Carol, my sweetheart and life partner, got some good coverage in an article in yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor titled “Waterless urinals: Cheap. Green. But many think ‘gross’”. She got even more extensive coverage in a March 9 article in the Lowell Sun “Making the Most of Human Waste” (I was sitting there while she was doing the phone interview, and it’s interesting to see what made it innto the article and what didn’t).
Thank you for indulging me while I brag about Carol.
OK, here’s a peace hymn that’s not too horrible.
Words: I found the words on Mudcat, made about three changes to make them gender-neutral, and smoothed out one or two rough transitions. I have been unable to track down who wrote these words, so I’m attributing them to “Unknown”; this is not great poetry, but it’s no worse than many of the hymns we sing on a regular basis.
Music: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” I’m providing sheet music for the hymn in two forms: (1) melody and words only, on a 5-1/2 by 8-1/2 inch sheet suitable for inserting into a typical order of service; and (2) full score for choir, SATB on a full 8-1/2 by 11 inch sheet.
Bernard Madoff, the perpetrator of what has to be the biggest Ponzi-scheme fraud ever, is planning to plead guilty tomorrow to all criminal charges that have brought against him. Well, I’m no legal expert, so I have no idea what should be done to him from a legal standpoint. But I do feel competent to address some moral points that relate to Madoff’s guilty plea.
First, the scope of Madoff’s crime is so vast, with so many victims, extending over such a long time that I am not convinced that Madoff can be morally rehabilitated. Much of morality is a matter of habit, and the longer someone like Madoff indulges in the habit of immorality, the longer it will take to break that habit. Then too, perniciously evil habits like Madoff’s, which are grounded in simple greed (not desperation), and which are made in full knowledge that they are wrong, are habits that will be much harder to break. Because Madoff has become habituated to crime and habituated to enjoying the fruits of his crime, because he has engaged in his crimes for so long now, I doubt he can ever be trusted to live a moral life on his own.
Second, because Madoff can never be trusted to live on his own again, outside of prison, then he will be unable to make restitution to anyone whose money he stole. Madoff’s crime is one where restitution would make a difference in the lives of the victims (at least, in the lives of the majority of his victims who did not commit suicide). But we can’t ever trust him with any money-making scheme ever again — at least, we can’t trust him to earn another 65 billion dollars to pay his victims back.
The most we could hope for is an apology, but the chances of Madoff making any meaningful apology approach zero. Some people will take comfort in believing that Madoff will suffer some kind of torment and torture after death, but even if I believed in such punishment after death, I would not call that a satisfactory resolution to Madoff’s moral violations. Thus, I hold no hope for rehabilitation, restitution, apology, or punishment after death.
Unfortunately, this is one of those moral situations for which there is no satisfactory resolution. Fortunately, my religious faith does not expect nice neat satisfactory resolution of every moral violation. From my religious frame of reference the best moral response to Madoff’s evil actions is — not to dwell on rehabilitation, restitution, apology, or punishment — but to strengthen the social moral systems that help prevent such actions: — speak out against greed; refuse to let anyone believe that we deserve something for nothing; tell your children why Madoff is evil.
The Civil Rights movement had the best political songs ever. But the peace movement has generally had boring songs. I blame it on Woody Guthrie. When he was with the Almanac Singers, he wrote a bunch of songs calling for peace. The chorus of one such song went like this:
Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace.
I can hear the bugle sounding,
Roaming around my land, my city and my town;
Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace….
Fourteen interminable repetitions of the word “peace.” It isn’t one of Guthrie’s best songs.
And ever since then, folk singers think that the best way to write a song about peace is to copy Guthrie, and us the word “peace” over and over again. Sy Miller and Jill Jackson do it in their song “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” Joanne Hammil does it in her otherwise lovely song “Circle the Earth with Peace.” [I changed my mind about Joanne Hammil: see below.] Lui Collins does it in her song “Peace on Earth.” Jim Scott does it in his song “Taking a Step for Peace.” These are all songwriters whom I generally like, but these particular songs just don’t cut it.
(Songwriters and singers, please take note: singing the word “peace” over and over again does not inspire me to work for peace; instead, it just bores me and annoys me. Singers and songwriters, please take further note: a good political song either tells a story, or it calls for action; but simply repeating a word over and over again does not make for a good song.)
Compare the above songs, if you will, to the Gang of Four’s “I Love a Man in Uniform,” a peace song in which a narrator tells why becoming a soldier is so compelling. This is a song which actually deepens our understanding of the way the military exploits people:
The good life was so elusive,
Handouts, they got me down;
I had to regain my self-respect
So I got into camouflage.
The girls, they love to see you shoot…
Problem is, “I Love a Man in a Uniform” is kinda hard to sing without that funky bass and rhythm guitar and those hip backup singers.
And that seems to be the pattern for peace songs. On the one hand, you have singable songs with inane lyrics. On the other hand, you have great songs that aren’t singable by ordinary people.
And if I can’t sing, I don’t wanna be a part of your peace movement.
Update 7 March 2009: I was in a workshop today led by Joanne Hammil, and she had us sing “Circle the Earth with Peace.” She wrote this song for use with kindergarteners and the primary grades, and there are fun hand motions that go with it, that really add to it. Now I am a fan of this song, and would gladly teach it to a children’s choir or an intergenerational ensemble. As always, context is very important for music.
Yesterday’s post has the story of how the great Universalist Hosea Ballou did a preaching tour of the New Bedford region in May, 1820 — including an anecdote of how Rev. Le Baron of Mattapoisett unsuccessfully tried to keep Ballou from preaching. Never one to miss out on provoking a good controversy, Ballou wrote a letter to Le Baron the next day, which apparently had some kind of wider distribution. This letter is probably the first Universalist tract ever written in the New Bedford area.
Ballou’s letter contains one almost poetic passage, which could almost be a proto-eco-universalist prayer. I added snippets from elsewhere in the letter to make conclusion for it, and here it is:
Does not the sun shine universally,
and the moon likewise?
Do not the clouds give rain to all,
and the fruits of the earth grow
for the benefit of all?
Is not the vital air for the life of all;
and are not all equally entitled to the waters?
All people, every person,
and the whole world are universal.
This testimony, I believe, is Universalism.
For those of you who love to watch early 19th C. Universalists picking fights, I’ve included the full text of the letter below. Continue reading
So Carol and I just got back from a vacation in San Francisco, and on our last day there we happened across an outdoor marketplace down the the end of Market Street, right where lots of tourists would walk through. There were people sitting at tables selling the usual things you find at such marketplaces:– colorful scarves, bad watercolor paintings, funky jewelry, good acrylic paintings, carved wooden tchotchkes, and so on.
At one table sat a youngish woman with uncombed brown hair wearing a drab green hooded sweatshirt. She was selling t-shirts with peace signs on them. The t-shirts were exactly the colors you would expect, deep purple and various earth colors. It’s exactly the sort of thing a tourist might buy and wear back home while bragging “I got this cool t-shirt from this funky woman in San Francisco. Cool, huh?” It’s exactly the kind of shirt that screams Hippy-Peacenik-Wannabe.
I think it’s time the grand concept of peace got re-branded with a new aesthetic that better reflects its universality and its high aspirations. Or maybe it would be better if peace didn’t have a brand. Can’t we just dump the drab colors, the hemp t-shirts, and yes maybe even the venerable peace sign, altogether?
Pretty please?… I’ll be nice to you if you say “yes”…
Posted in a slightly different form on PaxPac.
Among the original pewholders of the 1838 church building of First Congregational Society of New Bedford (now First Unitarian Church), there were those who actively opposed slavery through word and deed, but there were also those who did not support the anti-slavery movement. Here are some capsule biographies of some of the pewholders in 1838, with comments on the extent to which they opposed slavery:
Benjamin Lindsey (pew 12): Lindsey was a printer and publisher. He published and wrote for the New Bedford Mercury, a daily newspaper. By the 1830s, Lindsey was not supporting abolition in the columns of the Mercury, because he thought abolitionism was too revolutionary and would lead to chaos. Yet he also was willing to print anti-slavery books; in 1847 he published The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black, a Fugitive from Slavery, Written by Himself, a fugitive slave narrative.
Joseph Grinnell (pew 44) served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1843 to 1851. New Bedford Abolitionists grew angry with Grinnell in 1850; Grinnell was absent when a vote came up on the Fugitive Slave Law. One New Bedford abolitionist wrote, “I am ashamed of him…. When the most important bill of the whole session was up for consideration, and he knew it, he was not in his place, but at the Treasury Department….” (Grover, p. 218). Grinnell had been one of the original investors in the Wamsutta Mill in 1846, which manufactured cotton cloth; we can imagine that he was perhaps torn between a desire to represent New Bedford’s opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law on the one hand, and his interest in maintaining a supply of cotton on the other hand.
James Arnold and his wife Sarah Arnold (pew 66) were some of the many New Bedford Quakers who had become Unitarians in the 1820s. The Arnolds became very wealthy, and as time went on turned their attention to philanthropy. During the 1850s, our church supported Rev. Moses Thomas as a minister-at-large to work with the city’s poor people; when the church withdrew its support of Thomas c. 1859, the Arnolds came forward and employed him full-time to carry out their philanthropic work; Thomas worked for them until he retired.
While it is documented that the Arnolds opposed slavery, their main social justice interests were elsewhere. Most importantly, they were concerned with alleviating the effects of poverty; they also engaged in other philanthropic ventures such as endowing the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. Even if anti-slavery work was not a priority for them, it is hard to hold this against them given the extent of their anti-poverty work.
Charles W. Morgan (pew 68) is best known today for the whaling ship that bears his name, now at the Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut. Morgan was a prominent ship owner and merchant who owned an oil refinery and candleworks on South Water St.; his house stood on County St. at the head of William St., where the headquarters of the New Bedford Public Schools now stands. He was another of the liberal Quakers who became a Unitarian in the 1820s.
Morgan was also an anti-slavery activist, although it is not clear how active he was. According to historian Kathryn Grover, Nathan Johnson may have come to New Bedford with Morgan. It is not clear whether Johnson was a fugitive slave when he came to New Bedford, but if he was then Morgan was active in the Underground Railroad. Nathan Johnson and his wife Polly Johnson later became prominent African American citizens of New Bedford and conductors on the Underground Railroad — Frederick Douglass spent his first night of freedom in their house — and Nathan Johnson became a member of the Universalist church in New Bedford.
Andrew Robeson (pew 43) was a ship owner, and a merchant with business interests in New Bedford, Fall River, and Boston. He was involved both with the whaling industry and the textile industry, with a whale oil refinery on Ray St. in New Bedford, and a printing plant in Fall River for printing designs on calico fabric. Robeson’s house now stands on William St., across from the National Park Service headquarters.
Robeson was a strong abolitionist. It was Robeson who nominated one Mr. Borden, an African American man, for membership in the New Bedford Lyceum in 1845. The Lyceum sponsored a popular lecture series, bringing such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson to New Bedford to speak. The Lyceum members, who were all white, refused to admit Mr. Borden into membership on a close vote. Ralph Waldo Emerson then refused to speak at the Lyceum, while the New Bedford abolitionists left the Lyceum to form a competing lecture series. The resulting controversy got national attention for the rights of African Americans to participate freely in society.
In his Life and Times, Frederick Douglass mentions Robeson, alongside such prominent abolitionists as Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker, as one of those “friends, earnest, courageous, inflexible, ready to own me as a man and brother, against all the scorn, contempt, and derision of a slavery-polluted atmosphere…”
Loum Snow (pew 47) was an agent for whaling ships, a mill owner in Falmouth and Middleboro, director of the Mechanics’ National Bank, trustee of the New Bedford Institution for Savings, and director of the United Mutual Marine Insurance Company.
Snow was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. There are at least two documented instances of Snow helping African Americans escape from slavery. In 1850, Snow arranged for Isabella White, then a slave, to be shipped to New Bedford in a barrel labeled “sweet potatoes.” Then in 1859, William Carney, who had escaped slavery in Virginia and come to New Bedford, went to Snow seeking help to purchase the freedom of his wife, Nancy Carney. (Carney later went on to become the first African American to win the Congressional Medal of Honor, for his heroism during the Union attack on Fort Wagner during the Civil War.)
Snow’s Italianate house still stands on County St., on the north side of Morgan St., just a block or so from the church. Since this is the house where Isabella White arrived, it is one of those rare places that is documented as a station on the Underground Railroad.
Joseph Ricketson (pew 30) refined oil and had other interests in the whaling industry. He is best known today for helping Frederick Douglass on the path to freedom. Douglass tells the story this way in his Narrative:
“[U]pon our arrival at Newport, we were so anxious to get to a place of safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked the necessary money to pay our fare, we decided to take seats in the stage, and promise to pay when we got to New Bedford. We were encouraged to do this by two excellent gentlemen, residents of New Bedford, whose names I afterward ascertained to be Joseph Ricketson and William C. Taber. They seemed at once to understand our circumstances, and gave us such assurance of their friendliness as put us fully at ease in their presence. It was good indeed to meet with such friends, at such a time.”
Later, when he wrote his Life and Times, he added a few details:
“We arrived at Newport the next morning, and soon after an old-fashioned stage-coach with ‘New Bedford’ in large, yellow letters on its sides, came down to the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating to know what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker gentlemen who were about to take passage on the stage — Friends William C. Taber and Joseph Ricketson, — who at once discerned our true situation, and in a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: ‘Thee get in.’ I never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way to our new home.”
(Ricketson was another of the Quakers who became Unitarians in the 1820s, and retained his Quaker dress and speech throughout his life, so it is not surprising that Douglass mistook him for a Quaker.) Some historians believe that Ricketson and Taber had been sent on purpose to Newport to meet Douglass; in any case, Ricketson had no compunction about serving as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
Conclusion
Because of the range of opinions on slavery, we cannot say that First Unitarian Church was an abolitionist church in 1838. By contrast, the Universalist Church in New Bedford voted to support abolition, and had African American members, at about the same time. Yet we can also see that First Unitarian moved towards an anti-slavery position over the course of the mid-nineteenth century.
We can see the movement towards an anti-slavery position most clearly in the church’s choice of ministers. In the 1820s, Rev. Orville Dewey did not take a stand against slavery, or for equality for African Americans; after he left our church, he became one of the Unitarian ministers whom abolitionists did not like at all. By 1837, when our current building was built, the church moved towards an anti-slavery position when it called Rev. Ephraim Peabody, who, while not a radical abolitionist, opposed slavery. (Peabody’s wife, Mary Jane Derby Peabody, is famous for being the one who paid Frederick Douglass his first wages as a free man.) And by 1847 the church was ready to call Rev. John Weiss, then well-known as a staunch abolitionist. While not everyone in the congregation agreed with Weiss’s abolitionist views, the congregation (including those who invested in textile mills) gave him perfect freedom to continue his abolitionist activities and state his abolitionist views throughout his eleven-year ministry here.
Update: Added Joseph Ricketson 29 January 2009.
In 1964, a BBC interviewer asked Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., if he thought there would be a “Negro president” in forty years. Here’s a partial transcript of King’s reply:
“Well, let me say first, to make it perfectly clear, that there are Negroes who are presently qualified to be president of the United States; and many who are qualified in terms of integrity, in terms of vision, in terms of leadership ability. But we do know there are certain problems and prejudices and mores in our society which would make it difficult now. However, I am very optimistic about the future. Frankly, I have seen certain changes in the United States over the last two years that surprise me…. So on the basis of this, I think we may be able to get a Negro president in less than forty years….”
It took longer than forty years, of course. But King could hardly have foreseen the overwhelming re-segregation of the United States, and the carefully concealed increase in systemic racism, during the Reagan and Bush years. Link to the BBC video clip.
Martin Luther King would have been 80 today. On February 25, 1967, not long before he was killed, he spoke about the Vietnam War and its effects on our country. The following excerpt from that speech could easily be delivered today, with just a few minor changes:
“This confused war has played havoc with our domestic destinies.
“Despite feeble protestations to the contrary, the promises of the Great Society [anti-poverty program] have been shot down on the battlefield of Viet Nam. The pursuit of this widened war has narrowed domestic welfare programs, making the poor, white and Negro, bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home.
“While the anti-poverty program is cautiously initiated, zealously supervised and evaluated for immediate results, billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. The recently revealed mis-estimate of the war budget amounts to ten billions of dollars for a single year. This error alone is more than five times the amount committed to anti-poverty programs. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Viet Nam explode at home: they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.
“If we reversed investments and gave the armed forces the antipoverty budget, the generals could be forgiven if they walked off the battlefield in disgust.
“Poverty, urban problems and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession. When it is not our security that is at stake, but questionable and vague commitments to reactionary regimes, values disintegrate into foolish and adolescent slogans.”
Full text of the speech on Stanford’s Web site. Crossposted on PaxPac.