The Flaming Chalice

More recently, feminist writer Riane Eisler has used the chalice as a symbol of the "partnership way" of being in community. 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 during the Second World War by an Austrian artist, Hans Deutsch, in 1941. Living in Paris during the 1930s, Deutsch drew cartoons critical 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.

In Portugal he met the Reverend Charles Joy, an American Unitarian and executive director of the Unitarian Service Committee (USC). The Service Committee was new, founded in Boston, Massachusetts 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. The Unitarian Service Committee was a new, unknown organisation and needed some visual image to represent Unitarianism to the world, especially when dealing with government agencies abroad. Rev Joy commissioned this Czech refugee and cartoonist, Hans Deutsch, to design something that could be used on official documents, and thus an early version of the modern chalice came into being.

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.

The American Universalists and Unitarians merged in the early sixties, and versions of the symbol were adopted by the Unitarian Universalist Association . 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. A version of the symbol was adopted by the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in Britain. It has since been used by Unitarian churches in other parts of the world. 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.

Unitarianism values insights from the present as well as the past. It is appropriate therefore that the flaming chalice symbol should have both ancient and modern roots, in both instances grounded in the principles of sacrifice and service to humanity.

The symbol of the chalice flame may be further understood as a metaphor for the lives of human beings, both as individuals and in community.

A cup is a familiar object made to be held and passed around -- for sharing. A flame, by contrast, is not an object. It cannot be weighed or measured. It is no static thing, but a dynamic, changing process.

The flame needs three elements. The first of these is fuel. Fuel is material. Like the human body, like the treasured buildings, books, treasure and documents of a church community. If a fire lacks fuel it is said to be "burning low" like a candle in its final moments. The flame shrinks until it is just a feeble glow.

Unitarians are not ascetic or "other-worldly" but try to take a realistic and rational view of life. Unitarians readily accept that, like kindling for a fire, people in their private lives and collectively need the fuel of physical things.

The second element is heat. Think of the heat of life itself, distinguishing the living from the dead; the spark of intelligence, the warmth of human encounter, even the friction of disagreement. If a fire lacks heat, as when you dampen a flame with water, it is said to be guttering.

To develop as human beings, people also need heat. The vitality of congregational life, activities which animate and engross, thought-provoking moments that challenge are signs of a healthy liberal religious community. Unitarians believe that society is sustained by the warmth that functioning and supportive communities can provide.

The third element is air. Spirit has always been compared with air, or wind by Greeks and Hebrews alike. If a fire lacks air, we say that it is smouldering. There is much heat and thick black smoke, but little or no light. Modern life is too often like this.

Unitarians are open to the importance of personal religious experience, whether in a meeting house or a chapel on a Sunday, on a mountain-top, or in everyday moments during the working week. To develop, people need air or spirit: the inspiration, or breathing in, of that invisible, yet vital element; the deep moments of the self in prayer or meditation; the shared movement of the heart when the spirit is felt.

Unitarians, unlike Moses, do not simply find the fire burning in the wilderness. The flaming chalice is no burning bush, but something to be lit, and re-lit, by every person. It requires an act of will, of purpose and of faith.

http://www.uua.org/aboutuu/chalice.html by Dan Hotchkiss