Time machines – what wonderful things they be. Time machines, fueled by our imagination, they transport us back to the presents of the past. Time machines, what wonderful things they are; and how necessary, how very necessary. We need them, you see to mark the past in our memories. We need them because, as Edward Dawson reminds us, They are not long, the Days of Wine and Roses." Because they are not long -- because, our time for life and love and service is so short, we need to mark the past the better to model the future.

This is Sunday, December 5, 1999; so let us, on this Sunday, transport ourselves backwards, backwards in time. Our first stop – is at the first Hanukah – 2175 years ago today. Of course we don’t know what month it was when the Jewish people successfully struggled against the tyranny of their oppressors. But whether June or December, it was surely the Winter of their discontent. Antiochus wanted to Hellenize the Jews – to assimilate them into his empire, to destroy both their identity as a people and their religion. 

But that didn’t happen because the Maccabee brothers rose up against that tyranny and fought for, and won their freedom. The eight days of Hanukkah celebrates that victory – and the miracle is said to have occurred when a single vial of olive oil was able to keep the candles of freedom burning for eight consecutive nights. But that’s a myth, of course. The miracle had nothing to do with olive oil burning beyond its allotted time. The miracle was that the Jewish people, through their courage and against outrageous odds, were able to survive to this very day.

From the December of Hanukah – it is a short trip, as time machines fly, to another December – and another miracle. December 2, 1942 – fifty seven years and three days ago.

"While the United States Government had made its decision to pursue an atomic bomb research program before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attack and America’s entry into the war gave that program additional urgency. More and more scientists and administrators became convinced that a successful program would make a decisive difference in the outcome of the war. ...a key and necessary project for building an atomic bomb was the creation of a self-sustaining fission chain reaction...In early 1942 administrators consolidated chain reaction and plutonium chemistry research at one center, at the University of Chicago.

In November or December of 1942, Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood looked very much like it does today. Thanksgiving was over; perhaps Hanukah had begun. And if you were awake early, very early, you might notice a little man in a over-sized raccoon coat, bicycling his way up Woodlawn Ave, to 57th street. The man was physicist Enrico Fermi, on his way to work. As professor Fermi got to 57th and Woodlawn, he would be sure to notice the Unitarian seminary on one side of the street, and the massive, gothic cathedral that is First Unitarian in Chicago on the other. Turning right at First U. -- as it was then called, the cathedral of the people, Enrico Fermi had to bicycle only another block before he came to Stagg Field, the football stadium of the University of Chicago. It was underneath Stagg Field that Enrico Fermi did his work. 

The reason the field was available was that the University of Chicago had made the unheard of decision to drop its football team, the mighty "Monsters of the Midway" and one of the powerhouses in the Big Ten and in the nation because they felt, silly fellows, that college football "took away" from Academic research. Stagg Field became the home of several unheated squash courts, located in the basement of the stadium -- until that is, the beginning of 1942. Now you might think squash courts underneath an unused football field to be a poor place for scientific research to be held -- and you would be correct in your thinking. "Scientists were concerned about conducting large scale and potentially dangerous physics experiment in the heart of a big city. A runaway chain reaction would release lethal radiation and might result in an explosion. Though the scientists believed that such a catastrophe was highly unlikely, they did non tell the university administrators about the experiment or its potential dangers. 

The people of Chicago carried on their lives oblivious to the goings on in the catacombs of Stagg Field. The first nuclear pile was an ugly affair -- a large, roughly elliptical mass of dark graphite with surrounding timber scaffolding. Layer by layer, workers alternated blocks of solid, neutron slowing graphite with graphite bricks drilled to take two five pound uranium pellets. At key places opening were left for control rods of cadmium covered wood. Cadmium kept the fission process in check (at least that was the theory) as the pile grew to critical size....Throughout the construction process Fermi and his co-workers monitored the piles reactivity, its neutron release. And as November moved into December of 1942, things were getting hotter even as Chicago’s temperature was dipping below freezing and then close to zero. 

Remember the squash courts were unheated. Some small relief was found when twenty raccoon coats were discovered in one of the stadium footlockers -- but the coats also made mobility less than easy...On December 2, 1942 the pile was ready for the final phase of the experiment, CPI#1 --(Chicago Pile number one). People were keeping their fingers crossed that they might live to see a Chicago Pile number two -- but were there to be an explosion, gone would be Stagg Field with its inhabitants, gone the University of Chicago, gone First Unitarian Church, gone the Unitarian theological school, maybe gone Chicago. Some precautions were taken. "On the scaffolding around the pile, scientists stood ready to use control rods to arrest the process of fission should something go wrong. Those closest to the pile were jokingly called the "suicide squad." On the morning of December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi gave the order to begin withdrawing the control rods. Neutron counters clicked away with increasing speed as the rods were inched out. The process took most of the morning. Fermi used a hand-held slide rule (remember them) to check the levels of energy release. By mid-afternoon, the last control rod was released. 

The pile went critical. The fission reaction became self-sustaining and would continue to grow on its own. Left unchecked, it would kill everyone in the room and most of the people on the South Side of Chicago. The clicking of the neutron counter blurred into a scream -- so much so that it had to be turned off so that people could hear over the uproar. The pile continued four and one half-minutes (possibly the longest four and one half minutes in some people’s lives). Then Enrico Fermi gave the order to shut down. And guess what, it actually did shut down when they asked it to do so. "Where others had stood to watch squash games, a select team of scientists had just witnessed" the birth of the nuclear age. 

People like Enrico Fermi, people like Edward Teller, people like J. Robert Oppenheimer, all of these people (on one level at least) knew what they were about in the Winter of 1942. They took their jobs very seriously indeed -- seriously and personally. Many of them had come to these shores in order to escape the oppression of Fascism. This was not for them a job, but rather, quite literally, a matter of life and death. On one level, yes they did know what they were doing -- but on another level, they were not at all certain as to how all of this would turn out. As has been well put, "People do know what they do; people frequently know why they do what they do; but what people do not know - what they do not know is what what they do does." The consequences of our actions are sometimes at least beyond our ken. The first controlled, self-sustaining, nuclear reaction opened the door to the atomic age -- it led both to nuclear power and to Hiroshima. It was, and remains, a mixed blessing. 

But I am not here this morning to debate the merits of the nuclear age. I am here rather to speak of the flowering of freedom. I speak of it now on this second day of Hanukkah, here, today because "they are not long, the days of wine and roses." I speak of it now because this is a time when we can mark the past the better to model the future. In December of 1942, Enrico Fermi and a small group of raccoon impostors tried mightily to save freedom from the tyranny of Germany and Italy and Japan. They worked without fanfare, they worked with hardly any security at all (one of the positives of not having security guards is that the presence of security guards often suggest that there is something that needs to be secured.). They worked in the bitter cold, with graphite dust everywhere, with slippery floors everywhere, in an unheated and ugly building -- they worked that freedom might flower. 

They risked a lot, on December of 1942. They risked their lives, to be sure and certain. They also risked their beliefs, and their security. But most of all, they risked their clichés. It had been a cliché, you see, that nuclear fission was a fantasy -- it couldn’t be done. It was a waste of time and money and manpower. In Germany they had a thoroughly disparaging cliché -- they called it "Jew physics." Everybody knew "Jew physics" was a waste of time. Everybody that is, except those willing to risk their lives, their beliefs, their security, even the clichés that had forced these women and men, many of them Jewish themselves, to leave their native land, the better to save it by saving freedom itself.

We need to mark the past, the better to model the future. One last stop, then, for our trusty time machine – a stop sending back to the present, or at least yesterday’s presents – back to look at Unitarian Universalism itself. I say "yesterday’s presents" because, as an Association, we are not very old at all; as new as yesterday, in truth. The merger between the American Unitarian Association and The Universalist Society of America was completed in 1961 – 2100 years after the Macabbean Revolt, 19 years after "the birth of the nuclear age, 38 years before today. As an association, we are only 38 – younger than jack Benny almost ever was. We were born as a free church, without creeds. We were born in 1961, "affirming the worth of human beings, advocating freedom of belief and the search for advancing truth, (all the while) trying to provide a warm, open, supportive community for people who believe that ethical living is the supreme witness of religion." (That last sentence is not mine; it was stolen – borrowed rather from the "Unitarian Universalist Association Directory; 1999-2000."

We were born without creeds – but alas we have not escaped our share of clichés. And one our most pervasive clichés is rooted in one of the writings of Henry David Thoreau. "I went into the woods in order to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life." There have been one or two fellowships and churches in our association who have turned that one sentence into a cliché. Some have even called themselves Thoreau Fellowships – and when asked, "How do we get to that place, we are told, ‘It’s a stone’s "Thoreau" from nowhere." The Thoreau Fallacy: build a church in the woods – ad make sure nobody can find it. It’s a fallacy – or perhaps more forgivingly, a cliché, because it remembers that Henry David went into the woods, but forgets that he came out too. ‘I left the woods for as good a reason as I ever went there – I left that I might live out the lives I had imagined; and in so doing, meet with a success that is unexpected (to say the least) in the common hours.

A philosophical question for your consideration: "if the essential facts of life are fronted, deep in the woods, alone, is there anyone there to hear it?"

As we ponder that question, let us mark the pasts that , hopefully, were made present to us today, December 5, 1999. The first Hanukkah, the Jewish people successfully struggled for freedom; the first self-sustaining fission chain reaction, 57 years ago this week, part of our nation’s successful struggle for freedom. And the birth of the U.U.A., part of our present struggle.

Both the Jewish people and those proponents of "Jew physics" risked their clichés – "they knew what they were doing; they knew why they were doing what they were doing; but they did not know what "what they were doing" would itself bring about."

Let us be, today, about the business of risking our cliché’s. You see, I know there is a Henry David Thoreau cliché buried deep within me – well, maybe not so deep. My checkbook has printed out on it, "Reverend Tom Burdett." And sometimes, when I’m at the check-out line at the grocery store, the clerk will say, "Oh, you’re a minister – what kind?" And the Henry David Thoreau cliché within is tempted to answer – United Methodist – very progressive wing. It isn’t worth the effort to say U.U. and hear the inevitable, "What?" 

"it isn’t worth it" – I despise myself when I think that way. "Not worth it?" Like, did the Jews say it wasn’t worth it. Did Enrico Fermi say, It’s not worth it? How about a little c-c-courage, o cowardly lion of a minister? And I do say ‘I’m a U.U. minister." And sometimes, the check-out line gets stopped up, because I’m busy answering more questions. 

Kilgore Trout is Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘alter ego,’ He is a fictional character -- and fictional characters are not always taken seriously. Not only is Kilgore Trout fictional, he is also a very bad science fiction writer. But still Kilgore Trout does at times deserve our attention. His story about two pieces of yeast, pondering the meaning of life as they eat their sugar and suffocate in their excrement -- not knowing at all that they are in the business of making "Dom Perignon." Imagine the two five pound blocks of plutonium under Stagg field; if they could talk, they might well too ponder about the meaning of it all. "Gosh what a stupid place to be, locked in all this graphite what’s it all about anyway, why did God (or Enrico Fermi) place us upon this planet, without rhyme or reason?

The founding mothers and fathers of our Association were brighter than yeast and entirely more profound than plutonium. But their vision did grow into a pretty darned tasty champagne -- not Dom Perignon, but not bad either. And had there been neutron counters around their efforts -- those counters too would have screeched so loud at the warmth and compassion that was theirs to give. They would have screeched so loud that the temptation might well have been to turn them off, the better that we might here ourselves think.

This is the temptation that we need to fight against as we go about the business of the flowering of freedom. The temptation to "turn off the noise" before things get too loud -- to turn off the noise because you cannot hear your own thoughts; to turn off the noise because someone might hear you!!

"They are not long, the days of wine and roses," and it is because they are not long, that we need to be about the business of risking our beliefs, our security and our clichés. We look around us, and see bright faces, and we remember the brilliant traces of the children only recently here present. We look around us and we know that we are more than pieces of yeast, busily gorging on sugar. We look around and realize that something is growing here, something bright and bubbling like the finest of champagnes. We look around us and we see flowers everywhere -- we look around and everywhere we can see the flowering of freedom. We can see it; we can see it; we can see it. It can be ours if only we can risk, as the Jewish people did at the first Hanukah. It can be ours, if only we risk as Enrico Fermi risked on that bitter cold day, Wednesday, December 2, 1942. It can be ours , if only we risk, as did our founding mothers and fathers, just about thirty nine ago today. It can be ours. And should we take the risk, should we endeavor to "advance confidently in the direction of our dreams, then we will meet with a success that is (to say the least) unexpected in the common hours. Amen