Monthly Archives: April 2005

Sense of place

As I continue to explore ecological theology, I get more and more interested in the notion of place. A sense of place is essential to understanding how we humsn fit into the rest of the ecosystem.

So this blog, called Where Project, caught my eye: www.whereproject.org Later note: I removed the link because this Web site is now defunct.

It’s written and photographed by a PhD candidate in English at Boston College, who’s writing a dissertation on “place blogging” — blogs that are all about one person’s relationship to one place.

Update August 2006: This blog is no longer current, although the author keeps promising to update it.

Interim papacy?

In a news release dated today, the Associated Press reports:

Ratzinger, the oldest pope elected since Clement XII in 1730, clearly was chosen as a “transitional” pope, who would fulfill the unfinished business of John Paul’s quarter-century papacy yet not be another long-term pope.

I had wondered about that. An interim pope — how very interesting.

As an interim minister myself, I’d love to know how the new pope understands his role. Most of us interim ministers understand our role as helping a congregation mourn the previous minister, developing a new identity, and anticipating the future with zest. We interim ministers don’t try to carry on the pet projects of our immediate predecessor. Instead, we work to empower the congregation to take responsibility for its own health, wellbeing, and future success.

Somehow, I think this new interim pope is going to handle things a little differently than I would as an interim minister. However, if he’d like some advice, I’d be happy to share what wisdom I have gained as an interim. Have him call me at the office (just don’t give him my home number, please — waht with the time difference, I don’t need him calling me in the middle of the night).

Ancient hymn for a new day

Book 1, Hymn 49, Dawn

Come to us, come down, to our realm
from beyond the bright sky. Come, o dawn,
drawn by fiery horses, come to the house
where he pours out fragrant juice.

Your bright chariot, pulled by fiery horses,
is shaped to please the eye, light and agile,
o dawn. And you climb in it, coming here,
coming to aid mortals with noble aims.

O dawn, bright sky being, your coming
awakens creatures to wander earth,
stirs flocks of birds into sky, flying now
to all the boundaries of heaven.

Your radiant light, o dawn, grows bright,
the sky above and around us grows bright,
your beauty brought to earth. We call you,
just as you are, with our sacred songs.

(adaptation of a hymn from Ralph T. H. Griffith’s translation of the Rig Veda)

The April of religion

Back on October 13, 1885, Rev. William C. Gannett preached a sermon to the Illinois Fraternity of Liberal Religious Societies here in our little church in Geneva. It was later published as a tract in 1889, and republished by the American Unitarian Association in 1922 in the “Memorable Sermons” series. Here’s the opening paragraph:

“Are there not seasons of Spring in the moral world, and is not the present age one of them?” asked Dr. Channing toward the end of his life — and he died in 1842. Doubtless many persons living then were saying, “It is a season of the falling leaf, the old faiths are dropping from the tree; it is November in religion.” People say that today. I feel, instead, that Dr. Channing’s question is pertinent again: ‘”Are there not seasons of Spring in the moral and religious world, and is not the present age one of them?” There come seasons when thoughts swell like buds, old meanings press out and unfold like leaves; seasons when we either need new words for greatening thoughts, or else new meanings, new implications, new and larger contents, frankly recognized in the old words. And I think the present age, which some call November, is such an April in the world of faith; that old words are swelling with enlarged meaning, and that that is what’s the matter. In religion April’s here!

While I’m not as interested in the rest of Garrett’s sermon, I like his metaphor — and I do feel a new season of April coming to liberal religion in our day. I feel a quickening of new life as we expand our theology to include not just humankind but other living things as well. I feel old words swelling with new meaning as we recast Universalism for a new age in which people hunger for our message of hope. I feel a season of spring coming when our liberal religion will show itself as an example of how humanity can create humanity without narrow creeds and doctrines.

It’s an exciting time to be a part of a Unitarian Universalist congregation. We really do have the capacity to transform the world around us. It’s time to be hopeful.

Update 13 January 2006: I’d now add that the emergence of eco-theology gives reason to believe that this is another season of Spring in the moral world.

The symbol story

The following was written by Rev. Don King, and comes from the September 12, 1976, issue of the Pioneer, the newsletter of UU Society of Geneva:

The banner which hangs at the front of our church was made during the spring and summer by a group of women in the Alliance. The symbol which it displays was the result of an evolution which began during World War II and is still going on.

It began with the flaming chalice in the ellipse designed by Hans Deutsch, a refugee helped by the Unitarian Service Committee, and grew out of the need for some identifying mark in a world of many languages, stamps, and seals.

The basic part of the symbol is a chalice. The burning flame in the chalice is symbolic of helpfulness and sacrifice. The chalice with the flame remotely suggests a cross, which shows the background of our heritage [editor’s note: Don King was a humanist].

Fred Weidman, in Dearborn, Michigan, had the symbol made into jewelry and other decorative items. It was widely used by the Unitarian Service Committee, the American Unitarian Association, and many local churches.

About the same time, 1946, a group of Universalist ministers, including Richard Knost and Albert Ziegler, devised a symbol to represent their interpretation of Universalism. They put a Latin cross in a circle, but put it off center.

The circle, considered a perfect figure and being without beginning or end, suggested God and eternity. The cross indicated our Christian origins. As a whole, they symbol exhibits a tension and suggests an urge to strive for improvement in ourselves and our world. Revelation is not complete or final, but partial and growing. There is still much truth to be known.

In addition to the obvious uses — jewelry, lapel pins, letterheads, church bulletins — the off-center cross appeared in many churches in motifs of decoration and as an altar symbol.

With merger in 1961, and in some united churches still earlier, came efforts to devise a symbol which would combine the two already in use.

The Continental Association [i.e., the UUA] used two interlocking circles, symbolizing the union of the two denominations. These circles appeared on mailings from the office in Boston to identify them as Unitarian Universalist.

Several persons hit upon the idea of putting the flaming chalice in the circle. Such a device became the official symbol of the Midwestern Unitarian Universalist Conference and identified its letterheads and envelopes. It appeared on the banner of the Midcontinental Messenger from October, 1960, until February, 1964. A large mosaic was hung on the wall of the office at 5711 Woodlawn in Chicago.

While making a drawing of this symbol to be used on envelopes, Betty King [Don’s wife] hit upon the idea of putting the flaming chalice in the interlocking circles. Her sketch went to the printers and cuts and mats were made. Both symbols appeared in the August, 1962, issue of the Midcontinental Messenger. It was widely copied and still frequently appears on a church bulletin or on a special program [editor’s note: Betty King’s drawing is quite similar to the current UUA logo].

Fred Weidman had four copies of the chalice in the single circle made.

No widespread attempt has been made to design jewelry, but Betty King had about a dozen necklaces made and sold or gave them to friends. The Fellowship in Springfield, Illinois, had plaques made with the interlocking circles and chalice mounted on a wall shield.

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee used it for several years, but now has abandoned it for a sort of ‘mod’ chalice design.

[The above is Copyright (c) 1976 by the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva.]

I think Don King’s short essay is an interesting addition to the flaming chalice lore that circulates around our denomination. I particularly like the fact that he says this is a symbol which has evolved over the years, and which keeps on evolving.

Note that Don King makes no mention of the now-familiar three dimensional chalice which is lit at the beginning of many of today’s Unitarian Universalist worship services. Persumably, that was not happening back in 1976 here in Geneva.

Great evening

If you missed the canvass dinner yesterday, you missed a good time. Desserts were provided by Elba K. and William E. Needless to say, William’s strawberry rhubard pie was extraordinary, but I must admit I don’t even know what Elba baked because it was all gone before I saw any of it. Susan C. put together the entertainment, and Tracey M. (or was his name Erskine?) was the Master of Ceremonies. We got to hear excellent music by many of the usual suspects — Ruth C., Wendy E-G., Cynthia S., Kristin M. with her dad Tracey, Michael M., Lynn F. M., and of course Susan herself.

All the music was wonderful — this congregation has so many talented musicians — but I have to give a special mention to Caran W.’s non-musical contribution to the entertainment. Caran took her beloved Norton Anthology of Literature on a field trip to Chicago. She took photographs of various people with her Norton in some rather unexpected places, photographs which she shared with us in the form of a delightfully strange Power Point presentation. My favorite was the photo of the Norton with geese — turns out geese are not impressed when you try to read Faulkner to them.

One of the best parts of this canvass dinner is that we’re already most of the way to the goal. Instead of asking us for money, canvass chairs Jim and Diane E. were able to celebrate the generosity of this congregation.

Going to Saint-Terre

One of the more life-affirming Web sites that I visit these days is:
http://www.andrewskurka.com/

Andy Skurka is taking a year-long, 7,700 mile walk across the North American continent. Right now, he is somewhere west of Frazee, Minnesota, having walked close to 5,000 miles already. His sister posts trail logs just about every week, giving the latest news from his trek.

What is this but a contemporary pilgrimage — a pilgrimage, not to some dusty bones and pieces of a holy person long dead, but a pilgrimage to find who knows what? It strikes me as a good kind of pilgrimage for my kind of religion. Henry Thoreau offers a theological justification for this kind of pilgrimage in his essay “Walking”:

I have met but one or two persons in the course of my life who understand the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, whihc word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a saunterer, a Holy Lander.

And where is that Holy Land, that Sainte Terre, of which Thoreau speaks? Why, right in front of your feet. Andy Skurka is finding that Holy Land with each step he takes, and he has captured my imagination. I’m already thinking about what pilgrimage, to which holy land, I’m going to make.

Update: Andy Skurka completed his cross-continental hike ahead of schedule.

Search for America

Notes from my week of study leave

Back in 1927, a Canadian author named Frederick Philip Grove published a book titled A Search for America. It remains one of my favorite novels of the American experience. Tonight, I was talking on the phone with my older sister, who teaches writing at Indiana East University, and I was trying to tell her about Grove’s book. I couldn’t find my old paperback edition, but I found the full text of the novel online.

The hero of Grove’s novel (perhaps Grove himself?) emigrates to North America, and after taking a series of menial jobs, wanders across the continent searching for America — long before the Beats and the hippies did so later in the 20th C. Near the end of the book, Grove talks about the differences between the ideals and the realities of the American experience:

I was convinced that the American ideal was right; that it meant a tremendous advance over anything which before the war could reasonably be called the ideal of Europe. A reconciliation of contradictory tendencies, a bridging of the gulf between the classes was aimed at, in Europe, at best by concessions from above, from condescension; in America the fundamental rights of those whom we may call the victims of civilization were clearly seen and, in principle, acknowledged — so I felt — by a majority of the people. Consequently the gulf existing between the classes was more apparent than real; the gulf was there, indeed; but it was there as a consequence of an occasional vitiation of the system, not of the system itself. I might put it this way. In Europe the city was the crown of the edifice of the state; the city culminated in the court — a republican country like France being no exception, for the bureaucracy took the place, there, of the aristocracy in other countries. In America the city was the mere agent of the ountry — necessary, but dependent upon the country in every way — politically, intellectually, economically. Let America beware of the time when such a relation might be reversed: it would become a mere bridgehead of Europe, as in their social life some of its cities are even now. [Author’s note: I must repeat that this book was, in all its essential parts, written decades ago.] The real reason underlying this difference I believed to be the fact that Europe, as far as the essentials of life were concerned, was a consumer; whereas America was a producer. The masses were fed, in Europe, from the cities; the masses were fed, in America, from the country….

That was my idea; and it contained the germ of an error. In my survey of the American attitude I was apt to take ideals for facts, aspirations for achievements….

…America is an ideal and as such has to be striven for; it has to be realized in partial victories. (I have since come to the conclusion that the ideal as I saw and still see it has been abandoned by the U.S.A. That is one reason why I became and remained a Canadian.)

I like the United States, and don’t feel any desire to emigrate to Canada. Nor have I abandoned the ideals Grove talks about. But I think Grove may be right in this respect — it’s too easy to take ideals for facts, and aspirations for achievements. Indeed, you could make the same criticism of us Unitarian Universalists in the United States — as grand as our principles may sound, they don’t do much good unless we live them in our lives.

You might want to read the whole book, a grand sweeping novel of adventure and travel. Get it from your library, or read it for free online by pointing your Web browser here: Link.

What a book

Notes from my week of study leave

Made my bimonthly pilgrimage to the Seminary Coop Bookstore, down in the basement of Chicago Theological School in the South Side of Chicago. (I still say it is the best academic bookstore I have visited on this side of the Atlantic.)

As usual, I walked out with ten or twenty pounds of books, including a copy of The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic, by R. K. Narayan, a prominent 20th C. Indian novelist.

I remember reading a review of this book a few years ago, probably when the University of Chicago Press edition came out in 2000. The reviewer said it was the best short version (179 pages of the massive 100,000 stanza original poem) of the Mahabharata in English. I’ve been meaning to read it ever since.

Having never read the full Mahabharata, I am in no position to judge how good an abridgement it is. But Narayna’s book is well-written, gripping, entertaining, and even manages to retain something of an epic feel to it in spite of its short length. Best of all, I now have a better sense of the context of the Bhagavad Gita, one of my favorite religious texts, which is but one small part of the entire Mahabharata.

Highly recommended.