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THE OPEN

DOOR

News and views of

Croydon Unitarians

August & September 2019 .

Our minister Rev. Art Lester is pleased to

welcome you to worship every Sunday from

10:30am for the Service at 11:00am and

afterwards for fellowship and refreshments

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In the House of the Lord? Every time the events of the world - particularly the political world

- threaten to get me down, something seems to come along and lift my

spirits. Maybe that’s because I tend to be a “glass half full” kind of guy,

and maybe it’s more than that. I mean something like a quick glimpse

through the encircling curtain of gloom that comes and goes.

After a week of shocking news from the States, in which a

Somalian woman, a member of the US Congress, was told by a shouting

mob to go back where she came from, I found myself on July 21st

looking out from the pulpit at a roomful of refugees - sexual asylum

seekers from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. These, of course, are the

singers and other members of Rainbows Across Borders, the support

group lovingly put together by our own Ray Harvey-Amer.

They had come in what they referred to as a service of

thanksgiving, aimed at expressing their appreciation toward our small

efforts at welcoming them and providing support in their struggles with

the Home Office. It was gratifying to see so many of them, including

those who have been granted leave to remain already, but who travelled

long distances to be there. There was a lot of hugging and laughter, as

there often is, but what happened when they performed was something

entirely else.

Led by Daniel, a gifted singer and pianist, twenty or so “Rainbows”

took us through a repertoire of the kind of songs we Unitarians rarely

hear. At the climax, everyone joined in with “We Are Marching in the

House of the Lord”. Without advance notice, Daniel grabbed the hand of

one of us and began to dance. It wasn’t long before the whole

congregation had joined in, including quite a few octogenarians and at

least one nonagenarian. We were, literally, dancing in the aisles.

You might expect to see something similar in, say, a Pentecostalist

service, but it probably almost never has happened in our rather staid

churches. There were tears, and shouts of joy. Something happened in

that room that I’d never seen before. Without getting too theological, I’d

have to say that the Spirit was moving among us. I’ll never forget it.

The Rainbows say we’ve given them a lot. But I say that we’re the

real beneficiaries. We were, briefly, all dancing in the house of the Lord,

where racism, xenophobia, homophobia and hateful rallies simply cannot

exist. --Art Leste r

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Thank You From RAB The following letter is from Maria Kakooza of RAB. She thanks the

Unitarians, on behalf of the RAB choir members, for the donation of

£200, given at the meeting on the 21st July.

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The following is a review of the RAB performance at

the “Thanks Giving Service” by Ray Harvey-Amer.

Members of Rainbows Across Borders including some already ‘granted

asylum’ attended a Thanks Giving Service held at the Church on Sunday,

21st July 2019. The Service was to enable members to commemorate and

express their appreciation to the Croydon Unitarians for all the love,

encouragement & support they have given to LGBT+ asylum seekers since

the formation of Rainbows Across Borders in January 2013: and in

recognition of when they opened their doors during the dark times for the

hunted down and persecuted gay communities in the 1970’s.

The Service conducted by Rev Art Lester gave an opportunity for members

to reflect with our Unitarian friends how much can be achieved together

as seen in the past & in the present by the support given to Rainbows

Across Borders.

The Chorus: Rainbow Singers Across Borders reminding us as they sung

through their songs of justice, freedom & liberation. Including the premier

performance of ‘Raise Our Voices’ (with lyrics & composition by Daniel

Ega). That the sentiments expressed in songs sung remind us of the need

to take the words off the page and campaign, if we really want to make a

better life for all those that continue to be unjustly harmed & persecuted.

To the surprise & delight of the congregation was when Christine did an

elegantly posed chorographic dance routine with Daniel the Chorus

Leader. It would appear that ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ no doubt is the next

stop for our Christine!!

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The Service had a fine ending with the congregation on their feet clapping,

singing & dancing as the Chorus ended reprising ‘In the Light of the

Lord’.

Service - Leaders

Art Lester (Our Minister), or Rev Steve Dick.

Aug/Sep Musicians

Freda Lodge

Gill Stone

Freda Lodge

Bill Higgins

Events 11am on

15 Aug

Committee Meeting - All welcome

8 Sept

Gathering of the Waters Service and Church Barbeque

Our annual Gathering of the Waters service welcomes

everyone back from their summer of travel or home gardening.

For those who haven’t been to this essential occasion, here’s

what we do:

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• Bring a small quantity of water from wherever you’ve been.

It can be from the Pacific Ocean off Borneo or someplace

really exotic, like Crystal Palace.

• We gather them and watch as they blend without complaint,

just as we do.

• Then stay on for the big church BBQ. Something for

everyone (yes, Vegans too).

• Celebrate the end of hot weather or mourn the beginning of

autumn with your friends.

13 Oct Harvest service and Anniversary service

20 Oct Initial service by Dr Jane Blackall

17 Nov Anne Howe coming to visit

15 Dec Carol Service

Ross and Peter’s marriage Ross and Peter were married in Scotland on the 8th June. They reaffirmed

their vows to each other at a reception, with family and friends in

attendance, at the Church on 15th June.

We would like to congratulate them, and wish them all the best for their

future together.

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Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear

A long time ago, I worked for Mennonites in Africa. These

peaceful Christians have acquired a reputation as quite radical defenders

of the rights of the poor, and they’re very clued-in when it comes to

development issues. They also have a great sense of humour, as

witnessed by a cartoon bear with crossed eyes they often displayed called

“Gladly.” Hence, one of their favourite old hymns: “Gladly, the cross I’d

bear.”

Plus, they loved jokes - clean ones, for sure. Here’s one:

Two men are hiking in the Rocky Mountains when they disturb a

mother grizzly bear with two cubs. The enraged animal chases them up

hill and down dale, and the gap is closing all the time. One-man gasps to

the other, “Looks like we’re done for. We’ll never outrun that bear.” The

other says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. All I have to do is outrun

you.”

If you didn’t laugh, it may be because somewhere in the story is a

little bit of hard truth that we can recognise in ourselves.

OK, that’s a snack; let’s make a whole meal of it. Who is the bear?

There are a lot of candidates. Climate change, for one. Proxy wars

and not-so-proxy wars for another. A situation that leads to

uncontrollable immigration, as people try to find a way to survive.

Let’s just say that it’s the same beast that has always stalked

humanity, and in fact stalks the whole world of creatures. It was talked

about by Thomas Malthus as far back as the beginning of the 19th

century. It would have lots of names: starvation, poverty, misery and

death are a few. It has to do with a threat that never seems to go away:

not having enough sustenance to live. For sustenance you can say food,

shelter, fresh water and safety from enemies, all of which are a struggle

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to come by. Malthus equated lack of sustenance with overpopulation, an

issue that is still with us. But even when there are not too many people,

the need to accumulate sustenance never seems to stop when there is

enough. It turns into a grab for surplus. We don’t seem to know exactly

when enough is enough.

The desire to avoid the beast - in this case the bear - creates

competition for survival. “Every man for himself!” is the familiar cry.

“The devil takes the hindmost.” That phrase was originally about a

sinking ship, but it has acquired new currency these days. In fact, it more

or less perfectly describes the sort of pseudo-Darwinian theology of the

so-called “free market”, in which the fortunes of farmers and street

sweepers are affected by the whims and mood fluctuations of financial

investors. Punters, you can say. Not all that different from the guys on

stools down at William Hill. The motto might be, “I don’t have to

provide sustenance for all; all I have to do is outrun you.”

The fact that we are all trying to outrun our fellow sufferers isn’t all

that evident most of the time. Yes, we might be aware of competing with

others at work to get that promotion or that raise, or sell more cabbages

than the other greengrocer down the street, but good manners and the

sheer variety of our interactions tend to mask what is actually a very real

part of our lives.

On the international stage, the competition on our behalf is done by

governments and companies and big pension funds. We don’t necessarily

have to notice when part of the money we are set to draw in our old age

comes from a multinational company, which under the banner of

globalisation, buys all the water in a Bolivian town. Yes, all the water, as

a recent film showed, including the rain. We don’t have to notice much

when the manufacture of dangerous items is “outsourced” to nations with

weak laws and non-existent trade unions. We can ignore it when big

companies mine or drill someplace far away, until the environment is

wrecked and the health of local people compromised. We can ignore that

right up until the time when the natives get restless and take up arms,

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then call it “lawlessness” and help put it down. We can ignore all of this,

but it doesn’t go away. “All I have to do is outrun you.”

Competing with our fellows seems to be hard-wired into us, a

product of our DNA. When Darwin published his treatise on evolution, it

was easy to make a comparison between ruthless 19th century capitalism

and the “survival of the fittest” struggle among species. Adam Smith,

whose life was entirely led during the 18th century, is still the darling of

many modern economists. In fact, a right-wing think tank is named after

him. He wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He saw in

the human story of self-interest and competition a beautiful plan on the

part of God:

“…an individual intends only his own security…he intends only his

own gain, and he is in this led by an invisible hand to promote an end

which was no part of his intention, which ensures that the gluttony of the

rich helps the poor.”

With that as a guiding creed, mixed with misapplied Darwinian

ideas, it’s no wonder that competition became a good word, standing for

all things progressive, the goal of education. The “unseen hand” was, of

course, that of God, who ensured that the urges of people inherited from

the animal kingdom worked out well in the end. There was no Plan B,

though, for what might result if there was no God, and therefore no

“unseen hand” to guarantee happy endings. That’s pretty much where

we are right now, if you ask people. Greed, as Gordon Gekko said, is

good. You can add on gluttony too.

It is tempting to see humanity in simplistic images like this.

Theories, even exceptionally brilliant ones such as my own, tend not to

account for what is actually in front of them. I might be even more

inclined to see human history, as Tennyson said of the animal kingdom,

as “red in tooth and claw”, if I hadn’t had some life experiences that

seem to balance it.

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During the 1980s I lived in three different parts of what we might

call the poor world: two in Africa and one in Latin America. The people I

lived among were poor, some abjectly poor. People didn’t have shoes in

one. In another, a quarter of the children died of diarrhoea before the age

of five. There were rarely any machines, no telephones and few doctors.

The grizzly bear chasing them was all too evident, you might say. Not

like ours, hidden as it is behind insurance policies and the NHS.

In north Kenya, where I was among a group of Masai who had been

cut off from the main tribal area by white settlers, this was especially

true. Everyone was a herder. Everyone depended on grass and fresh

water for their flocks of goats and cows. When there was drought,

everyone was affected. When an epidemic struck, it struck them all.

When times got hard - harder, I should say; because they were always

hard - their first reaction was to band together. And when things got

critical, what they did was share, ensuring that no one was abandoned.

When things went especially well for one family, and the cows and

goats got fat and multiplied, they threw a big party and gave away most

of their livestock. This was viewed as the very pinnacle of success as a

Masai—to give your things away. Of course, this was rich in ego

satisfaction, and one’s standing in the community was enhanced, but I

never said the Masai aren’t human. What it showed me, though, was that

they had either advanced to - or perhaps never lost - a living concept of

what I have to call enough-ness, even though my spell-checker won’t

have it. That, and the fact that they knew that stuff was always just stuff,

really—not nearly as important as things like respect and the love of

community.

Competition wasn’t absent from Masai life. The young men, in the

age grouping called “warrior class”, competed constantly at things like

club hurling and free-standing jumping, in which some young men could

clear a metre from a standing start. I’m amazed that scouts from

American pro basketball teams haven’t opened an office in Masai Mara.

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There wasn’t any real reward for out-throwing or out-jumping the

other guys—just pride. The games were games, but living life was a

different matter.

Do I think you have to be a Masai to put competition in its rightful

place? No, because throughout human history, cooperation has lived

alongside competition, at least as far as your neighbours went. That’s in

part because the recent emphasis on the individual as opposed to the

group hadn’t yet taken hold. The ancient Greeks distinguished between

competition that enhanced life and competition that stunted it, and the

debate has gone on ever since.

But this is supposed to be a sermon, not a treatise on the vices and

virtues of competition. Whether competition is worthy of the high status

our culture has given it—from the Olympic Games to Wall Street—is the

subject of lots of chatter that shows no sign of dying down. While most

often seen as a virtue, there is evidence that competition can actually

bring about more problems than solutions, as when growers are forced to

produce crops for European supermarket stocks to the detriment and

potential loss of crop varieties. And despite talk of “win-win” solutions,

the continued poverty of much of the world points to what is called a

“zero sum” game, in which someone’s gain is always someone else’s

loss.

OK, this is what is sometimes called a “prophetic” sermon, in

which the speaker yells at everybody about what is wrong with the

world, and maybe the way they live. Prophecy is sometimes thought of as

predicting the future, but lately the meaning has shifted to looking at the

present. Something I do for fun is imagine I’m living, say, a hundred

years from now and looking back at us. I once imagined a conversation

with my great-grandfather, who was a slave owner with a turpentine

plantation. The idea of slavery now is so abhorrent and remote that we

can hardly believe that my father’s grandfather relied on it for his

considerable wealth. But it’s true. Maybe in a hundred years, we could

ask if we really imprisoned small creature in cages with the lights on 24

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hours a day, fed them antibiotics and amphetamines, then killed and ate

them when they were 8 weeks old. Or if we really believed that we could

keep on driving around in fossil-fuelled cars forever.

One question I’d really love to ask us from the far future is this:

“Why did you think that trying to outdo each other in commerce and

foreign policy would lead to anything other than a divided world?” Then

I might ask: “Did you ever really consider co-operating, collaborating,

instead?” And if not, why on earth didn’t you?

You see, we’re old enough by now. We’re getting desperate

enough, too. And we can do it. As Wendell Berry says, “Rats and

roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is

the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and

mercy.”

I think what we need is a strategy for those guys racing each other

in the story. Maybe a clue is in the name. Maybe we should be willing to

take on some more hardship and bear it, because it’s one way to help

others. Because it’s time to stop running, put our heads together and deal

with that old bear.

Gladly

--Art Leste r

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The Flamingo who didn’t want to be pink

Nicola, the daughter of our pianist Jill

Stone, has written this children’s book,

which is available on Amazon for £6.99

The tiny, pink flamingo chick has

noticed her white, baby feathers have

begun to turn pink but she doesn't want

to be pink! She wanders around the

watering hole, admiring the zebras'

dazzling stripes and the parrots' rainbow

feathers, but they all laugh when she says

she wishes not to be pink. She is

miserable until she meets a chameleon,

who reminds her that we must all be free

to choose how we are beautiful, but that

being different takes great bravery.

A thought-provoking fairytale based on Global Goal 5: Gender Equality,

with strong moral messages about freedom, self-expression and the

importance of choice.

Getting to Know You Pauline Peet interviews Fiona and David Shera

• Q You have both been attending Sunday services for a while now,

can you tell us roughly what drew you here and what you like about

us?

• A (Fiona) David had a really positive experience attending a

Unitarian Church in Bridport and was drawn to find a similar

church and community in South London. We both started attending

the Croydon Church regularly mainly because we felt nourished by

the service and welcome. Art “speaks” of many things that we are

pondering about… life and what is important beyond the day to day

craziness of life. We feel in tune with the values and philosophy of

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the Church and feel very at home when we come along every

Sunday. As for the homemade cake…well that is also greatly

appreciated, especially by Fiona!

• A ((David) Art speaks from the heart to the heart. Sharing music

and song.

• Q. Where would you be if not at church on Sundays?

• A (Fiona) Sundays are generally a quiet day for me. I spend time

catching up with chores and try to take our dog Lucky out for a nice

walk somewhere. We have a very cheeky 3-legged dog called

Lucky who is a street rescue from Uganda. He managed to sucker

me into adopting and falling in love with him when I lived in

Uganda 2011-13. So much so that he came back with me when I

left Uganda and he has now become quite infamous in crystal

palace for good reasons (he is super cute) and, unfortunately, some

not so good reasons (unpredictable bad behaviour)! He is quite a

troubled dog but seems to have found his 3 feet as he has got older

and calmer. It’s been wonderful to see him change from a scared

aggressive street dog into a pretty relaxed contented Lucky.

• A ( (David) It used to be the gym or Yoga.

• Q. Have you had time with us yet to have a favourite hymn/

hymns?

• A (Fiona) Not a particular favourite but I just love singing. I am a

member of Crystal Palace community choir and love learning and

performing songs with the choir. I find that singing takes me

somewhere else and brings me real joy.

• A (David) I’ve found the hymns quite challenging but I’m slowly

learning my way round a few of them.

• Q. Has there been anyone in your life who has inspired you. Or do

you have any inspirational words.?

• A (Fiona) My boss Caroline who I worked for when I lived in

Tanzania. She was a motivating leader, a warm-hearted person and

always there when I needed her. This included a time when David

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decided impulsively to pay me a surprise visit. This was incredibly

romantic of him. However, the problem was that when he arrived in

Dar I was hundreds of miles away in Arusha! Caroline arranged for

David to be picked from the airport and looked after him whilst I

drove back with great speed from Arusha! She inspired me to be

the best of myself personally and professionally.

• Q. How do you like to relax?

• A (Fiona) Dog walking in Stambourne or Sydenham woods. I love

the mornings in particular – a gentle breeze, the sun peeping

through the trees and Lucky frolicking around getting super excited

sniffing everything as if he had never been in the woods before. I

go every week to a 5 rhythms dancing class which is meditative

dance therapy. It’s amazing, I dance through my emotions and

frustrations and come out feeling renewed. I love singing with my

choir and really enjoy relaxing with good food, wine and close

friends. Art is another of my passions – I draw a bit but would like

to do more. David and I often go to art related events and enjoy

seeing exhibitions. We have more pictures than wall space and I get

pleasure from looking at my paintings and prints every day.

• A (David) Not very well these days.

• Q Do you have a favourite type of food/ restaurant.

• A (Fiona) I LOVE food, all food really, apart from Brussel sprouts!

I enjoy cooking for people and I am not bad at it so we don’t go out

that much these days. French food is perhaps my favourite but a

good Italian pasta cooked in truffle oil also goes down very well.

Prawn Cocktail takes me back to my childhood – it was what I

would always order when we went out for a celebratory family

dinner.

• A (David) Italian

• Q Do you have any pet hates or dislikes?

• A (Fiona) Brussel sprouts. Anger and rudeness. Life is too short,

why waste it being mean.

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• A (David) an embarrassingly long list of often small things, for

example people saying “no problem” to indicate they are about to

do the basics of the job they are in fact paid to do.

• Q What is your favourite holiday destination?

• A (Fiona) Has to be Tanzania. I lived there for 3 years and loved

exploring all it had to offer – safari’s in Selous National Park,

diving in the Indian ocean or lazing in Zanzibar. We have been

back quite a few times since and I feel like I am going home when I

arrive in hot sticky Dar es Salaam, the Haven of Peace.

• A (David) Our friends holiday home in Elmer in Sussex. Simple

but with a lovely South facing garden which leads to a path to the

beach. When the sun shines there you don’t need to be anywhere

more exotic.

• Q. Are there any special times in your life that, if you could, you

would like to ‘revisit’ again or times that you wish to forget?

• A (Fiona) My 3 years in Tanzania were perhaps the happiest time

in my life. Great job, friends, lots of great things to do and sunshine

nearly every day. I also loved studying in New York where I did

my master’s degree. It was a city full of life – I could spend hours

just walking around and people watching. The museums, art

galleries and central park. So much on offer.

My mum died of Alzheimer’s and it felt devastating to lose her

piece by piece. It was a very sad time for me although I always felt

a connection even when she didn’t know who I was. When both my

mum and dad passed away, I felt a part of me died with them. I felt

changed by that loss although I carry them in my heart. However,

losing them taught me to treasure life, even when it feels hard and

challenging. My mum also taught me kindness – she was

overflowing with it.

• A (David) I would go straight back to Tanzania and the time I spent

there with Fiona when our relationship was in its early days.

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• Q. Finally if you were to be stranded on a desert island what three

things would you take that would be important to you. (excluding a

mobile phone)

• A (Fiona) Music in some form – then I could dance and sing.

Photographs of people I love so I would have company and, if I

couldn’t take David I would try and sneak Lucky onto the island.

Having said that I am not sure he would be too keen as he really

dislikes the sea.

• A (David) A library of music. A library of books. If I couldn’t take

Lucky, I would try to sneak Fiona in…

------Thank you, Fiona and David

The Senior Service Adventures

of John Craske

Continued from the May 2019 Newsletter

Kagoshima

Both Nagasaki and Kagoshimi are on the smaller island south of Honshu

called Kyushu. Kagoshima is the most southern of all Japanese ports and

has an active volcano on the opposite side of the inlet between the town

and the mountains. We anchored beneath the volcano, which issued mainly

smoke, although it was not possible to predict when an eruption would

occur, the captain decided to risk it. We did not see any flames that night,

but the next morning the ship was blanketed with fine hot grey lava dust

to the depth of 2 -3 centimeters before the fire hoses were used to wash it

all off and we returned to Yokahama.

This is a regular feature (but with custom -tailored questions) for

anyone willing to participate. Please let us know.

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Leaving Japan

In Yokahama Harbour again, I was called to the officer in charge, who

decided it was to be me who should deliver all the official papers at present

carried on board to be deposited for safe keeping at the British Naval Base

at Kure, not far from Hiroshima. I was to take them by travelling on the

bullet train from the express terminal at Yokisuka. All 12 bags to be

stowed in the guard's van and in my charge, to be taken out by me when

we arrived at Kure. I had a seat in the carriage next to the van. It was a

day's journey of some 500 kilometres, toward the south end of Honshu. I

was given a revolver in a holster but no ammunition. I was also given

sandwiches for the journey. I had instructions to return to the ship in Hong

Kong in China, another 500 kilometres to the south, across the China Sea,

passing Taiwan. I was left to arrange passage when I arrived in Kure... A

tall order for a 19-year-old!

The train journey went well, passing through and stopping at some of

Japan's best known cites. I was told by the Officer to whom I reported on

arrival that there had been a spare seat on a Sunderland Flying Boat, but

my place had been taken by a person requiring urgent hospital treatment.

I would have to wait a while. After several days, it was arranged for me to

travel to Hong Kong on a Navy Supply Ship, with no duties and nothing

to do whilst at sea.

Soon after this I was transferred by an aircraft carried to Ceylon, as the

Island was called, and billeted in a base camp of wooden huts and outdoor

toilets, open to the skies and with pits in the ground infested with

poisonous scorpions. We were all waiting for posting to other ships. A

process that seemed to take for ever.

This is the end of Chapter 1. To be continued with Chapter 2………

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Happy Birthday!

We wish

Ross Burgess, Matu Nganga, Freda Lodge,

Christine Walsh, Filpe , Jim Tate, Elisa Tarr

a very happy birthday.

The law now requires us to ask you if you would like us to send you

emails. If you do not wish to receive emails from us, could you

please let us know? -- ed.

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The Croydon Unitarian and Free Christian Church

1 The Croydon Flyover, Croydon, Surrey CR0 1ER, Email croydonunitarian@hotmail.com,

ww.croydonunitarians.org.uk Tel 020 8667 1681

Contact Information

Minister Rev. Art Lester

Manse: Email:

020 8656 3996 artlester@hotmail.com

Chairman & President

John Craske Tel: Mobile : Email:

01342 604770 0798 2743333 rjohncraske@gmail.com

Secretary Martin White

Tel: Email:

020 8715 6859 deadlymittens@gmail.com

Treasurer David Williams

Tel: Email:

020 8661 2489 davidmwilliams@hotmail.co.uk

Webmaster Ross Burgess

Tel: Email:

020 8645 0943 ross@foxearth.net www.foxearth .net

General information from

Warden Lol Benbow Tel: 01689 841592 Mobile : 07932 154408 E -mail lolbow@googlemail.com For Church bookings, contact Lol Benbow.

The Open - Door Newsletter Editors: Peter & Jim Email: petertaylor1123@gmail.com Tel: 020 8681 6675 Mobile: 07758 943517

Could you please send us any contributions for the

October newsletter by Thursday 19 September 2019