A hat tip to Iris DeMent

You ever had a bit of lag time on a life lesson?

This past Sunday I spoke at the Anchorage UU Fellowship’s 9 a.m. Forum.  I was talking generally about non-theistic spirituality, and the title of my talk was “Reason and Reverence, Meaning and Mystery.”

A few weeks back at our other service, a folk-singing member sang a song called, “Let the Mystery Be.”  It was light, a little bit funny, and sounded to me like a great intro to my Forum presentation.

And it was.  Three other musical members of the fellowship did a wonderful job, people laughed, and enjoyed the live music (which doesn’t usually happen at the Forum).

As the applause died down and I was resuming my seat on the daïs, John B. (another member) called out that the songwriter was Iris DeMent.

I made a flip comment, an easy joke about growing up in a fundamentalist bubble and knowing nothing about music, and moved on.  People laughed, of course, because joking about fundamentalists is a too-easy target in a largely humanist UU setting.

After the service John B. came up to me, and with an earnestness I noticed but didn’t understand, spoke to me again about Iris DeMent.  ”You were careful to credit everyone you quoted in your talk,” he said.

I was a little brain fried.  Happens when introverts play extroverts in public.  I didn’t get it.

But the intensity of his tone stayed with me, and when my brain-cramp relaxed, I began to think about what he said.

Yes, I did grow up in a fundamentalist bubble.  Yes, that does contribute to my musical ignorance.

But I don’t need to nurture that ignorance, and protect that bias.  Part of honoring the worth and dignity of every person is giving credit to musicians as much as ministers and theologians.

It took me a while, but consider the lesson learned.  Thank you, John.

For so the children come

Within the last year I learned of a UU tradition of linking Christmas with dedicating infants and young children.  Our theology, however diversely we articulate it, teaches us that the divine spark lives in all of us, and so the birth of each child is an opportunity to celebrate incarnation.

This past Sunday we celebrated a Rachel Sabbath, which focuses on improving maternal health and universal access to family planning.  Our middle hymn, from Singing the Journey, was “For So the Children Come:”

The chorus began: Each night a child is born is a holy night: A time for singing, a time for wondering, a time for worshipping. Each night a child is born is a holy night.

Cool, I thought.  This must be what some UU congregations sing at Christmas when they’re dedicating babies.

But then the narrator read the words to the first verse:  For so the children come, and so they have been coming, always the same way they come, born of the seed of a man and a woman.

My heart fell into my stomach.  Always the same way they come?  Born of the seed of a man and a woman?  How did these words that sound like a bumper sticker on a right-winger’s car  find their way into a recently-published UU hymnal?

I recovered a bit during the second verse, but then came the third:  Fathers and mothers–sitting beside their children’s cribs–feel glory in the sight of new life beginning.

Sure, this image doesn’t have to read as exclusively one father and one mother at each crib.  But after the first verse’s jolt, it felt that way.

I spoke to our minister about it after the service, and she said that she’d noticed the language, too, as we were singing it.

In 2005 when Singing the Journey was published, one writer could say, without irony, “This is an impressive piece of writing even now, but especially for the time in which it was written. There isn’t a phrase or a sentence that seems out of date, even today.”  He was speaking of the same Fahs text, this time used as a reading in the older Singing the Living Tradition hymnal.

Five years and four months later, some Fahs’ words are now outdated in congregations where children do not always come in the same way.  Where members have wrestled painfully with the fact that it’s not as simple as “seed of man plus seed of woman.”  Where our children our children often have two moms, or two dads, or one parent, or adopted parent, or foster parents, or live with their grandparents, etc.

The times they are a changing.  How do we invest our resources in these changing times?  In printed hymnals, expensive to produce, expensive to replace?  Or in more flexible formats, ones that allow us to pivot, and move in a new direction when old words are hurtful rather than helpful?

I’m not against hymnals.  Far from it.  I love the comfort of familiar words sung again and again over time, gathering memories as we sing them.  I guess I’m arguing for sustainability–and not just saving trees by not printing hymnals.  We need to invest in media that reflect our living tradition, that support our singing along the journey into the future.

Revive us again

This past Sunday at the Anchorage UU Fellowship, our 11 a.m. service was a “revival,” and I almost missed it.

I had a bout of insomnia on Saturday night, and almost chose not to make the drive north on one of Alaska’s most dangerous roads.  Just before I finally got to sleep, I decided that I wouldn’t set an alarm, but I’d go to church if I woke up early enough.  And that’s what happened.  I got to church with enough time to be button-holed by a few people, and still be in my seat when things got started.

And start it did!  Our minister announced that the service was going to be a revival, said a few words about that, and then we started singing, and singing, and singing some more.  Simple songs, set in singable keys, words projected on the wall.  It was funny to watch my fellow UUs tentatively sit down between each song.  You could almost see them thinking, “Surely we’re done now, right?”

The sermon, if it makes sense to call it that, was a series of short experiences, interspersed with more singing.  One of the pieces of the “sermon” was a guided meditation about connection and relationship.  Our minister invited us to close our eyes and imagine our connections to the people in the room, and then beyond.

I found myself imagining those connections like the strings on a violin–taut, vibrating, singing.  My mind played with that, and as I imagined my connection to my family, the image changed.  The deepest, fattest string on a double bass was connected to me, but instead of stretching out to my family, it lay curled up, tangled, limp.

It was a powerful image, and it gave me important information.  I have often felt like I was the one who dropped the connection, but in the image, the string was connected to me, and loose on the other end.  The image told me that I’ve done what I can.

Another of the experiences during the service was “communion.”  Everything about it felt weird.  There was a big loaf of bread, grapes—and orange sections.  There was a hand sanitizer station before the bread.  It felt strange, and I didn’t want to participate.

But our minister talked about communion’s deeper, older meaning, the one that’s about community and connection and relationship.  And I love those things, and long for them, so I decided to give it a shot.  While I waited in line, I found community with another reluctant participant, and it was fun to laugh about it together.

I got my squirt of hand sanitizer, and tried to get it dry before tearing off a piece of bread.   I chose an orange section, rather than a grape, and headed back for my seat.  It felt familiar, this ritual of walking back to my seat with a small pieces of food in my hand, but the faint sense of familiarity didn’t prepare me for what happened when I ate the piece of bread.

I sat down, put the bread in my mouth, began to chew–and suddenly I was back in all the place where I’ve ever taken communion.  In that bread was almost thirty years of religious history.  My body literally shuddered from the impact.

It was a strange and powerful morning.  Intentionally chaotic, disjointed, lively.  The kind of religious ritual that says, “Don’t get too comfortable there, because we’re going to move.”   And move me it did.

I’m glad I didn’t miss the revival.

Celebrating Aspiration at AUUF

The leadership of the Anchorage UU Fellowship has been engaged in a conversation about increasing commitment among our membership.  Similar conversations, I believe, are happening in many other congregations.  Our conversation has been informed, in large part, by Michael Durall’s The Almost Church Revitalized.

As I understand it, some of our leaders felt strongly that certain commitments–including pledging–should be a requirement for membership, and proposed bylaw changes to reflect these requirements for membership.  Others recoiled from the idea, and I believe they were primarily opposed to a financial requirement for membership.

As I’ve said before, I love process.  And I think process created an elegant solution in this case, one that honors both sides of the conversation.  I’m not on the Board, and I don’t know that there is universal satisfaction with their solution, but I like it.

Here’s how it was presented in the July newsletter:

AUUF has worked to be open and welcoming to any and all who want to join. However, we also have a big interest in all of our members being active and giving both time and money to support AUUF becoming a strong, vibrant community. To that end the following are becoming our stated aspirations for members without becoming rigid in our getting to these expectations…

1) Attending Sunday services regularly.

2) Participating in at least one program each year that contributes to your search for truth and meaning, such as a small group or adult religious exploration.

3) Actively participating in AUUF social action projects.

4) Supporting the fellowship financially; striving to reach the 5% to 10% giving level is strongly encouraged.

5) Volunteering on a committee or in a way that sustains the work of the Fellowship.

6) Telling others about AUUF.

I love the word “aspiration” as a substitute for “requirement.”  Requirement, to my ears, implies punishment for not measuring up.  Aspiration, on the other hand, allows us to celebrate success.

I also love that there are six aspirations, six opportunities for increased commitment.  Behavioral change doesn’t happen on six fronts at once, so I’m interpreting this as “choose two or three to work on right now.”

Hopefully we will share our aspirations with each other, allowing for the mutual support that makes success more likely.  I chair our congregations Committee on Ministry, so I’ve got #5 covered.  But I don’t attend as often as I’d like, so I’ll choose #1 as one of my aspirations.  And I’d like to facilitate an Adult RE group–using the Tapestry of Faith materials.  I think my third will be “actively participating in AUUF social action projects,” but I don’t know what shape that will take.

Here’s to achievable aspirations!

LTLT #4: I Brought My Spirit to the Sea

“I Brought My Spirit to the Sea” is not on the list of hymns with which the Anchorage UU Fellowship is familiar, but it should be.

Our fellowship, like many UU congregations, has a large contingent of nature mystics.  If you ask what is sacred to them, their answer will be some variation on “being outside in nature.”

We are also an activist congregation, and the last verse of the hymn speaks to that sensibility.  It reminds us that we cannot spend all of our days in solitary contemplation.  We also need to rise “from bended knee to meet the asking years.”

I didn’t find an audio versions of the tune (Jacqui CM) online, so I brought my rudimentary keyboard skills to the task.  The tune is pleasant, and not difficult to play.  Its lilting style lends itself well to the hymn text.  My only quibble is that the last notes of the last line rise, making each verse seem to end with a question mark.

Unfamiliarity with the tune need not discourage congregations from singing this hymn.  Its meter is the aptly named “Common Meter” (the CM in the tune name), and better-known hymn tunes can be used instead of Jacqui.  The text, penned by UU minister Max Kapp, was inspired by time spent at Ferry Beach, a UU camp and conference center in Saco, Maine.  According to Between the Lines, Ferry Beach participants sing this hymn to the tune, “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.”