“Singing an eclectic repertoire”

One of the best short essays on singing in worship just went up at the Alban Institute Web site. In the essay, titled “Singing an Eclectic Repertoire,” authors Bruce G. Epperly and Daryl Hollinger point out that singing in church “is not about aesthetics — about what we like or dislike. It is about singing our faith in our local community while opening ourselves to new possibilities for singing and worship.” With that principle in mind, they offer some really great ideas for singing a wide-ranging repertoire that includes the following types of sacred song: early American, Irish folk, Hebrew traditional, African American spiritual, gospel, African, Latino, Asian, and contemporary musics.

For example, check out this suggestion for singing Irish folk melodies: “Most people don’t know that the origin of the song ‘Be Thou My Vision’ was an Irish folk tune. If you play it directly from most hymnals, it will sound more like a traditional Germanic hymn. When we simplify the harmonies and change chords primarily only once a measure, the mood changes drastically. The tempo can be lively. Adding a triangle, tambourine, and hand drum will enhance the Irish flavor.” Obviously, you could use similar ideas with English folk melodies as well.

Epperly and Hollinger don’t cover every type of music we sing as sacred song. They don’t cover Welsh tunes, medieval music, or contemporary North American chant, for example. But the authors don’t need to give us precise instructions on singing (and leading) every different type of sacred song. Once we realize that most congregations tend to make every song sound either like (a) old Germanic hymns, or (b) contemporary praise music — we can deal with that tendency, transcend our present narrow approaches, and become truly eclectic singers.

How about Tuvan throat singing in church? Would that be going too far? Umm, OK, I guess something like this might drive some people out of a worship service.

Discussion starter

“God Talk Checklist,” which you’ll find below, is something I came up with for our Coming of Age group. The youth who are participating in the Coming of Age program will be writing a statement of religious identity to present during a worship service in the spring. So how do you get someone to come up with a statement of religious identity? Well, in our society, many people equate God and religion, so one good place to start figuring out your religious identity is to think about where you stand on the God question. That’s what the checklist is designed to do — get you thinking with some degree of precision about where you stand on the God question.

Because the youth and adults who were present tonight found this to be a useful tool for starting a conversation about the God question, so I thought I’d share it here. Remember that it’s designed to be used in a group setting, where you fill it out and share your responses with other people. The checklist starts below the jump.

Continue reading →

Dead end

I’ve been trying to write something. I’ve been trying to write it all day long. Sometimes, I think it’s getting better, but then I get it to a point where I realize that the whole thing is fatally flawed. So I scrap what I’ve written, and start writing again. And pretty soon run into another dead end.

I’ve given up on it for now — I put it aside, and maybe I’ll never pick it up again. But somehow I do think there’s something there that’s worth saving — if only I could figure out what —

A song

“Here we walk in the verdant groves…” — all afternoon I’d been humming a Shaker song, attributed to the Shaker community in Enfield, New Hampshire; I couldn’t get the tune out of my head. Suddenly I realized why the tune seemed so familiar: the first phrase was exactly the same as the first phrase of the theme song to the old television show “Gilligan’s Island”: “Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…” Even though the Shakers sang it first, that spoiled the song and made me want to stop singing it. But I couldn’t, and now hours later the tune is still running round and round in my head — “Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…, Here we walk in the verdant groves…” — and I just can’t get rid of it. Maybe if I write about it, I can get it out of my head and make you start humming it instead.

Lecture 2: Some critiques of humanism

Second lecture in a class on humanism.

If we’re going to do a serious study of humanism, one of the things we have to do is take seriously any serious critiques of humanism. What I’d like to do is go through and give you six possible critiques of humanism, critiques that I consider interesting and worthy of thoughtful consideration. I’m not going to resolve these critiques for you; I’m just going to lay out seven arguments against humanism, and let you do with them what you will.

 

(1) Critique number one is the critique that humanism is no comfort to persons in a time of crisis. In its crudest aspect, this critique takes the form of saying, Well if you’re a humanist and you get cancer, to whom can you pray? But do not dismiss this critique on the basis of that crude critique.

Jean-Paul Sartre raises this issue in a subplot in his short story “The Wall.” The protagonist in this story was fighting in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. He is captured, sentenced to be executed, and spends his last night in a cell with some others who have also been sentenced to death. The protagonist, who has no apparent belief in God, watches as one of the other condemned prisoners who believes in God gives way to fear. Sartre’s protagonist faces his impending death with courage, and even finds himself relishing his last moments of living, as opposed to the believer who gives way to fear. But is this going to be convincing for most people?

This issue has been framed in other ways. Continue reading →

Spirituality development in youth

This morning, I was a guest in an online course on youth ministry, taught by Megan Dowdell and Betty-Jeane Rueters-Ward, and offered through Starr King School for the Ministry. Megan and Betty-Jeane invited Lane Campbell and me to participate in a conference call, and answer a few questions about spiritual development for teenagers. I took notes on what I said, and below you’ll find my re-creation of my answers to Megan’s questions on spiritual development.

Question 1: How is spiritual development for youth different than for adults or children?

My answer: If we’re going to answer this question within the context of a religious community, I want to begin with theology. We have to go back to theological anthropology, and ask ourselves: What is the nature of human beings?

Within my own religious upbringing — my family has been Unitarian for generations, and we’re now Unitarian Universalists — I always heard a lot about Ralph Waldo Emerson, who saw a divine spark within every human being, no matter what age. If the nature of human beings is that they have have some divine spark within them, then we are probably going to say that this divine spark doesn’t develop at all. I’d pretty much agree with Emerson on this point, although I’d probably argue with him about the nature of the divine spark. So I’m not convinced there’s much spiritual difference across ages; certainly, from the standpoint of theological anthropology, there’s no real difference between teenagers and adults. Continue reading →

Making your list and checking it twice

Church consultant Mike Durrall has proposed an interesting idea. Why not figure out how much money you’re going to spend on Christmas presents this year, and budget that same amount of money to give to your congregation’s social justice programs? Wouldn’t that be a great present to give to your congregation, and to the wider world?

This makes sense to me from a religious perspective. Christmas has not been completely secularized, and from my Unitarian Universalist perspective the Christmas story does have some interesting religious themes: the hospitality of the stable, and the lack of hospitality at the inn; and the magi giving expensive gifts to a family that is not particularly well off. And thinking about this gives me a specific idea of how we could donate money for social justice uses to our congregations at Christmas.

The minister’s discretionary fund in most congregations is used (at least in part) to provide confidential financial aid to people who need money right now. If, for example, a young couple were traveling and suddenly discovered that they had no money to rent a room at the Best Western Bethlehem, they could stop at the Bethlehem Unitarian Universalist Society and get money from the minister’s discretionary fund. However, in the present state of the economy, most minister’s discretionary funds have been sadly depleted. Often that money goes to members and friends of the congregation who are financially desperate, some of whom may have no other place to turn.

Why couldn’t we all budget some Christmas money to give to the minister’s discretionary fund of our local congregations? We can take a tax deduction, people who need it will receive confidential help, and we’ll feel good about giving one of the best Christmas presents ever. What do you think? Would a minister’s discretionary fund be a reasonable destination for this kind of Christmas giving?

P.S.: It occurs to me that if you don’t belong to a local congregation, or are a member of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, or if your local congregation doesn’t have a minister’s discretionary fund, you could give money to CLF’s prison ministry (PDF flier on how to sponsor a prisoner) as a sort of equivalent idea.

Baseball, Calvinism, and me

I am not watching the Giants game right now. I should be, but there’s no real point.

You see, if you grew up outside Boston as I did, baseball is all mixed up with Calvinism. I don’t have to watch today’s game, because the winner of this World Series was determined at the beginning of time, and nothing the players or fans do today can affect the final outcome. Just as Calvinists knew who the saints were (they were the ones who went to church), we know who the saints are in baseball (they wear pinstripe suits). However, a few baseball teams with long-haried weirdos — like this year’s Giants, and like the 2004 Red Sox — may occasionally win the Series because God likes to keep us mortals guessing.

So I am not going to watch today’s game. I mean, why bother watching if the outcome is predetermined?