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Two more questions in advance of my class on The Dispossessed next week.
(1) As a teenager on Anarres, Shevek sees a film about Urras, the home planet that’s a lot like ours–multiple countries, all with governments, some of which are capitalist and some communist. The film juxtaposes a famine in the country of Thu where the bodies of starved children are being burned with the wealth and plenty only 700 km away in the nation of A-Io, noting that these exist “side by side” (pp 33-34 in the Avon paperback edition). Do you think this is a fair criticism? Can it be applied to our world? How would you defend us, or would you make the same criticism?
(2) If you suddenly discovered that Anarres existed and you could move there, would you trade the benefits of living in a society like ours for those of that society? For example, would you give up the various things you own, and the possibility of owning more, in exchange for life in a society where you have almost no private possessions and “no one eats while another starves”?
Cross-posted at the UUCPA blog, and I’ve disabled comments here so that all comments are in one place; please make them over there.
In preparation for our class on theological unity within Unitarian Universalism scheduled for January 31 at UUCPA, Dan Harper and I are blogging about the topic online. With this post, I am less responding to Dan’s post than tossing my own thoughts into the mix, so I’ll use a new post instead of the comments.
The second question we posed to ourselves is “Do we need more theological unity in Unitarian Universalism?” and to that my answer is “No, we need less.”
What I mean by that is that our fear of diversity and difference among us keeps us from talking about our theology/ies.* And that dialogue is something we need more of. In fact, when I am afraid that Unitarian Universalism is withering and dying, it’s the lack of this dialogue that I suspect is the cause.
People sometimes address our decline in numbers with a call for increased theological unity, asserting that if we are to attract people, we need to know what we all believe and declare it. They usually seem to mean that everyone should rally behind their particular theology. While I agree that what we have to offer sometimes feels weak and half-hearted, what gives us such a tentative air isn’t the lack of a simple, unified statement. It is that we are dancing around the topic instead of digging in. We don’t have to agree about what we believe, but we do have to talk about it. And as long as we are afraid of disagreement, we won’t open our mouths.
Here I am getting into very personal territory. When I think about my own preaching and how it has changed–in my view, improved–over the past few years, I know that the weakness at the core was my fear of voicing my own theology. Too often, I was hedging. And hedging attracts no one. When I speak from my own theological center, not trying to speak for every UU but just for myself, I contribute to the conversation. The conversation, to me, is where we come alive.
By the way, our first question to ourselves was “Is theological unity necessary?” That word, “necessary,” always suggests another question, “necessary for what?” What is our purpose? When we know that, we may know the answer to whether we need unity. I have a lot of different ways of stating our purpose: “To transform ourselves, each other, and the world”; the benediction we say at the end of each service; the vision I once set out here. None of them, in my opinion, requires that we have a unified theology.
*”Unitarian Universalist Theologies” was the name of the core liberal theology course I took in seminary, taught at Andover-Newton Theological School by then-doctoral-student Paul Rasor. His book Faith Without Certainty would probably be very interesting to anyone who wanted to explore these questions beyond next week.
Cross-posted here at UUCPA’s blog. (I have turned off comments on this Sermons in Stones entry so that the conversation will take place there.)
photo by 4028mdk09, source: Wikimedia Commons
Apparently, each year when December 1 rolls around and some Unitarian Universalists (UUs) begin celebrating Chalica, other UUs get all het up about it. I got into a discussion about it on Facebook and needed to go look up a couple of things. When I clicked on this site, to my surprise, it carried a link to a sermon of mine. Gosh, what did I say about Chalica? Turns out I had a lot of nice things to say about it. The fact that it completely slipped my mind that I’d even written this sermon, I attribute to the arrival of my daughter a few months later. My memory, not great to begin with, has never recovered.
There are a lot of things I like about this holiday. I like the fact that it was started by laypeople and took off as a grassroots phenomenon, with little nurture by the UUA or ministers. I like that it was originated by a young adult, a demographic we claim to want to attract but often chase away through our actions or inaction. I’ve heard that it spread largely through social media and I think that’s great: UUs using the technology of our day, as our 19th century ancestors used pamphleteering, to reach each other and newcomers.
I like that it is a home-based ritual. We have too few of those. I grew up Jewish, and religion saturated our home and family life, making a natural bridge between what we studied and prayed about in the synagogue and what we were trying to practice in our daily lives. In Unitarian Universalism, most of our practices take place in church, and it makes it harder to bridge the gap between Sunday and Monday. Chalica is a way to bring our principles home.
I admit to liking that it seems to tick off the establishment. I haven’t followed too many of the debates, but reliable reporters suggest that UUA staff and ministers are more likely to line up at the con microphone, so to speak, and that laypeople are more likely to line up at the pro mike. When a religion is alive and thriving, the people generate their own forms, spontaneously and often without the leadership, or even blessing, of their ordained or professional guides. This holiday makes me know that ours really is a living tradition.
I like that it is new. Like the chalice itself, it echoes ancient practices and symbols, but its specific form and use are very recent. The lighting of a chalice at the beginning of services was a rarity, if it happened at all, 70 years ago; it has since become all but universal. The Water Communion was first celebrated in 1980 and is widely celebrated, having gained layers of meaning and the kinds of nuances that come about only through lived experience. If Chalica meets a need, it may take the same course.
I like that it meets a need I feel myself: for my religion to have its own holiday at this holiday-rich time of year. I find Christmas meaningful (for that matter, I can find meaning and beauty in just about anything, hence the name of this blog) and I enjoy celebrating it with my congregation, but if it were up to me alone, I would not choose the birth of Jesus as a focal point for a family celebration. (It is not up to me alone; my wife, Joy, lobbied heavily for presents at Christmas and she won. I reluctantly–ha!–accept mine.) We celebrate Hanukah because we want the munchkin to know her heritage (Joy grew up Jewish too), but I can’t say the significance of the holiday speaks to me very much. We don’t celebrate Kwanzaa because we’re not African-American. Of all the winter holidays, solstice may be most meaningful to me personally, and I created a home ritual to celebrate the return of the light with my daughter, but it doesn’t feel any different than taking her outside to see a lunar eclipse, or showing her the constellations, or any of the other things we may do to mark the seasons and the rhythms of the earth. In other words, I’m not a Christian, a Jew (at least not theologically), an African-American, or a Pagan. I’m a Unitarian Universalist, and although I don’t know if we will ever add Chalica to our busy December, I appreciate that it is a festival that celebrates what I hold dear.
I like that it provides an opportunity to delve into the principles, which are sometimes criticized as shallow but for my money, are ideals I strive to live up to (and never can quite attain). We’ll need to be flexible, as the principles are not written in stone and if they are not to take on the authority of a creed, we need to be able to revise them and let them go in time. Maybe that process could even be built into the holiday. How about an eighth night for a conversation about what other principles we might want to affirm and promote . . . ?
I like the suggestions about using the days of Chalica to act upon our principles, not just speak them. Kathy Klink-Zeitz suggests that for the fourth principle, a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, we might want to learn something new from someone else, give a book, or read a book. Jeff Liebmann, in the first of his 2012 Chalica videos, suggests that to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, the first principle, we might make amends to someone to whom we’ve shown disrespect, or give thanks to someone who has helped us.
I apparently wasn’t bothered enough by my one serious objection to this holiday to mention it when I wrote that 2006 sermon, even parenthetically. Maybe along with my Parenthood-Induced Memory Loss Syndrome, I’ve gotten more persnickety. But it does bother me, and as long as I am in the good graces of the Chalica fans I will send forth this plea:
Please find a different name for it.
It can’t be coincidence that it sounds like Hanukah. So how can I put this? It is tacky to the point of offensiveness–no, past the point of offensiveness–to spin off the name of another religion’s sacred celebration. I know that Hanukah is a minor holiday, but it is still a sacred festival and it and Judaism deserve our respect. I have tried to think of the name as playful. Playfulness is a wonderful quality for a holiday to have, and I smile to imagine folks sitting around a table talking about a new UU holiday that bears some resemblance to Hanukah, and joking, “We could call it Chalica!” But when it goes public and takes hold, I stop hearing it as playful and start hearing it as trivializing instead. It trivializes both Unitarian Universalism and Judaism. I don’t doubt the sincerity of the celebrations, but the name grins behind the back of a hand and whispers, “This is really just a joke.” Even worse, it says that Hanukah is a joke. I know we wouldn’t adapt the day of atonement to Unitarian Universalism and call the result Yom KippUUr, so please. Let’s call it something else.
We’re a creative bunch and I’m sure if we put it out to fans of Chalica as a challenge–name that holiday!–they could come up with a name that honors the values that gave rise to the holiday to begin with. In fact, let’s do it right here. I’d love to read your ideas in the comments.
Two years ago I had a late-night brainstorm and stayed up completing a fun, entirely unsolicited project: a “hope calendar,” modeled on an advent calendar, on which each day between Thanksgiving and Christmas had a fact or question about the work of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC). The idea was to use it during Guest at Your Table (GAYT), the several autumn weeks when we raise awareness of, and money for, the UUSC. It was especially geared toward families with kids from about age 8 to 14. I e-mailed it to our parents and teachers, made a bunch of copies of my calendar and put them out on the day of our GAYT kickoff, and had no idea whether anyone used it.
I also e-mailed it to the UUSC, which compiles ideas from congregations on how to promote Guest at Your Table. This fall, they asked if they could adapt my calendar, crediting me for the concept of course, and of course I said yes. Their very nifty version is here. I hope lots of families find it a useful way to learn about the work of this terrific organization.
Based on my own experiences, I accept it as a given that rich, lasting relationships can arise through online connections, via social media and the internet. On Sunday I’ll be talking about that and what it says about the nature of community, and asking how we might expand our sense of connection by using these technologies more as a congregation, just as many (almost all) of us are using them more in the rest of our lives.
How do you currently use social networking and the internet that would translate well to congregational life?
Last month we started ending our services with a benediction. We already had a benediction–different words each week–but it felt swallowed up in the chalice extinguishing, and then hemmed in on the other side by the postlude. Also, at Palo Alto people want to applaud the musicians, so when the postlude is the very last thing, the service ends with applause. This doesn’t always feel appropriate to the theme or mood of the service, and it tends to create the feeling that one has been at a performance.
I have visited other congregations where the very last words are a blessing, and I’ve loved the way it felt. It seemed right to have the postlude (followed by its applause) and then an element that would help us to leave with a sense of participation, mutual care, and a turning outwards. So what words of blessing? I knew I wanted them to be something we all said to each other and that we said each week, and I knew I wanted for us to make a physical connection.
I have a great affection for this passage from the preface to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and will probably give a sermon on it sometime (I could fill a book with thoughts just on the most perplexing line, “Argue not concerning God”), but it isn’t really right. It sounds like a command more than an invitation, albeit a command to do some terrific things.
Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
Dan Harper, who is our Associate Minister of Religious Education, and I both had stories relating to the benediction said in the Concord, Massachusetts, church, where he grew up and I have visited. Actually, it was the same story: of going to the home of someone who belonged to the congregation (they were not the same someones, but two separate families) and finding that they’d put the words of the benediction on their doors, where they would see them each time they left the house. They had become a blessing that they bestowed on themselves daily.
I knew them and liked them and wondered where they’d come from, so I poked around a little. First, here’s the Concord version:
Go out into the world in peace
Have courage
Hold on to what is good
Return to no person evil for evil
Strengthen the faint-hearted
Support the weak
Help the suffering
Honor all beings.
The Rev. Dr. Brent Smith has this on his website–I’m not sure whether it was, and/or is still, a regular feature at All Souls in Tulsa, where he previously served:
Be of good courage.
Search all things, and hold fast to that which is good.
Render unto no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted, support the weak, help the afflicted.
Love all men. Love all women. Love all children.
Love all souls, serving the Most High;
And rejoicing in the power of the Spirit. Amen.
I’m guessing that both have their origins in the Presbyterian Worship Book, because I found another site listing this, used by the Rev. Herb Swanson when he was interim pastor at St. John United Church, Columbia, Maryland, and described as “adapted from the Presbyterian Worship Book and the Bible”:
Go out into the world in peace; have courage; hold on to what is good; return no one evil for evil; strengthen the faint-hearted; support the weak; help the suffering. Honor every person that you meet. and Love and Serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
I liked the Concord version, and pondered if anything essential to my theology was missing. There were two things: beauty and–to a lesser extent, since it was already implicit–love. I wrote two more lines and ended up with this:
Go out into the world in peace
Be of good courage
Hold fast to what is good
Return no one evil for evil
Strengthen the faint-hearted
Support the weak
Help the suffering
Rejoice in beauty
Speak love with word and deed
Honor all beings.
We have been ending the service by taking hands and saying it–a feat that the people at UUCPA attempt with good humor, since it’s not easy to hold hands and hold a piece of paper at the same time–and I see a lot of smiles. Maybe we are feeling our very flesh become a great poem.
Update: we now have a Spanish translation.
The Rev. Dr. William R. Jones, one of that rare breed known as Unitarian Universalist theologians, and the even rarer breed of African-American Unitarian Universalist theologians, died on Friday at age 79 (obituary here). From the time I encountered his work when I was in seminary, it gave me that mix of headiness and humility that we get when someone articulates our own most cherished ideas far better than we can.
For example, this passage from his 1975 article in The Christian Century, “Theism and Religious Humanism: The Chasm Narrows”:
Abraham’s situation, when he is commanded to slay Isaac, represents the human situation. Forced to decide whether he is addressed by God or Moloch and given the impossibility of demonstrating whose voice he hears, Abraham must assume the mantle of ultimate valuator. He must decide the source of the command, and in the final analysis his judgment of the source determines the value of the command. If he concludes that the decree is from God, it is morally imperative. If, however, he decides that it is Moloch’s voice that he hears, the order must be rejected. But clearly, only Abraham can make this crucial decision.
Likewise with humankind: forced by virtue of our freedom and the existential situation of objective uncertainty, we cannot escape the necessity to be the measure of even that higher reality that created us. There is no way to escape this responsibility short of denaturing humanity, for it is a factor of the freedom that is our essence.
The same sense of uncertainty informs the humanist concept of history. The humanist acts “as if” history were open-ended and multivalued, as if human choices and actions were determinative for human destiny. But once history is afforded this character, it becomes problematical that the good is guaranteed. There does not appear to be an inevitable historical development, sponsored by ultimate reality, that ensures the liberation of the oppressed or a more humane society. Rather, oppression and liberation are equally probable. Nor is there a cosmic lifeguard to save humanity from its self-destructive choices. This is the meaning of the tragic sense of history in humanism — not that human efforts are doomed to defeat, but that the best-laid plans of one generation may be sabotaged by the actions of the next.
Thus, rather than fanatical advocates of absolute human freedom, religious humanists view themselves as faithful stewards of human finitude and creatureliness.
Amen, amen, and amen. Not to suggest that his work only recapitulated what I already believed; he has also challenged me, as good scholars and ministers do. I believe even this decades-old piece challenges humanists today, who sometimes act as if human beings are the pinnacle of creation (or, for that matter, gods) instead of finite and creaturely.
I wrote a few months ago about the promise and potential of black humanism, and what humanists and Unitarian Universalists of all backgrounds can learn from it. Bill Jones has done his part; the next steps will have to be taken by those of us he has inspired. Rest in peace and go with our gratitude.
Reading Gary Dorrien’s The Making of American Liberal Theology has sent me back to the Divinity School Address, in particular to confirm Dorrien’s interpretation that Emerson claimed, “To Jesus, all of life was a miracle.” “Did he really say that?” I wondered. Yes, here’s the passage:
“[Jesus] spoke of miracles; for he felt that man’s life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends.”
That’s a lovely sentiment, but what justifies attributing it to Jesus, RWE doesn’t say. I would like to think that Jesus was a Transcendentalist, but the evidence in the canonical gospels doesn’t support it.
Almost everyone, even those as iconoclastic as Emerson, wants to claim Jesus as one of their own. A revolutionary, a feminist, an upholder of law and order, a Taoist or Buddhist master, a prophet, a communist, a capitalist. We have just a few texts to judge by, and they support only a few of these interpretations. I would love to embrace the image of Jesus as a saint, the best humanity can be, but I don’t see him as having an exemplary character; he’s impatient and hot-tempered at times. And I would love to see him as a Transcendentalist, perceiving and proclaiming the miracle in the ordinary, but I think that’s Emerson, not Jesus.
I wrote about inclusive lyrics and their limits a few days ago. Some further thoughts on music, based on the vibrant music at General Assembly (GA) last week:
A song leader should use the mike when teaching an unfamiliar song or giving a soloist’s riffs over the congregation. Otherwise, they should back off the mike. When they sing right into the mike, we in the congregation hear them instead of ourselves and each other.
Rock makes people move. Not everyone, of course, but we have a few generations in services now for whom rock is the beat of our bodies. In any case, if you want people to move their bodies, play the music they dance to.
Let the congregation do the interesting stuff. A disappointing aspect of music at last year’s CENTER Institute (continuing education for UU ministers) was that the role of the congregation was that of backup singers to a soloist, and backup singers with a pretty monotonous part, at that. We, the congregation, would chant an uninteresting part over and over while the band would go nuts. I started to feel like wallpaper.
On the other hand, letting the congregation sing the same thing over and over can be really powerful. Too often, we sing something two or three times and just as we’re getting brave about harmonies and really feeling the music, it stops. Repeating a chorus many times lets us in the congregation begin to get creative, and get into that meditative place where a chant can take us. Jason Shelton did this really well with “Wallflower,” a Peter Gabriel song he sang immediately after Karen Tse’s sermon in the Service of the Living Tradition. She had ended with a story about prison and an exhortation to “do the one thing you can do,” and the song (how did Jason think of that song? Stroke of genius!) began with images of prison and ended with the refrain, “I will do what I can do.” He kept us singing it for a long time, allowing it to rise as a prayer and a promise from each of us. For me, in the midst of the campaign to raise UU awareness about slavery, every word of that service was about slavery and my commitment to do something to end it, and I am sure I was not the only person for whom singing those words evoked tears of hope and resolve.
Projecting words on a screen really helps people sing out. Proofread the words very carefully.
Don’t surprise the congregation. If you teach them a song, lead it the way you taught it to them. Small variations are okay–key changes, harmonies, etc.–but if you suddenly throw in a bridge, you have to warn us or we get confused and discouraged, and we don’t sing with the same abandon because we’re watching for further curveballs.
It’s worthwhile to teach songs before the service starts. Not everyone will be there, but those who were will anchor the singing.
The choir can introduce harmonies and rounds that embolden the congregation to join in, if the choir has a “y’all join in” attitude instead of a “be quiet and listen to us perform” attitude. Smiles and other signs of exuberance help. The conductor can transform the choir from performers into song leaders with one simple move: turn and conduct the congregation while the choir continues to sing. Conduct us as if we have never been in a choir, because most of us probably haven’t; keep it simple.
(c) Nancy Pierce
The choir members at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto have heard this from me before: the choir adds so much to the feel of the service when their attire is simple and undistracting. The GA choirs mostly wore all black, or black with bright stoles of various colors. One small ensemble wore shades of blue with various scarves, a mishmash of patterns that was pleasant because coordinated. Some of these groups had been singing together for only a few days, or even only a few hours, but they looked, as well as sounded, polished.
If you have a hundred-member choir, you need risers. Any choir, of whatever size, should have risers steep enough that you can see every singer’s face. It’s distracting to see just the top half of the back rows’ faces, and it has to interfere with their sound.
Having a band adds so much flexibility to congregational music. A trio of guitar, drums, and bass are all you need to make a huge difference. They won’t be called for on every song (not even the piano is used on every song), but they’re great to have.
Put more participatory music in the service. More. Now add some more.
At General Assembly, a music leader gave a heartfelt plea for us to be more creative in our use of imagery in music. “Standing on the Side of Love,” she said, is a wonderful song but unintentionally hurtful to those who cannot stand. She urged us to be more poetic. For example, she suggested that sitting is a powerful image for taking a strong position. This is true, but does not resolve the problem she raised, since there are people who cannot sit.
I have given this a lot of thought in the past, and where it has led me has been to songs that have no metaphor whatsoever, including the “dead metaphors” that characterize so much of our language (e.g., in “I have given this a lot of thought,” the verb “give” is a dead metaphor). I have considered some of the most basic metaphors we use in our hymns and other songs and who is excluded by them, and I must differ with the speaker’s confidence that we will be able to find, create, or rework lyrics that include everyone.
Vision imagery leaves some people out; some people cannot see.
Hearing imagery leaves some people out; some people cannot hear. (I have always liked “From All the Fret and Fever of the Day” for its use of deafness as a positive attribute, calling on us to be “deaf to all confusing outer din.” But it goes on to say, “Intently listen to the voice within.”)
If we want to be sensitive to those who cannot speak, we should avoid imagery about raising our voices in speech or song. Songwriters love to urge us to sing, but some people can’t voice any sounds, so all imagery of singing should be avoided.
Many people cannot have children or grandchildren, and are grieved by that. We should avoid phrases like “for the children of our children” (“Circle Round for Freedom”).
Some people cannot walk, march, or run a race, and replacing those words with “go” is no help. Some people cannot go anywhere. They live their entire lives hooked to machinery in a bed. “Come and go with me to that land” is no more sensitive to such folks than “We are marching in the light of God.”
In fact, we should avoid journey imagery.
About all that is left to us, the only attributes that apply to every living human being, are that we breathe and our hearts beat. Not without assistance, in some cases, so “Just as long as my heart beats” (Hymn #6) is probably a painful phrase for some to hear, but we could use those images without actually excluding anyone.
The other avenue still open to us is to skip imagery about human beings altogether. In the same service in which this issue was raised, we sang the rousing hymn,
Ain’t you got a right
Aint you got a right
Ain’t you got a right
To the tree of life?
No problems there, in the chorus. The verses were chock-full of imagery such as people on a journey, though.
The fact is that we would have a very short list indeed if we really eradicated all songs that refer to abilities that some of us lack. I suggest that instead of walling ourselves into that corner, we take a different approach. From my own experiences I find that the language makes little difference if we do two things.
First, we use a wide variety of images to portray human experience. They won’t all fit mine, but because we’re using a variety, many of them will, and it will be okay.
Second, and by far the more important: we make our communities places that welcome and celebrate all people, regardless of their abilities in all of these areas. In my experience, songs touch on a nerve of mine when the nerve has already been stomped on by the community. When the community practices justice on all these points, and many songs reflect my experience, the occasional use of imagery that might otherwise seem exclusive just seems irrelevant. Being one of the temporarily able-bodied, I can only extrapolate from my other identities to imagine how I would feel–how I will feel–when I am unable to walk, or talk, or hear, so please correct me if I am missing something.
By the way, the best music-and-sensitivity advice I heard all week came from Fred Small, who led a workshop on songleading and advised us not to identify the origin of a song only in the case of “minority” music, but in all cases (or none). As he pointed out, when we say “This song is from the African-American tradition,” but we don’t say of the next one, “This song is from the Irish tradition,” we imply that Irish is the norm and African-American is a special case. Amen.
Sermons in Stones 
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