"There is a theory that states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened." Thank you for your interest in the Unitarian Church of Marlborough and Hudson's weekly podcast. Today's recording was made at our service on Sunday, February 19th, 2006. This week's recording features Diane DeFranzo and Joyce Langley with a reading and personal reflection based on Douglas Adams', Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Listen here

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Reading “The Babel fish.” said The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of it’s carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix that has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. “Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. “The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “’But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your arguments, you don’t.’ “’Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. “’Oh, that was easy’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. “Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that doesn’t stop Oolon Collupbid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of this best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God.”

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Personal Reflection The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything – As Seen Through the Memory Banks of: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Why would “This” Worship Committee choose to inflict upon “This” congregation a service titled “The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything – As Seen Through the Memory Banks of: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Let me try to answer this question for you: One of the members of “This” Worship Committee (Me) had an extremely difficult and emotionally exhausting year in 2005. By the time the holidays arrived, neither Jim nor I had much left emotionally or mentally to “give”. We went through the motions of the holiday season and decided that the best gift we could give to each other was a week away. So during the week between Christmas and New Years we packed up and went away to a hotel. No phones, hence no calls regarding problems, concerns and issues from “Loved Ones”. No television (okay, there was one, but we didn’t watch it!), hence no disturbing reports concerning the actions of our president or of devastating news in our world. Totally Away! We spent the entire week: going out to eat, sleeping, swimming in the pool, sleeping, relaxing in the hot tub, sleeping, reading and sleeping! I can’t really remember the book I chose to bring with me to read, but Jim brought “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. The reason I can’t really remember the book I brought along to read, was because every time I would read a paragraph or two I would be interrupted by the sounds of Jim starting to giggle, which would then turn into the sounds of him laughing out loud! I would stop what I was reading and say “What?” He would then read me a paragraph or a page from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and then we would both have a really good laugh! It soon dawned on me that the material in this book would make a wonderful “Getting Out of the Mid-Winter Doldrums” service for our church this year. I realize that so far I really haven’t answered the question as to “Why would “This” Worship Committee choose to inflict upon “This” congregation a service titled “The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything – As Seen Through the Memory Banks of: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?” What I’d like to do is to tell you a little about the story of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and then end with my answers to this question. The story begins with Arthur Dent who is your “perfectly normal” earthling. He is lying down in the mud, dressed in his bathrobe and slippers, in front of a bunch of bulldozers from the “Town Planning Council”, trying to prevent them from “bulldozing” down his house to make room for a bypass. His friend Ford Prefect, who has been posing, as “an out of work actor” but is really an alien, roving researcher for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, stuck on earth for the last fifteen years, interrupts his endeavor. Ford reveals his true identity to Arthur and explains to him that the earth is about to be destroyed by a “Vogon Construction Fleet from the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council”, in order to make room for a hyper-spatial express route through earth’s star system. I’d like to take a moment here to explain to you that “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is “a device that looks like a large electronic calculator. This has about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million ‘pages’ can be summoned at a moments notice. It fits into a snug cover, which has the words “DON’T PANIC” printed on it in large friendly letters. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.” I’d also like to note here that the words “DON’T PANIC”, have served the purpose of allowing me to actually read this book without “undue stress and in a fairly relaxed mode” as throughout the entire book all of the characters find themselves constantly in life or death situations, only to find a way to avoid each situation and move on to their next adventure. Now to get back to the story… Just as “our friends” Arthur and Ford are about to be obliterated along with the earth they are transported to one of the Vogan Construction Fleet ships, which turns out to be “not such a good thing”, and are later transported again to the star ship the “Heart of Gold”, “which is a little better but not much”! The “Heart of Gold” is a brand new star ship, which is a secret project, just built by the Imperial Galactic Government. The reason this star ship is such a secret is because “The Infinite Improbability Drive” powers it. Designers and engineers decided, in their innocence, to build a prototype Improbability Field into it, which was meant, supposedly, to ensure that it was Infinitely Improbable that anything would ever go wrong with any part of the ship. They did not realize that because of the quasi-reciprocal and circular nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately! On the day of the unveiling of this secret project, the President of the Imperial Galactic Government, Zaphod Beeblebrox steals the new star ship and takes off across the galaxy with his earthly girlfriend Tricia McMillan, more commonly known as “Trillian”. Now our characters, which consist of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian and Marvin “a robot built with the new GPP (Genuine People Personalities) feature, who has been diagnosed as clinically depressed”, land on the “custom planet building” planet of Magrathea. They soon meet up with the inhabitants of Magrathea where they hear the story of the answer to “Life, The Universe and Everything!” “There are, of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are “Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?” “Many, many million of years ago a race of hyper-intelligent beings got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life, which used to interrupt their favorite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away), that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all. They built a super computer named “Deep Thought” which was so intelligent it was known as “the Second Greatest Computer in the Universe of Time and Space”. The computer programmers, “Lunkwill and Fook” asked of it the ultimate question, “The task we have designed you to perform is this…we want you to tell us the Answer! The answer to Life, The Universe and Everything!” Deep Thought told them that this program would take “a little while to run, actually seven and half million years! As it turned out the philosophers of the time, who were quite concerned about being out of a job, were quite pleased with this time delay. “They reasoned that running a program such as this was bound to create an enormous amount of publicity for the whole area of Philosophy in general, and while everyone was going to have their own theories about the answer, they could cash in on the media market and keep themselves on the Gravy Train for life”. Seven and half million years later came “The Day of the Answer!” The square and all the streets were packed with the excited crowd. As one man put it, “Never again, will we have to wake up in the morning and think: Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work?” Meanwhile, back in the computer room, there was a moment’s expectant pause while the computer panels slowly came to life and Deep Thought prepared to speak! “I have answer for you, but your not going to like it”, said Deep Thought. “The answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is 42!” At this point the new computer programmers, Phoucgh and Loonquawl looked down upon the waiting crowd and said, “We’re going to get lynched, aren’t we?” It was then figured out that they had the answer, but the question wasn’t specific enough, so they needed to find the Specific Question to the answer 42! Thus, the “The First Greatest Computer in The Universe of Time and Space” was designed by Deep Thought and built by the “custom planet building” planet of Magrathea. This computer was so magnificent and of such complexity that it could calculate the “Question to the Ultimate Answer” in its ten-million-year-program. This computer was named “Earth!” Thus, the Earth was designed by Deep Thought, built by Magrathea and commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. Yes, I said mice, the little white, squeaky, furry things with the cheese fixation! But, these creatures were not as they appeared. During the 1960’s (in earth time), while humans thought they were doing behavioral research on mice, the mice were really disguising their true natures and experimenting with humans. As the story of the answer to “Life, The Universe and Everything!” continues, it is revealed that five minutes before the computer program was completed the Vogons came and destroyed it in the “pretense of making way for a hyper-spatial express route through earth’s star system”. I use the phrase “pretense of making way for a hyper-spatial express route through earth’s star system” because it is further revealed that the Vogons were actually paid to destroy Earth by the Galaxy Psychiatric Association, to “put an end to the dangerous experiment to find the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, The Universe and Everything. In the morning they would be able to meet again their unhappy, bewildered and highly profitable patients, secure in the knowledge that the Meaning of Life would Not Now be, Once and for All, well and truly sorted out.” The mice, which had commissioned, paid for, and ran the Earth for “Nearly” ten million years, were Not quite so happy, Actually they were furious! Ten million years of planning and work gone just like that! The mice currently on Magrathea, Frankie and Benjy, have an Initial plan to have Magrathea rebuild earth in order to begin the computer program again, but when they meet Arthur Dent their plans change. Rebuilding earth and running it for another ten million years Just seems like Quite A Lot of work (besides the fact that they have been offered quite an enormous contract to do a lecture circuit)! They reason, that sense Arthur is one of the last generation products to live on earth, there is a good chance that the structure of “The Question” is encoded in his brain, so they offer to buy it Off of him. Arthur, being very personally attached to his brain refuses. Now “DON’T PANIC”, he again manages to escape, to go on to his next adventure with his brain attached! Without the assistance of Arthur’s brain the mice are forced to “try to fake a question that sounded plausible to The Answer 42”. They begin to examine a few possible questions. “What do you get if you multiply six times seven?” “No Good”, as this seemed Too Literal, Too Factual, too boring to sustain the interest of the masses. They finally came upon the question, “How many roads must a man walk down?” They agree that this question seems very promising, as it sounds very significant, without actually tying anyone down to meaning anything at all! After coming up with this answer the mice are off to their lecture circuit, and as I previously mentioned the rest of “our friends” are off to their next adventure. The rest of this book, or the rest of it that I have managed to read so far (it’s a 5 Story Trilogy of 624 Pages and I’m approximately half way through it) seems to be of the many adventures our friends encounter as they try to find “The Real Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, The Universe and Everything!” Now that I’ve told you a little bit about the story, I will try to answer the question “Why would “This” Worship Committee choose to inflict upon “This” congregation a service titled “The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything – As Seen Through the Memory Banks of: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?” The answer to this question, for me is two fold. First, I too have spent quite a lot of time searching for the answers to the meaning of My Life Specifically, and life in general. Just a couple of months ago I wrote in frustration to my friend Edward McGuire, “Edward”, I wrote, “If I just knew the answers to the questions, than I would know the rules, but sense I don’t, I Don’t!” This quest has brought me to Unitarian Universalism, where I am both free and encouraged to search, grow and change. Our Third and Fourth Principles State: “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations”, and “A free and responsible search for truth and meaning”. This search has taken me through many of the sources of wisdom from the world’s religions. Secondly, I have come to love “This” little congregation and “This” church in Hudson, MA. It is “Here”, that I feel safe. It is “Here”, that I can be just who I am, both human and fallible, and “it’s Okay”! It is “Here” that I have found many loving, accepting friends. It is “Here” that I can laugh and “Here” that I can cry. It is only “Here” in My UU church in Hudson, MA that would allow my to do this service. And I Thank You All for That! Blessed Be!