Quest Archives
by Lynn Ungar, consulting minister, Napa, California
It’s hard to imagine how any European might end up as a doctor in Equatorial West Africa, treating people in the hot, wet, malaria-infested jungle. That, in 1913, a renowned theologian, philosopher and organist would defy his friends, mentors and family and travel to an inconceivably foreign land; that he would there serve as a missionary for a group with whom he had profound theological differences by establishing a hospital for people whose language and ways he knew not in the least, almost defies imagination. What could possess a man to do such a thing? The answer is as simple as it is hard to fathom. He did it because it seemed like the right thing to do.
Church of the Larger Fellowship February 2, 2004
We are offering additional web based resources to accompany this month's edition of Quest, which focuses on Albert Schweitzer.
Please note: We'll be trying out this new Announce list feature for the next few months. Your feedback will be most helpful. You can reach the list managers at CLF-Announce-owner@lists.uua.org.
More about Albert Schweitzer's life: The Association Internationale Albert Schweitzer, with headquarters in Gunsbach, France, maintain a museum and archive. The website includes biographical information and some photos of the homes in Gunsbach. The website is provided in multiple languages - click on your choice.
CLF and Rev. George Marshall This brief history of our congregation will put some context to Rev. Marshall's outreach work as the minister of CLF.
UU Sermon Award in Schweitzer's Honor The Unitarian Universalists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals presents an annual Albert Schweitzer Sermon Award. The award is presented to the Unitarian Universalist presentor of a sermon that best exemplifies Schweitzer's principle of "reverence for life." Browse several years worth of the winning sermons.
Dr. Schweitzer's Nobel peace Prize Lecture 1952 "What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shake us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place."
Albert Schweitzer was born January 14th, 1875, in Alsace, the borderland between France and Germany. His father was a liberal Protestant minister, his maternal grandfather an organist and organ builder. Albert’s interests, career and values were clearly shaped by his family. But in his life’s story he was an original.
For all the subtlety and sophistication of his thought, for all the mind-boggling range of his life choices and experience, what stands out for me about Albert Schweitzer is a kind of unyielding simplicity. Religion was the great guiding force in his life, but it was a Christianity pared of dogma, subjected unflinchingly to the fires of thought, so that what eventually remained was a pure, unadulterated and irresistible nugget, the life and words of Jesus summed up in the imperative to love God and neighbor. What is remarkable about Schweitzer, in addition to the incredible seriousness with which he took this commandment to love, is the fact that he truly believed that the category of neighbor extends not only beyond the bounds of those we know and like, but also beyond the bounds of the human race itself, to encompass all living things. This sophisticated philosopher and theologian was to sum up the whole of ethics and morality in one simple phrase: “reverence for life.”July 9, 2006ity of this phrase is made all the more remarkable by the complexity and variety of the life of the man who declared it. Albert, who had started playing piano at the age of five, and who first played the organ for his father’s church at the age of nine, studied with a master organ teacher in addition to his full schedule of school, homework, chores and piano. Albert was told that after his confirmation in the Lutheran church he would be allowed to take lessons on the beautiful organ at St. Stephen’s Church. Highly motivated by the longing for the organ, and by his need to please his minister father by doing well in his confirmation examinations, Albert nonetheless was plagued with questions as to how the Bible could be literally true. He could not accept in his heart his instructor’s assurances that these things must simply be taken on faith. Schweitzer writes, “I was convinced—and I am so still—that the fundamental principles of Christianity have to be proved true by reasoning, and by no other method. Reason, I said to myself, has been given us that we may bring everything within the range of its action, even the most exalted ideas of religion.”
In 1893 Schweitzer enrolled in the University of Strasbourg, where his main subjects were philosophy and theology. The work for his Doctor of Theology thesis led, in 1906, to the publication of Schweitzer’s great theological work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer went on to lecture in both theology and philosophy at the University, and his ground-breaking work in understanding the words of Jesus from a historical perspective brought him wide renown as a theologian. In the midst of this he served as one of three pastors at St. Nicolai’s Church and toured as a virtuoso organist. With his teacher, the great French organist Charles-Marie Widor, he also edited the first five volumes of The Complete Organ Works of J.S. Bach. Apparently the man pretty much didn’t sleep.
At thirty, Albert Schweitzer was famous. He was sought-after as a musician in all of the great capitals of Europe, he was a leading scholar and one of the world’s great theologians and philosophers. One might think that he would have been satisfied. However, a deep spiritual unrest continued to gnaw at him. He enjoyed teaching and preaching, loved performing and scholarly research, but nothing truly gave him the depth of connection and meaning that he longed for. His unyielding adherence to reason left him out of place amongst a seminary faculty that were bent on teaching a more fundamentalist faith, and Schweitzer felt it would be unfair for him to lead students into confusion and turmoil by teaching his own rather heretical beliefs. Faced with this dilemma, he resolved to leave the seminary. “I decided,” he later told his friend Norman Cousins, “that I would make my life my argument. I would advocate the things I believed in terms of the life I lived and what I did.”
The particular form of that living witness came about more by chance than by any carefully worked out scheme. In the autumn of 1904 he happened to leaf through the monthly magazine of the Paris Missionary Society, and an article entitled “The Needs of the Congo Mission” caught his eye. The article was an emotional appeal for doctors to serve as missionaries amongst the people of the Upper Congo, who were devastated by disease, much of it introduced by colonizing Europeans, and who were without the aid of any modern medicine.
Schweitzer’s course was determined. In January of 1905 he said in a sermon at St. Nicolai’s: “When you speak about missions, let this be your message: We must make atonement for all the terrible crimes we read of in the newspapers. We must make atonement for the still worse ones which we do not read about in the papers, crimes that are shrouded in the silence of the jungle night. Then you preach Christianity and missionary work at the same time.” The sermon that was Schweitzer’s life and mission was not to convert “the savages,” but rather to try to atone for what White folk had done to Black folk.
Not surprisingly, Schweitzer’s resolution to serve as a doctor in Africa was greeted with shock and dismay by those who knew him best. How could he throw away a brilliant career and leave home and family behind to undertake a field completely unknown to him? Only Helene Bresslau, the daughter of a Jewish professor who was Schweitzer’s friend, seemed to understand. Helene was his companion and supporter through the years of medical school and fundraising that were to come. Determined to join him in his great mission, Helene studied to become a nurse. In June of 1912, mere days before Schweitzer was to leave for Africa, she became his wife as well. This is also supposedly the date of the first time that Albert ever kissed her.
There isn’t time to tell the full story of the fifty years that Albert Schweitzer spent in West Africa. That time is marked by years of grinding effort, not only treating the sick and injured, but also building by hand the hospital that was to house those patients. In addition to his work as doctor and as scholar, Schweitzer became not only building manager, but also fund-raiser and financial manager for the hospital, which survived for decades on the edge of financial doom. Indeed, by the end of the Second World War, it was only a $4300 gift from the Unitarian Service Committee that kept the hospital from having to close its doors for good.
The later years, however, were marked by fame and world-wide admiration. In 1953, in honor of both his humanitarian work at the Schweitzer-Bresslau Hospital in Lambaréné and in recognition of his political action for peace, Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace prize. The hospital which had started in a refitted chicken shed eventually grew to seventy-five buildings, where people found everything from treatment for sleeping sickness to a long-term residential colony for lepers.
Through it all, Schweitzer clung fiercely as always to his own sense of what was right and good and necessary. Much was stripped from him in his adherence to what he saw as true and moral: his academic career, his family, the comforts of Europe, even his faith in the church that was everything to him in his younger years. In 1962 Schweitzer told a group in Lambaréné: “From the days of my Confirmation classes, I was unhappy with the tendency of many Christians to evade the issues of the ethical application of the teachings of Jesus.... With the rise of Hitler I came to realize that the Church could not be counted upon to withstand the state or the culture in which it held a privileged position.… Something within me died, and I thought, ‘What is left?’ As I looked about me, I realized only a few small sects, like the Unitarians and the Quakers, were the only real hope—they and the new modern spirit of humanism which might rekindle the true spirit of Jesus.”
That’s no small demand, to be the only real hope for the salvation of the world, the last chance for Reverence for Life to shape the way that we live in the world. I don’t know that any of us would simply walk away from all our comforts and conveniences to devote ourselves to the preservation of life. But it matters to me that we remember that there are heroes who have made that choice, and who continue to call out to each of us, reminding us that our own small sacrifices are only a beginning.
As Albert Einstein wrote of Schweitzer in honor of his eightieth birthday: “He did not preach and did not warn and did not dream that his example would be an ideal and a comfort to innumerable people. He simply acted out of inner necessity. There thus still lies hidden, everywhere in many people, an indestructibly good core. Otherwise they would not have recognized him and his simple greatness.”
May that simple greatness live in us.
by Jane Rzepka, minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship
A few years back, Jane wrote the following column about Albert Schweitzer. In an effort to offer you a selection of material about Schweitzer in a single issue of Quest, we have decided to repeat her piece. —Editor
Every congregation has a story to tell. Maybe members all know about the time in the ’20s when lightning struck the steeple, and it keeled over, darn near landing on the greedy grocer who consistently overcharged. Or the time when the river rose and flowed right across the freeway and into the elementary school gym that the fellowship used to rent for Sunday services—the coffee pot and hymn books, stored in a cardboard box on the floor in the corner, were never the same. Maybe the congregation had an infamous member, or a famous one.
The Church of the Larger Fellowship did. We had a famous member. Here at the CLF, we don’t have steeples that topple or hymn books to dry out, but we do have wonderful members—many of whom deserve to be famous—and a few who actually are. One such was Albert Schweitzer. Dr. Schweitzer is one of the CLF’s stories.
“Is it true?” That’s what everybody asks. “Sure it’s true.” “So Albert Schweitzer was a Unitarian?” “Well, sort of.”
When I was young, we heard a lot about Albert Schweitzer in Sunday school because he was such a sterling example of how a person could put religious values into practice. He was a hero.
We tried to imagine this man from Alsace building a clinic in the jungle, providing food, clothing, housing, and medical treatment for patients and their families. We pictured the leprosy, the flies, the impossible heat and humidity, the struggle to pay the bills, and we thought he was the greatest. I am still impressed.
George Marshall, the minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, began corresponding with Albert Schweitzer in the 1950s. He raised $50 for Schweitzer’s hospital, and began to visit him in Africa. He co-authored a book about his friend, Schweitzer: A Biography, (easily available to CLF members from our loan library). In due course, Marshall invited Schweitzer to join the Church of the Larger Fellowship, and the great man accepted:
I thank you cordially for your offer to make me an honoured member of the Unitarian Church. I accept with pleasure. Even as a student I worked on the problem and history of the Unitarian Church and developed sympathy for your affirmation of Christian freedom at a time when it resulted in persecution. Gradually I established closer contact with Unitarian communities and became familiar with their faith-in-action. Therefore I thank you that through you I have been made an honoured member of this church.
This letter appeared on the cover of the CLF newsletter, and it caused a rumpus which spilled over into Time magazine. Had Schweitzer, who long felt constrained by traditional Christianity, turned his back on Lutheranism, the religion of his birth? It would not have been surprising, and it would have been news.
But Schweitzer made it clear that no, he was not breaking his relationship with the Lutheran Church, implying that he could remain on good terms with more than one religion.
Here’s what I predict: In time, for us at the CLF, Albert Schweitzer will become part of the story of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Even though he was a member, the facts of the matter, the technicalities of denominational affiliation, the quotation, the details, will seem less alive as the years pass, but the story will live. Long after we are gone, CLF members will know about the hospital in Africa, about the theology of reverence for life, and how the two fit together.
Even now, for those CLF members who are living similar lives in Africa, or Detroit, or Central America, or rural Maine, may this story serve as further validation. And for the rest of us, may Albert Schweitzer’s words find a place in whatever life we are living: I am only a person living his religion.
The question keeps coming up. Schweitzer’s connections with Unitarian Universalism are solid, as evidenced by the memories below. Was he a Unitarian? We’ll leave it to you to decide. And if you have personal anecdotes, please send them along to us! —Editor
From the Rev. C. Leon Hopper, Bellevue, Washington: “It was July, and I was working in the youth office as the volunteer field secretary for the American Unitarian Youth (predecessor to the LRY, predecessor to the YRUU). The day was as hot and muggy as only a July day in Boston without air conditioning could be. The Beacon Press had published some works of Albert Schweitzer and on that day Schweitzer had been invited to visit “25.” A call came to the youth office to announce that there would be a reception for Dr. Schweitzer, and we were invited to attend.
The AUY Director, Paul Henniges, and I put on our jackets (and ties too) and proceeded to the second floor where others were milling about, curious and eager.
The elevator door opened and Dr. Schweitzer emerged—his shock of wild gray hair akimbo, a somewhat shaggy mustache, blue eyes, string tie—and the heaviest black wool suit I could ever imagine! For a moment Dr. Schweitzer seemed bewildered and dazed from too much travel.
Dr. Eliot (Frederick May Eliot, American Unitarian Association president, 1937 to 1958), gracious in his greeting, proceeded to try to escort Dr. Schweitzer to the corner of the room in order to form a reception line so that everyone could flow by, giving the great man our respects.
Much to Dr. Eliot's dismay, Dr. Schweitzer would have nothing to do with a receiving line. Instead, with grace and dignity of character, fully oriented, he proceeded to go about the room, without escort or pomp, extending his hand, greeting everyone there.
It was a singularly profound gesture. He moved about the room as if to say: “You do not need to come to me—I will reach out to you. We shall meet, engage.”
The introvert in me needed then (and continually needs) the reminder of that great gesture of simply reaching out, going forth, engagement. We are not in a “receiving line” of life. We grow, I learned, from reaching out across lands, across barriers of ethnicity, race, culture, and language to others.”
The Rev. Richard Boeke, of Horsham, England, writes: “Dana Greeley (UUA president, 1961 to 1969) and George Marshall visited Schweitzer in Africa, and there was a bust of Schweitzer in Greeley’s office at 25 Beacon Street. (When I first glanced at the bust, I thought it was Joe Stalin….)” Ed.’s note: This bust of Albert Schweitzer currently resides in the CLF office.
The Rev. Orloff Miller, of Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany continues: “Richard Boeke's recollection concerning the bust of Albert Schweitzer deserves a further footnote. That bust was indeed thought to so much resemble Joseph Stalin that during the Cold War it was kept hidden. When Rhea, Schweitzer's daughter (an only child, born Jan 14, 1919, on her father's birthday) was scheduled to visit 25 Beacon a few years after her father's death, and during Dana Greeley's UUA presidency, someone fortuitously recalled the bust and a search was made. It was found in a hall closet just outside Dana's office and prominently displayed in time for the reception given in Rhea's honor. Perhaps the twinkle I noted in her eyes as we shook hands suggests that she had become aware of this bit of legerdemain.”
Miller also writes: “I was present at President Dana Greeley’s weekly staff meeting in Boston the day George Marshall read the translation of Schweitzer’s letter to the Church of the Larger Fellowship, of which George was then minister. Schweitzer had been invited to become a member of the CLF. George was particularly concerned as to whether the key word in the original language of Schweitzer’s letter (written in either German or French) was ‘honored’ or ‘honorary,’ and had been assured by the translator that Albert Schweitzer had specifically stated that he was pleased to be an ‘honored member’ of the CLF.”
From the Rev. Andrew Hill of Edinburgh, Scotland, comes the information that, according to George Marshall’s article “The Religious Philosophy of Schweitzer and Unitarian Universalism” in Faith and Freedom 29:2 (Spring 1976), Schweitzer and Frederick May Eliot “held a conversation…the minutes of which were placed in a sealed envelope never to be opened while either was alive. The envelope has never been found.”
The Rev. Donald Herrington writes from Transylvania, “I was with Vilma (The Rev. Vilma Harrington) meeting with him in his tiny hut at Lambaréné, when she asked him whether he was or was not a Unitarian. He replied, ‘Yes, I am a Unitarian. I belong to the Church of the Larger Fellowship, and also the Unitarian Church in Capetown.’ For someone of Schweitzer’s broad mentality he could be a Unitarian without breaking away from the Lutheran Church of his childhood.”
(Note: the language in these quotes has been altered to reflect our contemporary expectations of inclusive language. —Editor)
We advanced slowly on our trip upstream…. Before boarding the steamer, I had resolved to devote the entire trip to the problem of how a culture could be brought into being that possessed a greater moral depth and energy than the one we lived in. I filled page on page with disconnected sentences, primarily to center my every thought on the problem. Weariness and a sense of despair paralyzed my thinking. At sunset of the third day, near the village of Igendja, we moved along an island set in the middle of the wide river. On a sandbank to our left, four hippopotamuses and their young plodded along in our same direction. Just then, in my great tiredness and discouragement, the phrase “Reverence for Life” struck me like a flash. As far as I knew, it was a phrase I had never heard nor ever read. I realized at once that it carried within itself the solution to the problem that had been torturing me. Now I knew that a system of values which concerns itself only with our relationship to other people is incomplete and therefore lacking in power for good. Only by means of reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this fashion can we avoid harming others, and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us. (Albert Schweitzer Speaks Out)
People are ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to them, that of plants and animals as that of our fellow humans, and when they devote themselves hopefully to all of life that is in need of help. (Out of My Life and Thought)
The final decision as to what the future of a society shall be depends not on how near its organization is to perfection, but on the degrees of worthiness of its individual members. (The Decay and Restoration of Civilization)
The great secret of success is to go through life as a person who never gets used up. That is possible for one who never argues and strives with people and facts, but in all experiences retires into oneself and looks for the ultimate cause of things in oneself. (Memoirs)
Those who are always striving to refine their character can never be robbed of their idealism, for they experience in themselves the power of ideals of the good and true. (Memoirs)
It was, and still is, my conviction that the humanitarian work to be done in the world should, for its accomplishment, call us as human beings, not as members of any particular nation or religious body. (On the Edge of the Primeval Forest)
Because I have confidence in the power of truth and of the spirit, I believe in the future of humankind. Ethical acceptance of the world contains within itself an optimistic willing and hoping which can never be lost. It is, therefore, never afraid to face the dismal reality, and to see it as it really is. (Out of My Life and Thought)
Love cannot be put into a system of rules and regulations... We all must decide for ourselves how far we can go toward carrying out the boundless commandment of love without surrendering our own existence. (Memoirs)
Our human atmosphere is much colder than it need be, because we do not venture to give ourselves to others as heartily as our feelings bid us. (Memoirs)
With a little reason and much heart, one can change many things, or move mountains. (Out of My Life and Thought)
CLF members are invited to submit nominations for the UUA Unsung UU Award. The Unsung UU Award honors a person judged to have given high levels of service to UUism, while receiving relatively low levels of recognition. If you know someone in our congregation who has given to Unitarian Universalism at this level, email the office at clf@clfuu.org or mail to CLF, 25 Beacon Street, Boston MA 02108 for the board’s consideration. Deadline is March 31, 2004.
by Denny Davidoff, Board of Directors, Church of the Larger Fellowship
Organizations and the people within them do research for two primary reasons: to learn things they may not already know and to confirm that what they think they know is actually the truth.
The recent research undertaking by the board and staff of our congregation had similar goals. We wanted to learn what our members think of our programs and services, our methods of communication, and their lives as CLF congregants. And we also wanted to test the validity of some of our core assumptions.
The research was conducted by an outside firm, Market-Voice Communications in Indianapolis, so that the results would not be tainted by bias or incompetence.
So what did we find out?
There are significant differences between our new members (those who joined in 2002) and members of longer duration:
And how are all CLF members similar?
Thanks to everyone who participated. We hope to publish a more in-depth analysis in future issues of Quest.
The poet Denise Levertov, in her book The Poet in the World, writes this advice to poets: “If we are to survive...our own struggle to make it new—a struggle I believe we have no choice but to commit ourselves to—we need tremendous transfusions of imaginative energy.” She says, “If...people committed themselves, took risks, and did not let themselves be dominated by the pursuit of ‘security,’ their daily lives would be so changed, so infused with new experiences and with the new energy that often comes with them, that inevitably their poetry would change too.”
I’m no poet, but I am a minister, and ministers also need infusions of new experiences and new energy. So it is that most Unitarian Universalist congregations, including the CLF, send their ministers away on sabbatical as part of the employment agreement.
Mine begins on March 1. Details will follow in Quest in the next several issues. I’ll be back for the month of June, and finish up the sabbatical in July and August. Because we put Quest together so far in advance, you won’t notice my absence in print until July or so.
The Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, the CLF staff, and I are excited about putting plans in place that will continue all the aspects of my ministry while I’m away. We’ll keep you posted.
If you would like to represent the Church of the Larger Fellowship at General Assembly this year, it’s not too soon to start planning. The CLF is entitled to have 22 delegates at the General Assembly in Long Beach, California from June 24 to 28, 2004. You'll be able to attend workshops, concerts, programs, and worship services galore, while meeting Unitarian Universalists from near and far. And of course as a delegate you will be able to vote during plenary sessions.
Our delegates are asked to attend the CLF Annual Meeting and the CLF Worship Service and to work a minimum of three hours in the CLF booth. You can meet our minister, the Rev. Jane Rzepka, and the CLF staff, too.
If you’d like to participate in GA 2004 by representing the CLF as a delegate, your costs in addition to your travel include adult full-time registrations ($250 per adult before May 1st), hotel rooms at about $130 a night (this figure may increase), and meals. If you are interested in serving as a delegate, call the CLF at 617-958-6166 and speak to Lorraine or e-mail us at clf@clfuu.org before March 31 to indicate your interest. Visit the UUA’s GA Web site at www.uua.org/ga for details.
by Helen Zidowecki, acting minister of religious education, Church of the Larger Fellowship
You’ve seen the pictures. Albert Schweitzer looks to be a stodgy, grey-haired man from another century, without any of the flashy appeal of Britney Spears or Tiger Woods. But we know that his life had a lot of zip. How can we connect our children to Schweitzer’s values?
Albert Schweitzer’s phrase “rever-ence for life” offers much to think about for people of all ages. “Rev-erence” means “a feeling of profound awe or wonder, respect and often love and honor.” “Reverence for life” points me to the Principles of Unitarian Universalism, specifically the ones that mention “the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” and “the worth and dignity of every person.” As a means of linking Albert Schweitzer with Unitarian Universalism, three quotes from Schweitzer and three sets of children’s activities follow:
I must interpret the life around me as I interpret the life that is my own. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine.
What differences do you see in the people around you? Does everyone like the same things that you like? Do other people do things in the same way that you do?
Ask someone to show you how to do something that they know and you do not. And offer to show someone how to do something that you know how to do.
Whenever I injure any kind of life I must be quite certain that it is necessary. I must never go beyond the unavoidable, not even in apparently insignificant things. The farmer who has mowed down a thousand flowers in his meadow in order to feed his cows must be careful on his way home not to strike the head off a single flower by the side of the road in idle amusement, for he thereby infringes the law of life without being under the pressure of necessity.
Tell about times when you have taken care of something in nature, like planting a tree, or enjoying flowers in a garden rather than picking them.
Also talk about times when you did something that might have hurt nature, like picking bark off a tree or stepping on flowers.
The deeper we look into nature, the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret and that we are united with all life that is in nature…. We realize that all life is valuable, and that we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship to the universe.
Take time to sit quietly and listen to the sounds of nature, or take a walk and take time to look and feel and smell and see many wondrous things. Think about what we need to do to protect these wonders of nature.
Albert Schweitzer had some specific things to say to teenagers. When he visited the Silcoates School in Yorkshire, England, in the mid-1930s, he spoke on “The Meaning of Ideals in Life” to the students:
I want to talk to you about something which I have very much at heart. I want to speak to you about yourselves, about the path you are going to seek in life. Be one who knows that for life you require the truth, that to live you need goodness, to live you need gratitude; that within life there is a spiritual life and that we are but poor if we go into life without a realization of that spiritual life. You will be poor in life if all you think about is to get success for yourselves: the real purpose in life is to serve, to be there for others, to help in realizing what ought to be realized. I don't know what your destiny will be. Some of you will perhaps occupy remarkable positions. Perhaps some of you will become famous by your pens, or as artists. But I know one thing: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. Happy only are those who let themselves be guided by their hearts, because the heart is the great reason, the reason that always is right in life.
I want to talk to you about something which I have very much at heart. I want to speak to you about yourselves, about the path you are going to seek in life.
Be one who knows that for life you require the truth, that to live you need goodness, to live you need gratitude; that within life there is a spiritual life and that we are but poor if we go into life without a realization of that spiritual life.
You will be poor in life if all you think about is to get success for yourselves: the real purpose in life is to serve, to be there for others, to help in realizing what ought to be realized.
I don't know what your destiny will be. Some of you will perhaps occupy remarkable positions. Perhaps some of you will become famous by your pens, or as artists. But I know one thing: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. Happy only are those who let themselves be guided by their hearts, because the heart is the great reason, the reason that always is right in life.
If you have a youth in your life, you may want to try to initiate a conversation about the speech. Is it hopelessly old-fashioned? Is he right? Can we find happiness without a spiritual life? Is the real purpose in life to be there for others? Is it true that “the heart is the great reason, the reason that always is right in life”? If your teenager is inclined to keep a quotes journal, could any of Schweitzer’s words find their way into it?
Will Albert Schweitzer find a place in the next generation of Unitarian Universalists? Let’s find out.
Ed. Notes: The first two quotations under “Reference for Life” are from The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer, Edited by Charles Joy, Reviewed Edition: The ECCO Press, 1950, and the third is from The Spiritual Life, written By Albert Schweitzer, edited by Charles R. Joy. The original edition was published by Beacon Press, 1947, and the Reviewed Edition published by ECCO Press, 1996. All are found on the web site www.pcisys.net/~jnf.
The message for youth was taken from “Schweitzer's Message to Youth,” Albert Schweitzer Foundation, spring 1981.
by George Marshall, minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship, 1960-1985
According to a biographical piece about George Marshall written by Sally Ratchford, Marshall recalls that when he visited Albert Schweitzer, and stayed on to join the construction gang, Schweitzer would often send for him to visit after supper. They would talk long into the night, sitting at the rough wooden writing table the doctor had built with his own hands, on stools without backs, while the insects buzzed about the single kerosene lamp with a green shade that lit the small room. Now and then the doctor would raise the shade to free a trapped insect. “He knew what ecology was all about decades before the rest of us,” Marshall emphasized. “Ecology, the balance of nature, and the great chain of life of which we are all parts. He was more concerned about the natural order, and man’s place in it than any other person who ever lived, I believe. He called it Reverence for Life, and he made it the guiding principle for living.”
“I thank you that through you I have been made an honoured member of this church.”
—Albert Schweitzer
...that Quest is available on audio tape for members? Contact Giovanna at 617-948-6150 or email at gspadaro@uua.org
Quest February 2004 Contents Reverence For Life From Your Minister Was Albert Schweitzer a Unitarian? In His Own Words: Albert Schweitzer Unsung UU Award CLF Program Assessment Results Sabbatical Plans UUA General Assembly REsources for Living A Recollection From George Marshall Did You Know Resources for Quest February 2004
Last updated July 9, 2006
Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2823 Phone: (617) 948-6166 · Fax: (617) 523-4123 · E-mail: clf@clfuu.org
