by Reverend Doug Kraft
Who we are today is shaped by what happened in the past. This is true of us individually. It is also true of us collectively. While we can be certain of this, we can‘t be certain of what actually happened in the past. This “mist of time” can be very thick.
Police say that eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. Three people viewing the same crime often have different opinions. And they sincerely report different “facts”. I have read minutes of Board meetings that did nothing to capture the tone of the meeting and even misreported some of the facts.
On a larger scale, several times I have been close to events that reached the attention of the national media. The media portrayed these very differently than what I saw. The reports were shaped as much by the consciousness of the reporter as by the actual events. My understanding of what is going on in the larger world comes through the same media that I find unreliable when I know the events. It makes me wonder if I have any idea what is really going on in the world today.
When we look into the past, getting a clear picture can be even more difficult. Many layers of consciousness and opinion filter and distort our view. At the very least, we have the filtering of the witnesses who recorded the events, the filtering of the historian who reads the records of the witnesses, and the filtering of our own perspectives.
For example, less than two decades ago, some members of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento left to form the Unitarian Universalist Community Church. Many witnesses to that formation are still around. I ask them: “What were the motivations? Spreading Unitarian Universalism? Anger about something in the congregation? Desire for a different size or a different focus? Was it a split or a sending forth?” In response, I get as many different accounts as there are people to ask. I am sure there is truth in all accounts. But like the blind men and the elephant, all we have are different pieces of the larger truth. It’s hard to know what this elephant truly was.
If we go back even further, the picture is even murkier. For example, there are several times in our congregation’s history when the doors were closed or at least there are no extant records. We can see the glass as half empty: the church failed and closed. We can see the glass has half full: the church kept overcoming difficulty and springing back to life.
And what was really going on during those periods? Were Unitarian families in communication with each other? When the church came back to life, did it include those families? Was there some continuity? In other words, should we talk about the church going to sleep and the same church waking up again? Or did the church truly die and a whole new group of people start a whole new congregation? Should we speak of the present congregation as beginning in 1945 under Rev. Ted Abell’s leadership? Or in 1936 after the Great Depression closed the previous church? Or should we properly speak of the congregation as starting in 1868 under Rev. Henry W. Brown’s leadership?
There is no way to answer these questions objectively from the historical record. Yet we will each answer this question from our perspective.
And if we go back even further in time, we are left with more questions than answers. For example, we know that the charismatic Unitarian minister Thomas Starr King spoke in Sacramento in the late spring of 1860 and perhaps other times as well. Did he plant the seeds that later became the First Unitarian Church of Sacramento? There is simply no way to know.
Though it is difficult to know what truly happened in the past, there is no doubt but that it affects us in the present. The historian’s job is to distill as objective a picture as possible from fragments of evidence. I am grateful to Rodney Cobb and Dr. Irma West for assembling these fragments. Rodney included direct quotes from the records. These give tone and flavor. As we look through the shrouded mist, we can see images and hints and suggestions. I find these fascinating to contemplate. Perhaps we should treat history as a source of contemplation rather than a story: something to enter into and reflect upon but that we can never know for certain.
I hope you enjoy these historical hints.
Rev. Doug Kraft November 2007