From Your Minister
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When I was in my twenties, so many possibilities about what life might hold for me beckoned from so many directions that the upshot was I was fairly immobilized. Many futures were possible, but none of them called my name. Then one day, I stopped into a book-store and picked up a book.
I was always picking up books. But this book—well, it might as well have said on the cover, Your Destiny. But it didn’t. It said: Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, by Mary Daly. On the back, it had a blurb from a poet I liked, Adrienne Rich, who said the book was “…a milestone in the movement toward human liberation.” I began to read it right there in the bookstore and was astonished several hours later when I was told they were closing. I took it home and finished it that night.
By the time I had finished that book, there was only one future I was interested in. I didn’t know exactly what it would look like, but I knew I would dedicate my life to theology, like the author of this book.
I don’t remember noticing that the book was published by a press called Beacon Press, or that the inside cover mentioned that “Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association.”
But the book…the book centered me, moved me from infinite possibilities and no purpose to one purpose that might lead to a few good possibilities. I began investigating theology schools right then and there. I have since heard dozens of women clergy say that it was this very same book that woke them up and whispered “Yes” in their ears, just as it whispered in mine.
I’ve since learned that Beacon Press books have opened eyes and ears and possibilities for people all over the world, and in many ways. Books that are each, in their own way, “a milestone in the movement toward human liberation.” In a way, I think of these books as ministries of Unitarian Universalism, because they whisper “Yes” in the ears of their readers in the same way that our faith affirms human liberation. Many of these books have larger congregations than will ever sit in the pews of any church, and these people are inspired, transformed, motivated to work for justice. All the things we hope church will accomplish.
Good books keep offering new possibilities, generation after generation. Man’s Search for Meaning, written by psychiatrist Victor Frankl after he survived three years of labor in Nazi concentration camps, was first published in German in 1946. Beacon Press did the first English printing, in 1959. The book holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
Recently, Oprah Winfrey was interviewing parents whose six year old child had been killed in the tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Asked to describe how they were surviving this loss, the couple referenced Frankl’s book as if it had been written yesterday. They are choosing to find purpose and meaning, even in their abject grief. Across the decades, a Beacon Book has whispered “Yes” to their making meaning out of suffering.
Some of Beacon’s books don’t whisper, they shout YES! to human liberation. James Baldwin’s Notes of A Native Son. The Pentagon Papers, Jean Baker Miller’s Towards a New Psychology of Women, and so many other cutting edge feminist books. Martin Luther King’s prayers and Gandhi’s autobiography.
Helen Benedict wrote a 2009 Beacon Book called The Lonely Soldier, documenting the prevalence of sexual assault against women in the military. The book inspired an award-winning documentary on the topic which in turn caused Congress to finally hold hearings on the topic, where Benedict testified. Another milestone in the movement toward human liberation!
There are dozens more of these stories, stories of individual transformations and social change movements that have been nurtured and supported by Beacon Press.
For many of us, even in this world of blogs and tweets and Facebook updates, books remain a central, transformational, conveyor of possibilities. Our prisoner members find inspiration and connection to a world that they are locked away from in books. So many of us are in book groups; we have dozens of books lying about in various stages of being read, we compare notes with friends about what we are reading. In case it’s not clear, I could not be more proud of the history of Beacon Press, and its connection with Unitarian Universalism allows me to claim the work as part of my religious movement.
In the Sikh tradition the final in a series of prophets is not a person, but rather a book of wisdom. That book, the Guru Granth Sahib is the living guru of the Sikhs, and each copy of the book is treated with due reverence. We Unitarian Universalists do not designate prophets, or even canonical holy books. But maybe what we have is not a book, but a rather a publisher which speaks to our deepest dreams and commitments, calling us to ever deeper engagement with the truth.
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