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I’m now on study leave and one of my projects is a week-long intensive course in modern slavery at Not For Sale’s Abolition Academy, conveniently held across from the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. (If you’re interested, but aren’t close to the SF Bay Area, they also offer shorter “Backyard Academy” sessions all around the country.) I first learned about this organization when their president spoke on a radio show earlier this year, then I did more research when I was looking for an anti-slavery organization to support, as I chronicled in May, and along the way got interested in learning more from them.
I know a few things about slavery today, the first being that it’s alive and kicking: actual cases of people being locked up, forced to work, deprived of their wages, and even inheriting their servitude from their parents. Another is that it is far from a remnant; more people are enslaved right now on Earth than there were in the entire African slave trade of the 16th through 19th centuries. Tens of thousands are enslaved in the US or pass through here each year–obviously it’s illegal, but enforcement and prosecution are rare. A large component is sex slavery (the Iowa Family Leader kicked up a little dust yesterday by coming up with an outrageous euphemism for a child who was the property of the man who had produced him by raping his mother, who was also his property: “raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household”). I also know that apart from a few well-publicized cases, like the Thai workers locked in a sweatshop in Los Angeles several years back, there isn’t much awareness of the problem even among people who are attuned to social problems.
I’ve been pretty ignorant about it myself, which is why I want to learn more. The course I’ll be taking later this month is on the supply chain, following the connection from slaveholder to consumer and empowering companies and consumers to break it. A couple of reasons I like Not For Sale (NFS) is that they also train people in investigating slavery in their neighborhoods, and they do outreach to the faith community (possible future courses to take, if this one is good). I hope we Unitarian Universalists will act on our pride in our abolitionist forebears by leading the movement to (as NFS puts it) “re-abolish slavery.” I’ve already committed to preaching on 21st century slavery and abolition on August 14, so now I’ll have much more knowledge to bring to the pulpit.
Due to streaming problems on my end, I only caught the second half of Kaaren Anderson’s sermon for General Assembly Sunday worship an hour ago, but you can bet I’ll go back and watch the rest as soon as it’s up at the General Assembly events page. About the respect for different religions expressed by Karen Armstrong (Ware lecturer earlier in the week), she pointed out that Armstrong was not trying to argue common ground–the “all religions are the same at the heart” idea, which is problematic–but rather, to call each one to accountability to its higher authority. That authority being the same for all religions: does it increase compassion and connection?
That’s what my parents taught me was the test of our religion, and all religions. When I got older, I chose the one that suited my theology better than the one in which they’d raised me, but there was no question it had to meet the basic test of whether it made me a better person and the world a better place.
The track Kaaren didn’t take but that my mind went down, in those little detours that make up half of sermon-listening, was that since religion (as she said in other words) can wield the power of life or death, it is foolish to label any particular religion destructive or constructive. Or to blame religion per se, as writers like Christopher Hitchens do–but he’s always been a sloppy thinker. I’ve run into all too many UUs who tar all of Christianity or all of Islam with the brush of that religion’s undeniable acts of destruction.
And Unitarian Universalism, too, can inspire us to choose life, or it take us down the route of self-righteousness and self-absorption, which can be not only wasteful but death-dealing. I suspect the only reason we’ve never waged a religious war against non-UUs, the way Christians, Muslims, even Buddhists have done, is that we’re so badly outnumbered. I don’t mean that as cynically as it sounds, but simply as an acknowledgement that our religion, like all human creations, contains the seeds of good and evil. We have to choose what we will do with it.
All of this took a few seconds to zip through my mind. Meanwhile, Kaaren was bringing it back home, to why we join Unitarian Universalist congregations and what their purpose is. Inspiring.
Aha, and the service is up now. Back to church!
After this service, one of the wonderful leaders, J., who attended Mark’s talk at our church, and who had said he wished he could come to Thursday’s meeting (“Toward a More Diverse UUCPA”) but had a conflict, came up to me and said, “I wasn’t going to come Thursday because I had a prior commitment. It’s still prior, but this is more important. I’ll be there.”
Do you see why I am filled with confidence? Do you see why I love my congregation and have such faith in their ability to do whatever they set their minds and hearts on? I can’t wait ’til Thursday.
Ah, the UU blogosphere’s a-popping with things I want to respond to at length, too much length for a comments box. Actually, one I want to respond to is a recent post by James Ishmael Ford, whose Monkey Mind blog doesn’t have comments boxes. I’ll get to that one next. Right now I’m meditating on my Palo Alto colleague Dan Harper’s post “Liberty and democracy in liberal religion.” It touches on a topic I think about a lot: the balance (or, equally, the tension) between individual liberty and the demands of community. My candidating sermon for the first church that called me, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rutland, Vermont, was about this challenge, titled with the words of the Vermont state motto: “Freedom and Unity.”
Dan writes, and I hope he won’t sic Righthaven on me,
[T]he major attraction to Unitarian Universalists for many people in our congregations is that no one can tell them what to believe or do, and this too is enshrined in the bylaws of the UUA, in the claim to a free and responsible search for truth, which is often restated in colloquial terms as “no one can tell me what to believe.” This last attitude is in close emotional alignment with the attitude that the government shouldn’t tell individuals what to what to do with their property.
In close alignment with it, but not at all the same thing. After all, I accept limits on what individuals can do with their property, while insisting on radical liberty to decide what I will believe (I’m pretty sure Dan does too). They are, however, two things we conflate often, and at our peril.
Dan thinks that many of the people who identify as UU theologically but don’t join a UU congregation–there are, by some counts, twice as many of them as actual members of our congregations–stay away because they “find themselves unwilling or unable to submit any of their individual theological liberty to the demands of being part of a democratically organized congregation.” I think this is probably true. Those who do not wish to submit in any way to the strictures of community–I’m thinking of extreme libertarians–will not want to join a congregation, even if they identify themselves as theologically UU.
But I see the congregation as a workshop, as rehearsal space, as practice fields, as a laboratory for the larger democracy, and so I’m focused more on the people who do come to our congregations, and yet who expect that they can pretty much have things the way they want them in that micro-society because of that “free and responsible search” stuff, and of course, that “inherent worth and dignity” stuff. I’m not sure if they are wrongly extrapolating from our freedom of theological belief. It is just as likely that the reason they aren’t very clear on the costs and benefits of different kinds of freedom is that the larger culture has so much trouble accepting a concept such as “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” We certainly don’t get “Your right to pour poison onto ‘your’ land ends where ‘your’ land includes an aquifer that lies under others’ land,” or our environmental laws would be very different. We are a much more civil-libertarian than communitarian society.
The distinction between things that are truly no one else’s business and things that do affect others substantially enough for them to deserve a say (namely, via government) is an essential one to make no matter what kind of society one lives in. It’s one with which our democracy, the democracy of the United States, still struggles. After all, it is not easy to agree on the answers to questions such as “Is whom one marries entirely a private choice, or do others get to restrict it?” “Is whether to carry a pregnancy to term entirely a private choice, or do others get to weigh in?” or even “Do I get to say anything I want to at Annual Meeting, or is some of what’s on my mind so destructive that I should bite my tongue?” That’s why we keep debating them. I don’t think we will ever resolve these questions once and for all, but if we accepted that they are not simple, but arise out of the tension between important values, we could approach them with a lot more clarity. Helping people to do that is very much in the job description of pastors, religious educators, and congregations.
Have we UUs given more attention to democratic structures than to theological liberty? I don’t think so. In any case, we definitely haven’t given them enough attention to make up for the confusion that reigns in a nation that is supposedly democratic but in which the prevailing definition of liberty is still license. No wonder people come into our churches saying “I can believe anything I want here!” and thinking it means “I can do anything I want here.” What are we here for if not to help them sort out the difference?
I’m thinking about music a lot as we continue our process to find our new music director. As I wrote before, we had a music stakeholders’ brainstorming session and recorded people’s wishes and peak musical experiences. A lot of my own peak experiences occur during congregational singing, so my bias is toward strengthening that aspect of our music. It’s a bias that was reinforced this week by the singing at our ministers’ chapter retreat. We love to sing together, and we sound great. We were a little tamer than at some previous gatherings–there wasn’t a lot of drumming or dancing–but we leapt into rounds and harmonies as always, and some folks gathered around a guitar and sang late at night. (There was also karaoke, but I got tired and forgot to join it, to my disappointment.)
There are many routes to a vibrantly singing congregation. Here are three:
(1) At St. Gregory of Nyssa, “with no organ, the choir serves as the backbone to support the people in a capella singing.”
The congregation sings, in four-part harmony, during most of the service– opening prayers, hymns and canticles between Scripture readings, the Lord’s Prayer, music when we walk up to the altar, music during communion, and music with the dance. Visitors tell us that they’re struck by how easy it is for first-timers to participate, and how wonderful it is to be part of making such high-quality, beautiful music.
Even for congregations blessed with organs or pianos and excellent musicians to play them, like the one I serve, having a group of singers lead the congregation in singing opens up new possibilities.
(2) A Nick Page workshop will get a congregation singing powerfully, as I know from compelling personal experience: he led a service at the restrained, not to say uptight, Vermont congregation I used to attend, and got us harmonizing, gently drumming on the pews, and singing with big smiles. In covering the workshop he gave on the Saturday, the local paper picked up on something he said, along the lines of “You can be ordinary or amazing, so you might as well be amazing”: their headline was “You might as well be amazing,” and wouldn’t you love that as the lead-in to Sunday’s service?
(3) Worship leaders who know how to teach parts and lead music well make a huge difference. I’m not bad at this, but I’m far from expert, and it takes a lot of preparation. Finding and learning appropriate music can take as much time in a week as preparing my sermon. In other words, it’s ideally the role of a music director, or people and groups trained by the director.
I go back to a few basic assumptions: We’re going to have music in our Sunday services. Some of it will be the congregation singing together. It might as well be amazing.
Our congregation is looking for its next music director, and we had a really interesting music stakeholders’ meeting last week. As we brainstormed wild-eyed dreams and wishes, one that came up was a desire for more variety in our music. Most of our music is classical–including some fresh off the press, thanks to our current music director’s being a highly accomplished composer–or folk.
When brave souls suggest that we use more contemporary music, the names that come up tend to be the Beatles and Bob Dylan. To be fair, Bob is still chugging away, but believe me, we aren’t talking about any of his albums from the ’00s, ’90s, or ’80s. Or probably ’70s. This is understandable, because studies suggest most people seldom listen to any popular music that came out since they were in high school or a little older. I’m an unadventurous music listener, myself, mostly listening to stuff that’s as old as I am or older. (When I was in high school, the airwaves were dominated by Michael Jackson and Madonna, neither of whom inspired me to buy their CDs, or as we still called them then, albums. Feh.) But “Blowin’ in the Wind,” while deservedly classic and even potentially useful in worship, is not contemporary. Heck, it had stopped being contemporary before the escalation of the Vietnam War.
One woman in the meeting talked about a song she knew, a pop or rock song I think it was, that seemed very spiritual to her. I bet most of us can think of some songs just like this, if we listen to any contemporary popular music.
I don’t think newer or more varied music can be counted on to bring hordes of young people to our churches (or African-American or Latino or working-class people, or whatever underrepresented-in-our-congregation population we’re aiming for). What I think is that it is meaningful for people to hear their music, and more diversity in music means this happens for more of our people, just as it’s meaningful for us each to hear our own theology and so our congregations use a range of theological language. So without making any claims of musical messianism, I’d still like to hear your suggestions for music appropriate in Unitarian Universalist worship that:
- was written in the last 10 years,
- is in some popular genre, and
- isn’t already in a UU hymnal.
Dropping a verse or changing pronouns are time-honored ways to adapt music to worship, so don’t be shy about that. E.g., change “Rainmaker” by Keb’ Mo’ from 3rd person to 2nd and it is suddenly less a love song about a woman than a paean addressed to God, or your congregation, or something. I can’t use that one, though, since it’s from 1998.
My first nominees are “One Voice” by the Wailin’ Jennys (from the CD 40 Days) and (oh dear, the only new music I seem to listen to is kids’ music) “Extraordinary,” “What a Ride!” and “How Big” by Eric Herman (all from What a Ride!). Your turn!
Our district has been grappling with a painful situation: the firing of our District Executive, Cilla Raughley. Many (all too many) Unitarian Universalists of the Pacific Central District, including the congregation I serve (the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, a.k.a. UUCPA), don’t even know that we’re part of a district, nor have any idea what services to expect from–or responsibilities to assume towards–the district. However, some of our members are paying attention, especially since Cilla was a member of UUCPA until she became DE. (A District Executive may certainly belong to a congregation, but some decide that it is best not to belong to any one district church, preferring an option such as membership in the Church of the Larger Fellowship.)
If you’ve ever been in an organization whose leadership went through a crisis, you’ll know it raises pastoral issues and issues of communication. One of the skills of community-making is knowing how to act when we have incomplete or conflicting information about matters of concern to the community. So I used my most recent newsletter column to share what I’ve learned from hard experience.
UUCPA is in a tender position because so many of us know and love Cilla. She and her husband Andrew have played important roles in our congregation, chief among them friend to many of us. Unitarian Universalism was not only Cilla’s employer, but her community, and she and Andrew must be feeling very alienated from their community. I hope you will extend them all the comforts of friendship. We need not know what happened, or what position we take, in order to express our support and affection.
Since employment decisions (with all their necessary secrecy) create strong feelings, conflict, and confusion, I want to urge us all to be mindful of what words and actions help build community in such a time. I have seen the damage done in these situations when we fill the gaps in our knowledge with gossip and speculation. We do it because we want to know what really happened; we have our theories and loyalties; we try to stitch a coherent story out of many and conflicting versions; but in rushing to replace our uncertainty with firm statements for which we have no real support, we do harm to real people. It is best if we:
* assume good intentions of everyone involved;
* remember that behind abstractions such as “the District Executive,” “the UUMA chapter,” “the PCD Board” and “the UUA” are ordinary people who, like us, love our tradition and are doing their best to make the decisions that will benefit it;
* ask ourselves, before we speak, whether what what we are about to say is true; if it is necessary; and if it is kind;
* remember that we are all Unitarian Universalists seeking to build a community together based on the principles we share.
Unitarian Universalists need to be countercultural. We need to be countercultural because there is much in our home culture (I’m thinking of US culture, but it applies everywhere there are UUs) that needs to be challenged. One such characteristic (and here I’m definitely speaking of the US) is the tendency to equate progress and future orientation with a dismissal of the past. Tear down the old to build the new. Adopt this exciting new technology and don’t bother to save anything from the one it replaces. Favor youth over age. Why learn history?–it’s boring and irrelevant. That’s our modus operandi as US Americans.
So Unitarian Universalist ministers are walking in step with the dominant culture when we diss the “gray hymnal,” Singing the Living Tradition (SLT). There were a few such occasions during the UUMA CENTER Institute in Asilomar earlier this month, which is why I bring it up. There was a lot that bothered me about the “uh-huhs!” that followed the hymnal-bashing, and the gleeful trashing of the past was bothersome element #1. Hymnals are not just songbooks; they are repositories of history. For example, SLT records a very brief window in our history, between the adoption of the seven principles and five sources in 1985, and the addition of the sixth source in 1995.* And of course, it holds melodies and words that, like the beautiful brick buildings of old mill towns, I would hate to see discarded in favor of the new, no matter how beautiful the new might be (and the songs we are proposing to put in their place are sometimes as unbeautiful as the factory-built, vinyl-sided crap that now occupies the towns, but that’s a topic for another post).
When we changed over to the gray hymnal, what did we do with all the blue ones? In the case of most congregations, we discarded them, maybe keeping one on hand for the library (or not) but not using them anymore. That great reading that didn’t make the cut for SLT? Forget it. The vast legacy of Kenneth Patton, whose mark is all over the blue hymnal as it was all over the Universalism (and humanism, and UUism) of his time? Reduced to eight nuggets (and most of them are indeed solid gold). Your mother’s favorite hymn? Gone. What a waste.
I appreciate the openness to other music that characterized the week at Asilomar. We sang music my congregation almost never uses, and a lot of it was great. It was cool to find spiritual meaning in pop songs that usually make me change the station (but seriously, UU ministers singing “love, lift us up where we belong!” in worship sound much better than Joe Cocker. Of course, I think just about anything sounds better than Joe Cocker). I have lots more to say, good and bad, about the music of Institute week, but only praise for the willingness to break out of the hymnal(s) and try some new-for-us music.
However, in creating my home music library, I don’t throw out the old stuff when I buy the new, do you? I bought a Dixie Chicks CD last fall–for me, this is cutting edge–and I still listen to my Beatles albums. (Is it okay to call them albums? I’m seriously dating myself, aren’t I?) And that Dar Williams disc that I almost wore out the first six months I had it. And the late Beethoven quartets. And so on and so forth. Let’s not bury the hymnal just because we make the radical discovery that there are excellent songs for worship outside it.
Something I would like to bury is the mantra I heard a couple of times during the week and predict will be repeated ten times more at General Assembly, “No church that’s growing sings from a hymnal.” I want to see some documentation before I take that seriously. Also, I would like to know what it actually means. Individual congregations or denominations? Does it mean they don’t even have a hymnal, or that they do but they tend to project the words on a screen rather than use the books? I suspect it is simply a very broad translation of “mainline denominations are not growing,” which is itself a sloppy statement. The Catholic church and the Mormon church are not, technically, mainline denominations, because that’s shorthand for “mainline Protestant denominations,” but they are not independent or evangelical; they are both growing; and they both have hymnals.
I strongly favor expanding our music sources. I especially favor getting our noses out of the books so we can look at each other. I’ve purposely made our new Thurday evening services hymnal-free because something different happens when we sing music that doesn’t require reading. But they use music from SLT, because it is powerful and beautiful. Let’s not throw that beauty and power away.
__________
*The first five sections of the hymnal, encompassing 356 of the 415 hymns, correspond to the then-five sources. Also, the Principles and Purposes (which also include the sources) are printed on page x-xi.
Tonight and tomorrow our congregation’s choir (and various other musicians, most of whom are congregation members and staff) is putting on a concert, A Nation of Immigrants. The centerpiece is a mass by our music director, Henry Mollicone, a noted composer who is also, this year, a composer-in-residence here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto. Ever since Henry became our music director, he has forged a connection between social justice and music. This piece, Misa de los Inmigrantes, alternates the elements of the Latin mass (here sung in Spanish) with narration, in English, telling the true story of a recent immigrant from Mexico. Another concert a few years ago featured his Beatitudes Mass, which also integrated interviews with real people, in this case homeless people; Henry stipulates that all proceeds from performances of this piece benefit the homeless. Tonight’s concert splits the proceeds between the Day Worker Center of Mountain View and UUCPA.
Music and justice are a natural fit for our congregation, and Henry has helped put them together in other ways, for example enthusiastically generating a list of pieces for a Coming Out Day service in which I requested that all of the music be by LGBT composers and librettists. I’ve been thinking about other ways to use our love of music, and the power music has to change hearts, to take it out beyond our worship services. How about a congregation-based Threshold Choir? Sending small groups to sing or play at hospitals, assisted-living facilities, shelters, or hospices? (As a teenager, I was very moved by caroling with my mom and a few other members of the New Haven Chorale at Yale-New Haven Hospital on Christmas Day.) Creating a group that sings songs of work, struggle, and peace? Creating musical groups whose membership intentionally combines members of the congregation and other groups such as recent immigrants (our area has a zillion), veterans (ditto), or people without homes (ditto)?
photo by Gary Vanderlinden
While the monks of Drepung Loseling Phukhang Monastery were at our church this week, they had for sale malas (beads used for counting mantras or prostrations), flags reading Om Mani Padme Hum, wall hangings with various writings of the 14th Dalai Lama, and so on. This quote caught my attention, especially the part I’ve emphasized.
Let me explain what we mean by compassion. Usually, our concept of compassion or love refers to the feeling of closeness we have with our friends and loved ones. Sometimes compassion also carries a sense of pity. This is wrong–any love or compassion which entails looking down on the other is not genuine compassion. To be genuine, compassion must be based on respect for the other, and on the realization that others have the right to be happy and overcome suffering just as much as you. On this basis, since you can see that others are suffering, you develop a genuine sense of concern for them.
As for the closeness we feel toward our friends, this is usually more like attachment than compassion. Genuine compassion should be unbiased. If we only feel close to our friends, and not to our enemies, or to the countless people who are unknown to us personally and toward whom we are indifferent, then our compassion is only partial or biased.
Genuine compassion is based on the recognition that others have the right to happiness just like yourself, and therefore even your enemy is a human being with the same wish for happiness as you, and the same right to happiness as you. A sense of concern developed on this basis is what we call compassion; it extends to everyone, irrespective of whether the person’s attitude toward you is hostile or friendly.
I have wanted a proper mala (all 108 beads) for some time, but as with all such purchases, have felt the tension between the wish to have one and the desire not to be acquisitive, especially about spiritual things. This week, offered the excuse that I was helping the monks build more dormitories for their monastery, I bought one from them. I will not be using it to count prostrations, the way the Tibetan Buddhists do, thank you very much, but on my walks I’ve been using it to meditate as I go, and trying to work up some respect, and thus genuine compassion, for people I tend to pity or dislike.
Sermons in Stones 
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