the flaming chalice

"At the opening of Unitarian Universalist worship services, many congregations light a flame inside a chalice. This flaming chalice has become a well-known symbol of our denomination. It unites our members in worship and symbolizes the spirit of our work."

—Dan Hotchkiss

Source

No matter what sort of Unitarian Universalist Congregation you attend, you will most likely see some version of the flaming chalice, either on their publications, or at the altar, or in some form of art around the building.

I was interested to find out the history of the chalice, so I did my handy internet search and found out some interesting facts behind it!

The following is from the Unitarian Universalist pamphlet called "The Flaming Chalice" by Dan Hotchkiss:

Sharing, generosity, sustenance, and love are some of the meanings symbolized by a chalice. 

 ...The chalice and the flame were brought together as a Unitarian symbol by an Austrian artist, Hans Deutsch, in 1941. Living in Paris during the 1930s, Deutsch drew critical cartoons of Adolf Hitler. When the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, he abandoned all he had and fled to the South of France, then to Spain, and finally, with an altered passport, into Portugal.

There, he met the Reverend Charles Joy, executive director of the Unitarian Service Committee (USC). The Service Committee was new, founded in Boston to assist Eastern Europeans, among them Unitarians as well as Jews, who needed to escape Nazi persecution. From his Lisbon headquarters, Joy oversaw a secret network of couriers and agents. Deutsch was most impressed and soon was working for the USC. He later wrote to Joy:

There is something that urges me to tell you... how much I admire your utter self denial [and] readiness to serve, to sacrifice all, your time, your health, your well being, to help, help, help. I am not what you may actually call a believer. But if your kind of life is the profession of your faith—as it is, I feel sure—then religion, ceasing to be magic and mysticism, becomes confession to practical philosophy and—what is more—to active, really useful social work. And this religion—with or without a heading—is one to which even a 'godless' fellow like myself can say wholeheartedly, Yes! 

The USC was an unknown organization in 1941. This was a special handicap in the cloak-and-dagger world, where establishing trust quickly across barriers of language, nationality, and faith could mean life instead of death. Disguises, signs and countersigns, and midnight runs across guarded borders were the means of freedom in those days. Joy asked Deutsch to create a symbol for their papers "to make them look official, to give dignity and importance to them, and at the same time to symbolize the spirit of our work.... When a document may keep a man out of jail, give him standing with governments and police, it is important that it look important."

Thus, Hans Deutsch made his lasting contribution to the USC and, as it turned out, to Unitarian Universalism. With pencil and ink he drew a chalice with a flame. It was, Joy wrote his board in Boston:

...a chalice with a flame, the kind of chalice which the Greeks and Romans put on their altars. The holy oil burning in it is a symbol of helpfulness and sacrifice.... This was in the mind of the artist. The fact, however, that it remotely suggests a cross was not in his mind, but to me this also has its merit. We do not limit our work to Christians. Indeed, at the present moment, our work is nine-tenths for the Jews, yet we do stem from the Christian tradition, and the cross does symbolize Christianity and its central theme of sacrificial love. 

The flaming chalice design was made into a seal for papers and a badge for agents moving refugees to freedom. In time it became a symbol of Unitarian Universalism all around the world. The story of Hans Deutsch reminds us that the symbol of a flaming chalice stood in the beginning for a life of service. When Deutsch designed the flaming chalice, he had never seen a Unitarian or Universalist church or heard a sermon.

What he had seen was faith in action—people who were willing to risk all for others in a time of urgent need. Today, the flaming chalice is the official symbol of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Officially or unofficially, it functions as a logo for hundreds of congregations. Perhaps most importantly, it has become a focal point for worship. No one meaning or interpretation is official. The flaming chalice, like our faith, stands open to receive new truths that pass the tests of reason, justice, and compassion.


Source:
The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. The Flaming Chalice Pamphlet by Dan Hotchkiss. http://www.uua.org/publications/pamphlets/introductions/151248.shtml
(emphasis mine)

New beginnings [and] Ocean Depths

I realize I've sort of taken a detour from Judaism. I should have wrapped up my Jewish experience with this wonderful interview I had with a beautiful and intelligent Jewish woman and her husband already. I have that interview and conversation halfway typed and saved as a draft. The thing about my visit with Mary Blye Posani is that she made me think differently about God. She was the culmination of everything I had been learning for the past months. She made me think about sacred spaces and mystery and seeking out those things for myself... and I couldn't really just type up what we talked about and move on. I had to process it all for myself, and figure out what God was saying to me... so I apologize for the detour into my own life and heart and experience... and I will eventually get to that talk I had with Mary on Shabbat, and wrap up Judaism properly, and move on to my next experience. I promise! 
*****************************

On November 6th, at 6pm, I am going to be baptized.

I was baptized as a kid. Maybe 9 or 10. I accepted Jesus when I was 5 or 6. I didn’t understand what either of those things meant, and besides all that, what was God washing away? The sins of a child – lying to my parents, disobeying, hitting my brothers... I didn’t really get it.

So I grew up and made different choices, and when my husband and I split in 2006, I left God and the church, too. Only, I missed God. I blocked him out and I tried to fill up the spot where he was, and instead, I just made a big mess out of my life.

a [crisis] of faith

**This blog post has been written in my journal, emailed to my best friend, and scribbled on napkins for the past six months... it has been an ongoing process, thinking and praying and trying to figure out where my head is. This is sort of the compilation and resolution to how this projected has affected me personally over the past eighteen months.**

It was never supposed to get personal. You see, I started out this project with a set of beliefs and values. I wasn’t willing to compromise them or [disbelieve] them, and I wasn’t thinking that even the consideration of those prospects would be a problem. I thought that I could happily maintain my own belief system while objectively reporting on the beliefs of others.

I mean, granted, I was willing to see God in a new way. I was willing to explore the spiritual practices of other groups, and incorporate some of their views on God into my own theology, if the occasion arose where those beliefs did not clash with the beliefs that I already had. I was even willing to go so far as to say that what was right for me is not necessarily right for everyone, and their beliefs could be right for them and wrong for me. But I knew what I believed and my foundation wasn’t going to shift. ((I thought.))

Islam was my first religion to study. It came to me easily. They incorporated my own prophets from the Old and New Testament. They had some funny rules,