Category Archives: Liberal religion

Universalist miracle story

This afternoon, the First Universalist Society in Franklin, Mass., installed Rev. Ann Willever as their Family Minister. I’ve know Ann since both of us were non-ordained Directors of Religious Education, so of course I went to this installation (Ann even asked me to give the opening words!). This is a big step for First Universalist — they had dwindled away to almost nothing by the early 1970s, and sold their old church building. But unlike the many churches that closed down during that decade of economic downturn and social turmoil, First Universalist managed to hold on. They met in rented space, and persevered, and grew big enough to afford one full-time minister, and grew some more and added a very part-time Director of Religious Education, and then a few years ago they got big enough and bold enough to build a new church building, and then they needed space for Sunday school and weekday meetings so they held a “Miracle Sunday” and raised enough money on one Sunday to pay for the new building, and now they have added a second called minister to their staff.

You may say, This is no miracle, this is simply an example of perseverance and hard work. That is true. But one thing I noticed this afternoon at the installation service: everyone in that church was pleasant, and kind, and they obviously cared for one another, and the children and teenagers were obviously loved and cared for by the adults. It was just a lovely community to be a part of, even for just a couple of hours on one Sunday afternoon. It is a loving community, not in the sappy sense, but in the real honest sense of a community that loves one another through respect and care. That’s the real miracle: the means by which this was all accomplished was actually not hard work (though hard work was required) nor perseverance (though that too was required); the means by which all this was accomplished was love. Call me maudlin, but that’s what I call a Universalist miracle.

Glad to be a Universalist

Recently, Carol and I have been coming face to face with the machinations of manipulative, amoral people — different people for each of us. No, they’re not church people. No, I’m not going to go into details — there’s no need, anyway, because no doubt you’ve had your own experiences with such people, and you know what goes along with those experiences: frustration, sense of betrayal, hurt, sometimes even despair. Suffice it to say that it can be discouraging.

It’s times like these when I’m glad I’m a Universalist. People are the way they are, a mixture of good and evil. But in the end, the most powerful force in the universe is Love. Some of the old Universalists used to say that God is love; which sounds like a theistic formulation, though if you’re a humanist you can also take it to mean something like “what we used to call ‘God’ is now better understood as ‘love’.” Whatever works for you; metaphysical speculations don’t particularly interest me. The point is that manipulative, amoral people can fight against the power of love for a time (sometimes for their whole lives), but it takes lots of energy, and it diminishes their lives. And the point is that I don’t need to exhaust myself wishing for revenge upon them in the form of sending them to some eternal torment; for in wishing such a thing, I would be as manipulative and as amoral as are they.

Nope, it’s good being a Universalist, because I have the ultimate comfort of knowing that even if manipulative amoral people happen to be causing harm in my life, their influence can only be transient — because the permanent truth of the universe is love.

As always, your mileage may vary….

Universalist “conversion” experience

Turns out Julia Ward Howe was emotionally a universalist, and had a fairly emotional “conversion experience”. When she recalled the moment when she discovered liberal religion, she emphasized the joy she found in the universalism of her Unitarian faith:

“Who can say what joy there is in the rehabilitation of human nature, which is one essential condition of the liberal Christian faith? I had been trained to think that all mankind were by nature low, vile, and wicked. Only a chosen few, by a rare and difficult spiritual operation, could be rescued from the doom of a perpetual dwelling with the enemies of God, a perpetual participation in the torments ‘prepared for them from the beginning of the world.’ The rapture of this new freedom [i.e., her new Unitarian faith] of this enlarged brotherhood, which made all men akin to the Divine Father of all, every religion, however ignorant, the expression of a sincere and availing worship, might well produce in the neophyte an exhilaration bordering upon ecstasy. The exclusive doctrine which had made Christianity, and special forms of it, the only way of spiritual redemption, now appeared to me to commend itself as little to human reason as to human affection. I felt that we could not rightly honor our dear Christ by immolating at his shrine the souls of myriads of our fellows born under the widely diverse influences which could not be thought of as existing unwilled by the supreme Providence.” [Reminiscences: 1819-1899, p. 207; gender-specific language in the original, obviously.]

One last comment: I believe that many newcomers to Unitarian Universalism today experience the same kind of joy at their discovery of this liberal faith as did Julia Ward Howe. Theological details may differ, but the joy at realizing that no one is going to be damned to eternal punishment still remains fresh.

Shape note singing & today’s hymnody

At the New England Folk Festival, one of the workshops I attended was an introduction to shape note singing. Shape note singing is a tradition of hymn singing that stretches back to the singing schools established by North American ministers in the second half of the 18th C. as a way to improve congregational singing. The shape note tradition began in New England with composers like William Billings (1746-1800) of Boston, moved south where it produced books like The Southern Harmony in 1854, and held on into the 20th C. in Appalachia and a few other out-of-the-way regions. Finally, starting about 1975 shape note singing enjoyed a nation-wide renaissance with singing groups from New England to California (link to list of regional singings). Thus shape note singing is an indigenous North American musical tradition with an unbroken two-and-a-quarter-century history.

At the workshop I attended, I learned the basics of one shape-note tradition. The music is sung in four parts (sometimes three parts) and is printed in a distinctive style of musical notation where the note-heads have different shapes depending on the pitch. The singing style is full-throated and open, even a little nasal. The singers are always arranged in a square divided into four sections: tenors or leads (they carry the melody) in one section; sopranos or trebles to their right; altos to the right of sopranos; and basses to the right of the altos and the left of the leads. The center of this square is left open and whoever is leading a given hymn stands in the center facing the tenors, and beats time (the front row of tenors also beat time for those who can’t see the song leader).

As a working minister, what really struck me is the gap between singing shape-note hymns for an hour sitting in a square on the one hand, and the realities of incorporating hymn-singing into real-life liturgy on the other hand. Shape-note singing started as a singing school, a way to teach ordinary people how to sight-read four-part harmony; the singing master would come to your town for six weeks or some months, and lots of people would learn how to sing shape-note hymns, and then the singing master would go away and (in theory, at least) a big percentage of your congregation would have some basic music skills. Of course, when you use shape-note hymns in a worship service, I can’t see that you would have everyone sit in a square, and divide up your congregation by tenors, sopranos, etc. But the shape-note hymnal embodies the teaching method of the singing master.

What particularly interested me is that shape-note singing connects a specific hymnal with the pedagogical method (teaching people how to sight-read music, etc.). Hymnals such as The Scared Harp are both teaching tools, and liturgical resources. Compare that to the hymnal that I use everyday, Singing the Living Tradition, which seems to be written by musicians for other musicians; there is no concession made to the non-musician, and there are no singing schools to help people how to use that hymnal. The new Unitarian Universalist hymnal supplement, Singing the Journey, makes even less of a concession to non-musicians — most of the hymns require an accomplished or professional accompanist, some of the hymns stretch out over six pages (requiring three page turns) — while it contains some beautiful music, it’s really a hymnal for trained soloists and choir directors, not a hymnal for the average member of a congregation. Having peeked into the hymnals of other denominations, I think this is a widespread problem.

Contrast a hymnal like Singing the Journey with the group singing songbook Rise Up Singing. Rise Up includes only lyrics and simple chord progressions, no musical notation — you either have to know a song, or you have to have a song leader who can lead the song. Rise Up has a pedagogical method implicit in it:– you learn to sing by singing songs you’re already familiar with, and then when you gain confidence you’re willing to learn new songs that are led campfire-style (mostly unison singing, with simple guitar strumming) by a song leader. I’ve used both Rise Up and Singing the Living Tradition extensively, and in my experience, Rise Up is much better at empowering average singers to simply sing.

I’m not suggesting that we replace our hymnal with Rise Up Singing (although I have used Rise Up successfully in worship services). But we could learn this from shape note singing:– every hymnal could include a coherent pedagogical method that will improve the skills of the average singer.

Spare ribs, fried rice

Commenter Dwight offers these alternate words to the tune of “Spirit of Life”:

    Spare ribs, fried rice, warm pot of tea,
    Moo goo gai pan, crispy noodles dipped in duck sauce.

    Hoisin chicken, wings — hot, sticky,
    Chopsticks in hand, giving fingers tiny splinters.

    Shoots of bamboo, fortune cookie,
    Spare ribs, fried rice, pot of tea, pot of tea.

The words may seem a little choppy if you just read them, but sing them out loud and you’ll see that they fit the tune quite well. I shall sing this as a grace next time my dad and I partake of the all-you-can-eat buffet at our favorite Chinese restaurant. Thank you, Dwight.

What kind of eggs?…

I have been reading Julia Ward Howe’s Reminiscences: 1819-1899. After having been raised in a very well-to-do New York household, she married Samuel Gridley Howe in 1843, and they immediately embarked on a honeymoon trip to London (accompanied by no less than Horace Mann and Mary Peabody Mann). It was quite a wedding trip — she met Carlyle, Dickens, Landseer, and other London luminaries of that time. But what really struck me about this trip was her description of the breakfasts to which they were invited:

“The breakfast was at this time a favorite mode of entertainment, and we enjoyed many of these occasions. I remember one at the house of Sir Robert Harry Inglis, long a leading Conservative member of Parliament…. At this breakfast, he cut the loaf with his own hands, saying to each guest, ‘Yill you have a slice or a hunch?’ and cutting a slice from one end or a hunch from the other, according to the preference expressed.

“These breakfasts were not luncheons in disguise. They were given at ten, or even at half past nine o’clock. The meal usually consisted of fish, cutlets, cold bread and toast, with tea and coffee. At Samuel Roger’s I remember that plover’s eggs were served.”

I’m struck that it was worth remarking that one host actually cut the bread “with his own hands.” I’m also struck by the plover’s eggs.

Rapt in a Revery

This story is part of a work-in-progress, a book of stories for liberal religious kids. The sources for this story are Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and The Days of Henry Thoreau by Walter Harding. I wrote this story for use in worship services, but I have also used it in Sunday school classes (slightly modified) to introduce a unit on meditation.

Rapt in a Revery

I thought you might want to know what a spiritual practice is, so maybe you can talk about it after Sunday school with your parents. A spiritual practice is something you do regularly that helps you get in touch with something larger than yourself. For example, some people sit and meditate for a spiritual practice. Some people do yoga for a spiritual practice. Some people pray for their spiritual practice.

Well, I don’t pray, and I don’t do yoga, and I don’t sit and meditate. I do a different kind of spiritual practice, a spiritual practice that many Unitarian Universalists do. But first I have to tell you a little story….

Way back in 1845, a man named Henry David Thoreau was living with his mother and father and his sisters in a big house in Concord, Massachusetts. Henry worked for his father in the family’s pencil-making business. Henry’s family all went to the Unitarian church in town. Henry himself preferred the Universalist minister to the Unitarian church, but Henry basically stopped going to church once he grew up. Then one day Henry decided that he needed some time to himself, to get in touch with something bigger than himself. I would say it this way: Henry wanted some time to do intensive spiritual practice.

He went to his friend Waldo Emerson, and asked Waldo if he could build a little cabin out in the woods, on some land Waldo owned that was right next to a pond named Walden pond. Waldo said, Of course! So Henry spent a few months building a cabin for himself, and then he went off to live in the woods. His cabin was only a mile or so from his family’s house, and he still went home regularly to eat dinner and spend time with his family. But mostly, Henry lived out in the woods alone, and worked on his spiritual practice.

Henry’s spiritual practice was to spend time in Nature. One of his best ways of spending time in Nature was to sit quietly outdoors, doing nothing, just watching the natural world. Here’s how he describes it:

“Sometimes, in a summer morning, … I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant roadway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.”

I can see the whole thing in my imagination: a warm sunny day, Henry sitting on the front step of his cabin, looking out over Walden Pond, “rapt in a revery” — and when Henry says, “rapt in a revery,” he means that he is just sitting quietly, not really thinking of anything in particular — he is simply sitting and watching and listening to the world of nature around him, lost in wonder at the beauty of the natural world.

Sometime you should try doing this yourself. On a nice day, find yourself a comfortable place to sit outdoors — maybe leaning back against a tree. Pick a place where you can see and hear the natural world — it could be in your back yard, if you have a back yard — pick a place with trees and grass and birds and sky and clouds. You just sit there — you don’t have to do anything — you don’t have to think about anything — and see if you can lose yourself in sitting, watching, and listening to the natural world. See if you can lose yourself in something larger than yourself.

Henry Thoreau could sit like that all day, but he had had lots of practice. You try it for ten minutes or so at first. Maybe you’ll find you like it — sitting like Henry Thoreau lost in wonder of the natural world. Maybe that will be your spiritual practice — a real genuine Unitarian Universalist spiritual practice.

William Howard Taft Attack Ad

In the 1908 U.S. presidential election, William Howard Taft was attacked for his Unitarianism. He refused to respond to the attacks, and won the election. But imagine if his opponents had had TV attack ads in their arsenal….

Screen grab from video showing Taft.

A note about the historical facts behind this attack ad….

The [1908 presidential] campaign was notable for the vicious attacks on Taft’s Unitarianism, particularly in the Midwest. Evangelical Protestants, in a flood of letters and newspaper articles, accused him of being an infidel, a Catholic, etc. His religion was no secret. He attended All Souls Church faithfully. Roosevelt and others responded sharply to the attacks. Following his own instincts, as well as the advice of the President, Elihu Root, and other Republican leaders, he said nothing himself in response. Bryan did not attack Taft personally, but he would not criticize those who did, thereby implying that he agreed with them. (Link.)

Any resemblance between the content of this attack ad, and attacks on the religious liberal running in the 2008 U. S. presidential primaries, is entirely intentional. 1:27.

Note: Although blip.tv is now defunct, I had a copy of this video and uploaded it to Vimeo. Click on the image above to view the video.