Kris has returned from his annual leave which included a visit to the Český lid Unitarians in Prague. Although he arrived home yesterday, no-doubt jet-lagged, he uses this opportunity to report back to Adelaide Unitarians about the many things we share, but also describes some innovations from which we may benefit. Listen on for some glimpses of what he might have in store for us!
Expanding Horizons
Prague Unitarians
Kris has returned from his annual leave which included a visit to the Český lid Unitarians in Prague. Although he arrived home yesterday, no-doubt jet-lagged, he uses this opportunity to report back to Adelaide Unitarians about the many things we share, but also describes some innovations from which we may benefit. Listen on for some glimpses of what he might have in store for us!
- Duration:
- 26m
- Broadcast on:
- 21 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) You're listening to Expanding Horizons, the podcast of the Unitarian Church of South Australia, a home of progressive spirituality and free religious thought and action since 1854. The views expressed in these podcasts are those of the speaker and are not intended to represent the position of the church itself or of the worldwide Unitarian Universalist Movement. For more information visit unitariansa.org.au (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) I want to share the experience I had in Czechia recently and I think it helps to give a global perspective to people that have a positive, humanist, compassionate philosophy. There are unitarians of course in the UK, in North America, and it was something of a surprise to see not only how well unitarians are doing in Czechia, but also to see how their experience is actually quite similar to what we have been going through in Australia and how unitarianism expresses itself in Australia. I went to the building, which is the headquarters in Prague. They were fortunate that like us from four bears long ago, they were able to acquire a significant building right in the middle of the old town of Prague. It used to be a palace, I'm not sure who's been to Prague, but there are many, many palaces. Every prince and lord and bishop seem to have a palace, the best palaces were the bishops of course, but it's a lovely old building. I took a photograph of one of the posters that they had on display a hundred years of Czech unitarianism. Now with the origins of unitarianism over 400 years ago in Eastern Europe, at the edges of the Catholic Empire, as it was at the time, one might have thought that there was quite a long heritage to Czech unitarianism, but I learnt that that really wasn't the case. So they celebrated a hundred years because it was in 1922 that a society was formed by Norbert Chappec. He had been a unitarian only after travelling to the United States from Czech. So I'll say a little bit about him. This may look a strange portrait because it's my photograph of a portrait on the wall in the Czech unitarian headquarters, and so it has a weird reflection to it, but this was an early photograph of Chappec. Like most Czechs, he was born into a Roman Catholic household, but he became disillusioned as a teenager with the dogma of the church and became a Baptist, and was ordained as a Baptist minister. He could see trouble coming with World War I looming and travelled to America. There he explored and took on unitarianism, and he travelled back to what became Czechoslovakia after World War I, after the successful Allied nations had dismembered Austria-Hungary. It was a time of great change in Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovakian constitution guaranteed a liberal approach to religion, so hundreds of years of staunch Catholic influence in government and every facet of life had opened up to new possibilities. And so not only other forms of Protestantism, but unitarians flourished, as well as Freemasons, the Theosophical Society, and a number of other variations. But in 1922, a society was founded. At that stage, it didn't have the unitarian name, but Chappec was evidently a charismatic and dynamic individual who spread this message of a liberal religion, a religion centred on humanity and compassion throughout what was Czechoslovakia. Prague, of course, became the centre, but there were many other small churches set up around, particularly the Czech part of what was then Czechoslovakia, since divided into separate countries. Here's an image on the window at the Czech unitarian headquarters, and this is a symbol which appears in their literature as well. So they have the "U" for unitarian. They have a couple of sunflowers striving toward the sun. Although Chappec mainly gave a strongly humanist message in his countless lectures, he nonetheless couldn't escape a faith, a belief that there must be some higher power, something more than what we can see here materialistically on Earth. So the sun in this emblem somewhat signifies that which we strive for, no matter what we call it, in the literature they have surrounding this image. They speak of the different sunflowers not being identical. In other words, we all have different abilities and characteristics, and yet there is that option to strive toward the light. It was in 1930 that building was acquired through the generosity, not only of local unitarians, but through the British and US unitarian societies. They contributed money to buy this palace. In any case, it's a large building and I have a few handy snaps from my phone to show you just to give you an idea of their base over there. There was another symbol that's used just like we might use an "A" frame out the front of a building. They had some of these signs with a new logo just basing it on the "U" in this case with rainbow colours. There's a large building and then they acquired more or less a dwelling place, again converted into part of the building structure next door. So the entrance on this little street in the middle of old Prague, very unprepossessing, very humble, and this is when it's all locked up. But there are essentially two entrances, and the other entrance is the main entrance. I took this photograph off the door that leads into the unitarian part of the building, and there is no say that, is because numbers used to be huge. They have, as part of the building, a hall which can take 700 or more people. But like the history of religion in the West and Australia and Czechia over the last century, or at least the last half century, numbers have gradually dwindled. So they actually lease that big hall to an arts organisation which uses it as an opera hall and they put on major musical productions. So it's become truly a source of income to sustain the whole enterprise. And there's another part of the building which is rented out as a museum as well. So that's apart from the meeting space which they keep for themselves. But for the actual unitarian officers, this is their humble little doorway. This is a view almost from the street to the museum part, which as I say is part of this huge building which is rented out. So again, very humble sort of circumstances externally, but it's quite impressive once you get inside. This is the inside of the auditorium. So they actually have a proscenium arch stage for performances as well as a beautiful piano in that modern seating. Now, one of the interesting things to me is that not only culturally and philosophically are they similar, I think, to the Adelaide congregation and the Australian setting of unitarianism, but the numbers are quite similar as well. So in Adelaide, which is the largest congregation in Australia and New Zealand, not counting a couple of political offshoots in Melbourne and Sydney, Prague also is the largest congregation, stands to reason, in Czechia. And they have similar numbers attending. In the various churches that they have around Czechia, again, comparable numbers to those who attended the other Australian capital cities and in New Zealand as well. So it was just interesting to see an organisation of about the same size as we have here, which is in contrast to England and the US. Just like we have in this wonderful building we have here, there was a little library area, a little area for children, a boardroom situation as well. And now I'm going to take you out into the Czech countryside. I don't know where I got the idea that there was going to be this retreat. I mean, a spiritual retreat in a monastery. I think it's just part of me being a romantic. I thought, well, it must be in a monastery. But there was absolutely no evidence for me to assume that. And in fact, this retreat took place in a converted headquarters of a silver mine. I couldn't bring you back any silver because they had finished it all. But there was this huge observation tower up above the old buildings which had been converted into like a motel or bed and breakfast scenario. I didn't climb the stairway, and this is really digressing from anything spiritual, but it was fascinating that you could climb up the stairs on the side of this lookout tower, which must have been about nine floors high, that sort of equivalent. It's a bit hard to tell from the photograph. Because they had built a lookout and then built a bigger lookout room on top of it, to get to the room on top, you had to walk out into the air, into this cylinder of a cage, walk up a little spiral staircase out with nothing underneath you, but a little bit of metal, and then walk into the top part. So, no, they didn't get me up there. And there are a few symbols around the place. These tools embedded above the doorway as a sign of the old silver mine. Simple accommodation, but beautiful views. And this is the view from the window with farms and forests outside. As I say, this is about an hour or so out of Prague, and quite typical of the Czech countryside. Really beautiful, green, pleasant lands. In this farm next door, there were goats, horses, donkeys, and of course camels as well. And just nearby there was a beautiful lake, which one could walk around. And in this picture of the lake on the screen, that tower I was talking about stands well above the landscape. And it was actually used to look at the different mining sites and make sure there weren't fires and things like that. Inside the venue, there was a nice meeting room, and that's where a chalice was set up. Of course, it was in that part of the world, Central Europe, that the symbol of a chalice with a flame was designed by an Austrian during World War II for the agency that developed to get refugees out of Czechoslovakia. And it stuck with the Unitarians as the symbol for the organisation, as John mentioned, spread around the world. So we started with the lighting of the chalice. In the background, you can see some Czech words. I'll come back to those in a moment. But the sort of things we talked about, there are about 13 of us. Mostly Czech people, apart from myself, a couple of American expatriates living in Prague as well. But these were the ways we approached spirituality, thinking about it, that intellectual approach. And I can say, if there's anything different with the Czech culture as I experienced it with the Unitarians there, I could say there were even more intellectual about it than us. In the sense that there would be a feedback session after an exercise. What did you think about that? What did you feel about that? People would give a five minute monologue about their internal emotions, feelings and sensations and so on. Which I know goes on everywhere, but it seemed almost more than what we would experience in our culture. Meditation, of course, as well, as I think most of you would know, I do believe meditation is very important, a very helpful tool in the spiritual progress. And we have the monthly meditation meeting here. More about that later. Art, also. Now, in terms of art, I'm going to show you a couple of pieces of art. I won't give you the full context, and I don't mind if you think they're quite childish, but the initial exercise was in terms of letting go of the baggage that we arrived with. Which is a very important part of preparing ourselves for any spiritual advance. So anyway, that's what I came up with, and then another painting opportunity came up, something to do with a flame. But again, I won't go into the details. It is actually a great challenge, and I'd love to try it with this group someday. I'm just trying to figure out how we could do it on a Sunday morning with all these pews set up the way they are. But it would be wonderful to do some art therapy or art experimentation, I think. It's really quite a challenge to be able to paint or draw without the mind interfering, getting in the way, telling us what we should do or shouldn't do, or this might be criticized and so on. And there is a lesson in that for life as well. To be able to live and be in the moment without the mind being on loop with all of the messages we've been bombarded with since childhood, don't do this, you should be that, you should be something else. You'll get in trouble for this. Leaving all of that aside and just doing the right thing and responding naturally and humanly in the moment is harder than it sounds, I think. Nature also, as we saw in the earlier photograph, there were forests, really just a few minutes walk away, and we enjoyed the nature. I wrote a couple of poems while I was out in the forest, so it's a bit presumptuous really to call them poems, but if I call them sketches, maybe that will lower your expectations a bit. Here we are, shadows. How sad when one blocks the light of another, depriving them of the opportunity to grow. Yet it is inevitable that there is shade in the forest, for each one that grows casts a shadow. Yet a miracle occurs, the little one finds a way to find the light and grow anyway, so the forest endures. And another one, the most beautiful buildings in the world are made of stone. The stones may be glad for their hardness to make such a thing of beauty. Stones sit there passively and immobile unless carried away. Yet some enjoy the richness of their constitution, while others merely lament their limitations. Anyway, on to the dance. Yes, there was a bit of dancing as well. And I know it has been said here that there are places you can dance, and this isn't one of them, but I'd like to get us dancing one day as well. Anyway, we might come to that. I'm not sure. Anyone else here speak Czech? Well, actually nobody here speaks Czech. Alright, so we were discussing meditation, and Vipras Nene was translated as the emptying of the mind, which is really the first process, the first part of a meditation exercise. And then Zglidnene is the calming of the mind. So a deliberate calming of the entire psyche and body. And then Aktivasi was active meditation, which might be praying for someone, summoning a particular energy or quality within us, and so on. So I should mention that a lot of the proceedings were in the Czech language, but they had an interpreter. And like UN style, I was wearing a headpiece, which would have a simultaneous English translation. And that was really quite wonderful how they were able to blend the Czech and English instruction. When we had an exercise of breaking into groups to prepare a Sunday morning service, so we actually broke into three groups each to have 20 or 30 minutes service time. Quite wonderful, the different approaches people came up with. But I must say, I, right up to the last second, was grumbling. I will never work out a service with other people ever again, with lots and lots of good ideas, but a reluctance to come to a decision about anything. A reluctance to criticize any other idea, no matter how ill-fitting it would be. So the first hour, actually nothing was decided, so the frustration building and changing of the mind. Oh, you know how we said we're going to do that three times? Let's scrap that and do that other thing. And this was occurring right up to the last second, literally. And of course, it all went very well in the end. Upon reflection, I realised all of the frustration said as much about my personality, as it did about anybody else's. There was quite a bit of art involved, and one of the interesting exercises was a massive sheet of butcher's paper, about two metres by five metres, perhaps something like that. I would cover almost a third of the floor of this hall. Each person took a little part and drew whatever they wanted to draw in black. And so this is one little part of it. The first part was just some free doodling, if you want to call it that, or free expression of whatever we wanted to put down without thinking about it too much. And then the second part was to find a little portion and blacken it as much as possible to create a point of density. And then the third part was to wander around freely and join up as we pleased the different creations of the 13 different people. And so that ended up in this massive abstract artwork, which was quite interesting. I'll just finish with some curiosities. One of the evening's entertainments was to invite a local unitarian who's a bat specialist to go bat hunting with us. I shouldn't be surprised, especially in Czechia, but the first place we went looking was at the local pub. So they thought we needed to be suitably lubricated before going out to find the bats. Lots of bats in the area. He had a special bat meter. Now, I never knew there was such a thing, but he attached it to his phone and it was able to detect the sonar waves of the bats. So from their nose they were able to project essentially radar, which bounces off their prey when they detect something moving. And through this machine you can hear the sound as a chirping beep beep beep. We didn't actually see any bats, but we heard them. They were too good for us. Secondly, just to mention that the Prague area and, you know, at different times it's been called by some of its constituent parts like Bohemia, Moravia and so on. But although there was an overbearing Roman Catholic presence for centuries, it had a very significant role in the Protestant Reformation. And there were heretics such as Huss and others who were condemned, sometimes killed in that part of the world. But it was also a place where alternative belief systems quietly flourished as well. And alchemy has quite a strong representation in that part of the world. So this was just one of the symbols I saw in one of the local art galleries which featured a couple of the pieces of equipment used in alchemy. And in this case paradoxically and with a message about the masculine and the feminine, each feeding into each other to create the solution. Anyway, I'll come back to that later, maybe one day. And then I was just impressed in Valencia going to an art gallery there. I do appreciate these pieces of art from the masters a few centuries ago who focused on death and in order to put life in perspective. And there's a Latin inscription there, I can probably read it badly, in omnibus, operibus, Tuis memorari, nouvisi, machuwa, etinie, ernom, non-picibus. Which I loosely translate in the vernacular as if in all you do, you keep the eternal in mind, you won't go wrong. [Music] We hope you've enjoyed this expanding horizons podcast. These podcasts are the intellectual property of the presenter. 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