Monthly Archives: October 2006

Autumn watch

Each time the weather gets cool I think to myself, this is the first real autumn day.

Today we had more clouds than sun, a stiff breeze out of the northeast, and the temperature never got above sixty degrees. On my way back from an errand at about lunch time, I stopped to talk with Patrick, the contractor who’s renovating a historic house a few doors down from us. I asked him if he had gone to the meeting on Wednesday where the National Park Service presented their plans for the Corson building which stands between his house and the building with our apartment. He had, and he pointed out where there would be an emergency exit from the fifty-seat theatre they’re going to build, and where there would be a retail store. I asked him about the house he’s renovating, and he said he decided to put in two residential units, instead of one commercial and one residential unit. I started to say that made sense because you don’t see many vacant apartments downtown but you do see lots of empty commercial space, when suddenly Patrick shook my hand and said, Hey, good to see you, gotta run.

I realized that he had been standing there wearing nothing but a t-shirt, while I had on a long-sleeved shirt and fleece vest. He must have been freezing. The warm days when you could have long conversations outdoors are about over. Maybe this was the first real autumn day; except I know it’s going to get still colder, and soon this will seem like one of the warm days.

A remembered painting

I happened to think about someone I knew years ago when I was studying sculpture. A couple of her student paintings stuck in my memory, though I have little enough memory of the woman herself. The paintings were sort of abstract landscapes, meditatively dark. I remember one in particular that was mostly black, with dead branches applied to the canvas, framing the center. My description makes the painting sound funereal, but in my memory the effect was mostly introspective and thoughtful. If you remember the artwork that was being shown in the New York galleries in the early 1980’s, you’ll realize that her paintings were derivative (dead branches and all), but they were well-done nonetheless.

As I said, one or maybe two of these early student paintings stuck in my memory, and in a moment of boredom that old visual memory came to the surface. I wondered what sort of paintings she was doing now — or maybe she had turned to sculpture, for when I last saw her work, in 1987 while she was doing her MFA, she was making sculptural constructions rather than paintings. I remember one in particular, an intricately woven, amorphously-shaped web or mass of delicate wires and fibers that hung from the ceiling of her studio. Looking back on it, I would describe it as thoughtful.

Her name came right up on a search engine, bringing up a Web site with her domain name. But this was not an artist’s Web site: the site had been set up by friends after her sudden death in 2005. She must have been 42 or 43. I scanned the Web site, and it turned out that she had given up a career as a painter, had gone on to get a doctorate in art history, had moved to Cambodia to study the art there. She died in Cambodia, from what wasn’t clear, although she was seven months pregnant.

This was not someone I had ever known well; one or two of her paintings happened to stick in my memory, that’s all. I like to think that who a person is will be more important than what a person has made or accomplished; but mostly I suspect that a person is more likely to be remembered for what his or her hands have made, or for what she or he has done or accomplished. I remembered one student painting by this woman better than I remembered her as a person. That could be considered nothing more than a trivial memory.

Altoid update

If you read this post, you know that I’m upset because evil corporate bean-counters decided it was too expensive to keep putting peppermint oil in Altoids; now they’re just sugar and artificial flavor. I used to rely on Altoids for a hit of peppermint oil to soothe my vocal chords when conducting worship, and this past Sunday, I felt bereft without my peppermint-oil Altoids.

We were in a nearby supermarket tonight, and lo and behold they still had the old-fashioned peppermint-oil Altoids in most of the racks of candy beside the check-out lines. I bought seventeen tins, enough for a two-year’s supply if I limit myself to using them when I preach.

Now I’m worried that I may have missed some of the check-out lines. I’ll have to go back and see if I can buy still more of the old-fashioned Altoids. And OK, yes, maybe I’m a little obsessed about this.

What about memorial services?…

Memorial services are on my mind at the moment, because I’ve led two memorial services in the past week and a half. Weddings are on my mind, too, because at church we are in the midst of reviewing our wedding policies. So today when I started thinking about how to create more engaging worship services, it suddenly occurred to me that common, ordinary Sunday worship has to be connected with memorial services and weddings.

Maybe I need to explain why they need to be connected. A memorial service, a wedding, and a regular Sunday worship service all deal with the big human mysteries: life, death, birth, suffering, hope, grief. Take hope and grief as examples. Regular Sunday worship is a time when people can, among other things, reflect on their day-to-day hopes and griefs. A memorial service is a time when people can, among other things, grieve the death of someone they loved and hope for a continuation of life. A wedding is a time when people can, among other things, grieve over losing a son or daughter or friend or sibling to a new household and a new more important relationship; and of course a wedding is a time of hope and joy.

Thus you can see that weddings, memorial services, and regular Sunday worship services share important themes. You could also add christenings or child dedications, and confirmation or coming-of-age services to this list. You could also add special services such as Christmas eve candlelight services. The same theological and religious themes run through all these types of services. That says to me that if you want to change regular Sunday worship services, or if you want to add other new worship services to your worship line-up, any changes should be linked to all the other special services your church offers.

Think about it this way. Every church is going to have a few people who are “twice-a-year attenders,” people who rarely come to regular worship services. But these people do attend Christmas eve candlelight services, they do come to weddings and child dedications and memorial services. And, with a fair amount of regularity, a child dedication or a memorial service touches one of these twice-a-year attenders deeply enough that he or she starts coming to church regularly. When that happens, doesn’t it make sense that the wedding or memorial service look enough like a regular Sunday worship service that that twice-a-year attender feels comfortable?

For example: as a minister in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, I feel that means that as a minimum every service I conduct has to have something like a sermon. I feel that the sermon is perhaps the most distinctive part of Unitarian Universalist worship; after all, we claim to be people who think hard about religion, which is related to our claim to be people who disdain empty ritual as a kind of idolatry. Further, a Unitarian Unviersalist sermon (at its best) is really one installment in a long-term constantly evolving dialogue between the minister and the congregation, thus acknowledging the priesthood and prophethood of all believers. (Not that I’m a big fan of sermons myself — I don’t process auditory information particularly well, so I tend to drift off during sermons — but I recognize that sermons are central to my religious tradition.)

So a memorial service that I conduct will always have a reflection or homily on the deceased person’s life. A wedding that I conduct will always have a homily about marriage and the couple’s path to marriage. Child dedications are usually too short to include even a homily, but I do make a point of explaining what we are doing when we dedicate a child. And so on, for other special services.

To stick with the specific example of sermons for a bit longer, all this means for me that any alternative worship service I want to engage in on a regular basis has to contain something equivalent to a sermon. Maybe you can change the form of the sermon a bit, but any sermon has to be the original, thoughtful creation of the worship leader, something that engages the congregation in a long-term dialogue. To go beyond the specific example of including a sermon, any alternative or special worship service that I do has to feel enough like a regular Sunday worship service that if you attend one, you won’t be entirely at sea attending the other.

In short, I think it’s time that those of us who are advocates of alternative worship in Unitarian Universalism address these questions: Will your brand-spanking-new alternative worship format be able to handle memorial services and child dedications? –and– What is so central to Unitarian Universalist worship that it must be included in any alternative worship service?

Autumn watch

On the page with all the weather reports and forecasts, the New York Times also prints a little map at this time of year that purports to show where to go look at fall foliage. According to this map today, northern Maine and the White Mountains in New Hampshire are past peak color, while New Bedford is still green.

Except that it’s not green around here. Carol and I drove my sister Jean to the airport today, and in the low areas along I-195, we saw plenty of color in the trees. A few trees were at peak color: one entirely crimson red maple caught my attention, even at 65 miles per hour, even though I was driving in traffic that required most of my attention. And most of the maples in the swamps were at least half red, or orange, or yellow.

You can only think of “peak color” covering broad swaths of land if you look at autumnal colors from a car. At any speed over 25 miles per hour, the variegated colors of individual trees blur together into a homogenous “fall foliage color.” Viewed that way, New Bedford is still pretty much green. But if you walk into a red maple swamp, or even drive by one, peak color is happening right now; and the red maples will be bare by the time the New York Times declares this region is a peak color.

Carol and I watch the maple tree across the street from us; the windows of our second floor apartment look straight into its branches. Our fall foliage season started a week and a half ago, when we looked out one cool morning and realized with shock that some of the tree’s leaves were touched with red. “Look at that,” I said, “the tree across the street has some red…” “Don’t say it!” said Carol. “I’m not ready for fall.” Neither of us is looking forward to the moment when that tree is entirely red. At the moment, we’re used to seeing a few little touches of red, and we haven’t really noticed those few little touches are slowly spreading.

Just sitting

It has been an exhausting week. At church, a long-term member died suddenly. In my family, we had a memorial service for my cousin on Friday; and then on Saturday two graveside committal services, one right after the other, one for my Uncle Dick and one for my cousin Becky (daughter of one of Dick’s sisters), both in the family plot in Nantucket, Massachusetts. I have to say I feel pretty drained. Maybe if I could just catch up on some sleep I’d feel like doing something more than just sitting….