Eric and Ruth McCairns
Profile
Eric McCairns was born in 1946 and brought up in Maryhill, an area of Glasgow where Partick Thistle’s football ground was the only patch of grass in the neighbourhood, and most families had to use a communal toilet and wash in a zinc bath in front of the fire. Encouraged by his mother, Eric did well at school and was the first member of his family to go to university. He studied Bio-chemistry at Glasgow University and was awarded B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Ruth Whitehouse was growing up in straightened circumstances on a poultry farm near Sydney. In a home without television, she became a voracious reader. Like Eric, she was brought up Presbyterian, and like Eric she won a place at university – the first in her family – with the support of her mother. Ruth’s degree was a B.Sc. in Agriculture at Sydney University.
Their lives began to converge when Eric, after spending two years at the University of California in Los Angeles doing post-doctoral work, moved to Australia in 1975 to take up a position at the Children’s Hospital in Sydney. Ruth was working for her Ph.D., studying tiger beetles. Their lives finally collided when they met at a Burmese restaurant in Sydney’s Chinatown. They were married in 1976 and by 1982 they had three children. While their children were young, Eric worked during the day on research into the blood cells involved in childhood leukaemia, and Ruth taught evening classes in plant protection at a technical college. They have vivid memories of switching the kids between cars in the college car park at nights.
Eric eventually joined Amersham International, makers of products for medical research. In 1993 he was transferred to England to run their Life Science business in what was termed ‘Rest of World’ – which included Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, the Indian Sub Continent, Asia (minus Japan), and Australia and New Zealand. Hence he lived for much of the time in a jumbo jet, although he and Ruth made their home in Buckinghamshire (where they still live today). In 2005, however, he was made redundant when Amersham was taken over by a giant American company, and that was the end of his professional career.
Ruth and Eric are enjoying an active and fulfilling retirement. They belong to the Living History Group of the Sealed Knot, an English Civil War re-enactment society. In authentic seventeenth-century costumes, Ruth makes Bobbin Lace (as did her maternal ancestors until they emigrated to Australia from Bedfordshire in the 1840s), and Eric plays a variety of musical instruments, especially the Spanish bagpipe and a wooden whistle. He also whittles wooden artefacts, has recently joined Bedford Pipe Band, and is learning to play the Highland bagpipe. Ruth is a great reader and keen gardener (especially proud of her Celtic knot-garden, designed by Eric). She took up photography fairly recently, specialising in flower studies and architectural details. ("I see things differently now: everything looks more beautiful.") They enjoy visiting old churches and cathedrals, and recently they have added Unitarian chapels to their list.
It was only in 2005 that Eric discovered Unitarianism, through reading a book about heresies. Ruth had already heard of our faith through her interest in the works of Elizabeth Gaskell and Ralph Waldo Emerson ("my literary hero"). They found the MCO Chapel Society through the Internet, attended a service, and soon decided that they had always been Unitarian, without knowing it. In the Presbyterian churches of their youth they had both questioned many aspects of mainstream Christianity, especially the doctrine of atonement and redemption. Ruth was even a Sunday School teacher, but as a biologist she could never subscribe to the notion of a virgin birth ("for one thing, the offspring of such parthenogenesis would have to be female!"). For Eric, the idea of the Oneness of God is central. (He was always aware that to claim divine status would be anathema for Jesus, as a Jew.) After several years’ membership of their increasingly evangelical Anglican parish church, they both value the Unitarian freedom to think for oneself. Eric is exploring the spiritual practices of Sufism (including recitation, chanting, and dancing), which he finds entirely compatible with Unitarianism.
At the end of our conversation, I asked them each to name their favourite hymn. Eric chose Immortal, invisible for its transcendental imagery of the ever-present spirit of God; and Ruth chose O love that will not let me go, because it reminds her of her mother, "whose religion was her life".
Ruth and Eric say that they feel at home in the Oxford chapel and have been made to feel welcome. They enjoyed the course on Everyday Spirituality led by Peter Hewis last autumn, and they take pleasure in attending the monthly discussion groups. They have become such a familiar presence on Sundays that it is hard to believe that they found their way to us so recently. To think that they might not have come at all if it had not been for that book about heresy! Catherine Robinson July 2006