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.

LTLT # 5: It Is Something to Have Wept

How can you sing an enigma?  How can you give yourself to a hymn, when you have no idea what it means until you get to the last six words?  And even then, you might not understand unless you’ve scoured the internet to figure out what “The Great Minimum” means.

Before I rant too much longer, though, I have to let you know that not everyone feels this way; some people like a little mystery in their lyrics.  My suspicion is that it matters how your brain works.  Whenever I take a Multiple Intelligences assessment, the top three strengths for me are linguistic, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence, in that order.  Musical intelligence is usually pretty far down the list.  Someone for whom music is more important, and words less important, might experience enigmatic lyrics differently than I do.

This tangent helps me understand that, for me, it’s really important to have a simple, easily singable and preferably familiar tune.  I want the tune’s structure to support the hymn’s meaning, and not distract from the hymn’s lyrics.  Given a complicated, unfamiliar tune, and impenetrable lyrics, and I’m unlikely to enjoy the hymn.

I wonder how diverse UU intelligences are.  How many UUs are wordy, introspective types like me?  How many could care less about words, but need interesting and challenging music?  How many are nature folks who would rather be outdoors than sing a hymn?  And how do we create a common experience for a community whose members are, quite literally, wired differently?

On a different note (pun intended), I do like some of the words from “The Great Minimum” that this hymn left out:

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.

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.”

Other Explorations of UU Singing

Here are others writing about the UU hymnal and other aspects of UU music.  I’ll update this post as I meet more explorers.

• Unitarian Hymnal Sing-along is among the first results of a Google search for most UU hymn titles.  Kathryn, the blogger, “attempts to sing a different song everyday from the Unitarian Universalist hymnal.”
• Jon Arterton provides a useful hymnal history and user’s manual in a talk simply called “Singing the Living Tradition,” presented at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown, MA.