Reading 1: Extracts from an essay by Francis Power Cobbe - a feminist and Unitarian from the late 19th Century.
Reading 2: Extracts about Annie Dillard, botanist and mystic; taken from Women in search of the Sacred
Hymn - Nearer My God To Thee
Address:
Today I have chosen to think about some
of the women who have had an influence for me in this life of mine. Today I feel really
lucky, lucky and privileged. My chosen path, towards ministry and indeed within
the six and half years of ministry to date, has been relatively easy, and the question of
my gender has not been an issue at all; but of course it has not always been so
for women and even within the enlightened Unitarian movement women have sometimes found
it difficult to express themselves. We
just have to look at the writing of Francis Power Cobbe and read her
descriptions of a woman’s role, to realise how difficult it was for women to
outwardly make a connection with the divine.
Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904) was one of the most influential figures
in the British Unitarian movement of her day. Although she lacked formal
educational and professional credentials, she made her way among the leaders of
progressive thought by sheer force of personality and intellect. According to
Unitarian historian Alexander Gordon,
"In detaching Unitarians from the older supernaturalism, her influence was
considerable."
In
the wider community she was one of the foremost protagonists for the
emancipation of women, educational and social reform, and a more humane
treatment of animals. Cobbe was not always a Unitarian, she was brought up with
Calvinism, but started to question this in her teens. By the time she reached
her twenties she denied immortality, the divinity of Christ, the trinity, and
the divine inspiration and authority of the bible. When her mother died, she confided her
beliefs to her father and he immediately banished her from his house. A year later though he invited her to return,
as his housekeeper! She persisted in her
religious studies through the works of Theodore Parker; whose theology
presented God, not as a conquering king, but as a Father/Mother, Infinite in
power, wisdom and love.
Another
active suffragette and Unitarian was Sarah Flower Adams, born 1805 and died in
1848.
Unlike Frances, Sarah grew up as a
Unitarian. Her father was editor and
owner of The Cambridge Intelligencer, and she married William Brydges Adams, a
well-known inventor and civil engineer. When she married Adams, she made an
agreement with him that she would do no Housekeeping. She is most well known
for her poetry and her hymn writing. She
met people such as Robert Browning, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Leigh
Hunt, and Harriet Martineau, but her convictions owed much to Thomas Southwood
Smith, the health reformer, with whom she lived for many years; and there was
her association with William Johnson Fox’s radical Unitarian congregation in
the 1830’s. It was at this time when she
was most prolific with her hymn writing, contributing at least 13 hymns to the
Hymns and anthems published in 1841.
The
hymn - Nearer, my God to thee!’, is easily the most
famous. It has been said that it was
this hymn that was played by the band on the Titanic as it sank. It was a favourite hymn for funerals and the
bandleader from the Titanic had always said he wanted it played at ‘his’
funeral so maybe that is where the story came from.
An
internet site says this of her. ‘Her
feminism and professionalism, the nature of her work, and her unconventional
lifestyle were all grounded in Unitarianism, the most progressive and
liberating ideology of the 19th century.
There
are many other 19th century women I could mention but there is one
who is quite significant for me and that lady is Florence Nightingale.
She is most remembered as a pioneer of
nursing and a reformer of hospital sanitation methods. She pushed for reform of the British Military
health-care system and with that the profession of nursing started to gain the
respect it deserved. What is generally
less well known about her though was her development of new statistical methods
of analysis. She developed the ‘polar
area diagram’, which was the first form of the Pi chart. She was an innovator in the collecting,
tabulation, interpretation and graphical display of descriptive
statistics. I used to be a maths teacher
before becoming a minister and just as I developed my love of mathematics from
my father, so too did Florence develop her love for mathematics from her
father, when he took over the education of his two daughters. However, he did not really approve when she
begged her parents to let her study mathematics instead of ‘…worsted work and
practising quadrilles.’ He urged
Florence to study subjects more appropriate for a woman, but after many
emotional battles her parents relented and allowed her to be tutored in maths.
Religion
was important to Florence and her unbiased view was owed to the liberal outlook
in her home. Her parents were from a
Unitarian background although the sisters were brought up as Church of
England. On the 7th February
in 1837, Florence Nightingale believed she heard her calling from God, although
she did not appreciate what that calling was to be. She never married, as she believed that God
had decided she was one whom he ‘had clearly marked out … to be a single
woman.’ There are many quotes attributed
to Florence Nightingale, but most of these are about her work and social
reform, but I did find one that shows us her more religious outlook.
“For
what is mysticism? Is it not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or
ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for ‘The
Kingdom of Heaven is within’? Heaven is neither a place nor a time." (1873)
Women
of today owe so much to these liberal women of the 19th and early 20th
Century, without their efforts in both social and religious matters women such
as Annie Dillard could not express themselves as they do, today. Annie is a botanist and a mystic, I could
have chosen any of her experiences to use for a reading, but what is important
is that they all relate to the way in which to view life.
As Anne Bancroft says in her book ‘Women in
Search of the Sacred’, “…
Throughout Annie Dillard’s work there is the feeling that for life to be worth
living it must be unrushed, based on inner silence and space, where living in
the present is the most important act, where sounds can be really heard and
sights really seen.” Or as Annie herself
says, “I walk out. I see something some event that would otherwise have been
utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me
with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell.”
When
Annie ‘saw’ that tree in the reading she recognised this as a glimpse of the
eternal, a gateway to the divine. She
began to recognise this in other moments too, such as sitting on a pavement
drinking a cup of coffee, stroking a puppy and gazing into the hills on the
horizon. In each moment though, the
point when she recognizes the connection is the moment when she returns to
reality and she has to move on always in the hope that she will be ready to
open up once more. How fortunate she is,
to have the freedom in her life to be open to these experiences, and without
all those liberal women of the past it is a freedom that she would not have.
And
how fortunate I am to have found my chosen path, within this liberal religion
of ours that one hundred years ago allowed the first woman to train for the
Ministry. I started this address by
saying how I felt lucky and privileged to be in my position, and now as I come
to close I want to tell you about something that is very special to me. In my spare time I quilt – creating out of
small scraps of fabric things of beauty such as this quilt that I made for my
daughter.
Quilting is an activity that
requires pure concentration, there is much room for error so I can’t afford for
my mind to wander. I become for a time absorbed and
completely in the moment. In some small way, in the words of Sarah Flower Adams
through this creative activity I am brought ‘Nearer, my God, to thee, Nearer to
thee!’, or it can be said I experience the ‘inward disposition’ mentioned by
Florence Nightingale. Or in Annie
Dillard’s terms I open up my senses and make a connection with the Eternal.
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