The Fraters are a very select club, at least numerically, as it is strictly limited to the number of beds available at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “American Canterbury Tales,” his Tales of a Wayside Inn which includes his “Paul Revere’s Ride” If you count roll-aways, there are slightly more than twenty beds in the Inn. So, how I got in, I’ll never know. But I’m grateful. And proud…
I like to joke that the gang says it gathers to read learned papers to each other, but really it’s about being able to compare notes of aches and pains and who takes the most pills in a day and to reflect on how the denomination has declined since our day. And it is that. But it is also so much more, so much more.
The Fraters are tightly tied to the last part of history of the Universalist Church of America, those exciting and difficult times leading to the consolidation that created the Unitarian Universalist Association. Among the Fraters, past and actually present are leaders of that grand project, and some who would become leaders of the new denomination.
The only distressing part of this year’s gathering was the announcement of three of the Fraters who for various reasons said they would be shifting to “inactive” status. They included David Cole, emeritus minister of West Shore Unitarian Universalist church in Cleveland, Raymond Hopkins former executive vice president of the UUA and Gordon McKeeman, longtime minister of our congregation in Akron, former president of Starr King School for the Ministry and a onetime candidate for the presidency of the Association. All did their ministerial training at Tufts and all were leading lights of the Universalist church in those years prior to consolidation. They were also all members of another fraternity, the Humiliati, who were central to the formation of an “emergent Universalist” theology that I find central to my own understanding of Unitarian Universalism.
Of course the stream moves on.
At this retreat we inducted two new members into the Fraters. Helen Baylies who did her theological studies at Manchester College, the Unitarian seminary attached to Oxford University and who now serves as minister of the First Parish in Saugus; and Carlton Elliott Smith who did his theological studies at Howard University and currently serves at the First Parish in Arlington.
I had the enormous honor of toasting these new Fraters at the concluding dinner of the retreat. While I spoke without notes, the gist I wanted to convey was that the Universalist impulse is the heart of the Unitarian Universalist way; it is to use Buddhist terminology the manifestation of Karuna, holy compassion. This little band stands in a line of association with those who have given their lives to the manifestation of that karuna, a living and dynamic compassion as a central theological principal. And, I really think, so long as people are willing to throw their lives into this great work with that perspective, there will be hope for the world.
I’m glad that Helen and Carlton were willing to walk in the footsteps of David, and Raymond and Gordon, and all those others who have shown us the way.
And I’m so glad I can be part of that band, myself.
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