems at best counterintuitive, at worst ludicrous. 

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Guilt and Responsibility

I have begun archival research for this semester's independent study on the genealogy of free religion in Germany. Already, I intend to rename the project German Unitarianisms, on account of the multiple strands and specificity of nomenclature enmeshed within this quilt of German liberal traditions.

Naturally, one of the first questions to surface revolves around the role of self-identified unitarian churches in the NSDAP: preaching the Good News of tolerance and human dignity, these congregations encountered head-on the greatest test of their ethical (and political) resiliency with the rise of a racist and exclusivist ideology under Hitler. I hesitate to offer a conclusive answer thus far as to the degree of involvement and accommodation, yet I did come across challenging and provocative confessions by Pfr. Clemens Taesler, then-pastor of the unitarische freireligioese Gemeinde in Frankfurt, Germany: his tangential participation in the NSDAP should be explained, he insists, in terms of his responsibility for his family's safety and concern about the dissolution of his congregation. Moreover, without his gestures towards the NSDAP, thousands of people would have had to suffer through the toughest periods without religious support ("hätten tausende von Menschen auf jeden religiösen Trost ... in der schwersten Zeit verzichten müssen").

While this explanation certainly does not amount to a clean absolution, it raises a profound issue: to whom is the minister responsible? Does a pastor's decision to appease a hate-filled ideology in the name of maintaining a fellowship of religious support necessarily stain him with guilt? When faced with the decision for abstract justice or concrete community, which does one choose?

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