Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Unitarian Universalism

  • Winter Solstice

    Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make any corrections.

    Readings

    The first reading was an excerpt from the long poem titled “Shapechangers in Winter” by Margaret Atwood (not available online due to copyright restrictions).

    The second reading was a short poem by Unitarian Universalist poet Annie Finch titled “Winter Solstice Chant” (available online here).

    Sermon: “Winter Solstice”

    Beginning about fifty years ago, an unknown number of religious progressives began drifting away from traditions like Christianity, Judaism, and secular humanism to embrace Paganism. Paganism is an umbrella term that includes a variety of traditions, but probably the best known of the Pagan traditions is Wicca. People who follow the Wiccan tradition usually observe eight main seasonal celebrations — I say “usually,” because Wicca is extremely decentralized and people decide on their own how to practice Wicca. But the eight usual Wiccan celebrations include solstices, equinoxes, and the four days roughly equidistant from solstices and equinoxes; and each of these has its own name, so that for example the winter solstice celebration is called Yule, or Yuletide.

    Back in the 1990s, I had a friend who was a Pagan and a Unitarian Universalist minister. In my recollection, she was a feminist who was inspired by Wiccan theologies that placed more emphasis on the divine feminine than on the divine masculine. And my recollection is that she was one of the Pagans who paid great attention to aesthetics, with carefully decorated worship spaces, with special aesthetically pleasing clothing, with compelling music, with incense, and so on — aesthetics that engaged the intellect, the senses, and the emotions in deep and meaningful ways.

    When she finished qualifying as a Unitarian Universalist minister, several of us were curious where she would find a position as a minister. There are many Unitarian Universalist congregations that are definitively humanist, and it was hard to imagine a goddess-worshipping Pagan as their minister. There are even more Unitarian Universalist congregations that engage the head far more than the heart, and it was hard to imagine those congregations valuing the aesthetic skills of our frined.

    We were a bit surprised when she was hired as the assistant minister of King’s Chapel in Boston. How would a Pagan minister fit into a Christian Unitarian Universalist congregation? But she pointed out that King’s Chapel is really good at ritual; they use a poetic prayer book; and they have a beautiful building and music, and aesthetically pleasing rituals. We wondered how her Pagan theology would mesh with King’s Chapel’s Christian theology, but she pointed out they were progressive Christians who were feminist and LGBTQ-friendly and oriented towards making the world a better place.

    I’ve been thinking about this friend of mine this month. Here in the northern hemisphere, late December seems to call out for ritual and for beauty. I think of our Christmas Eve candlelight service here in our Meetinghouse, with lots of candles, lovely music, and the same beautiful readings every year. That kind of beauty and ritual is both comforting and enlivening in the darkest time of the year. What we do here on Christmas Eve is not so different from Pagan winter solstice celebrations. The ritual is different, of course, but there are candles and lovely music and beauty. In the overall feeling, you can see a family resemblance there.

    Part of the reason that there’s a family resemblance there is because both Christianity and Paganism are syncretic religions. From what I can observe, nearly all religions are syncretic. Every religion incorporates elements from the cultures in which they are embedded. Here in this country, we tend to associate Christmas with certain kind of music — Handel’s Hallelujah chorus; the carol “Go Tell It on the Mountains”; songs like “White Christmas.” Handel’s Messiah is European art music based on Western Christian traditions. “Go Tell It on the Mountains” has roots in African American traditions including both Christianity and traditional African beliefs and values. “White Christmas” is a pop song written by a Jewish composer.

    We here in the United States tend to take this for granted, and we assume that everyone who celebrates Christmas sings the same songs. But Christmas is always influenced by the surrounding culture. For example, consider Maori Christmas songs. New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere, and one Maori Christmas song goes out of the way to disavow the connection of winter and Christmas: “Not on a snowy night / By star or candlelight / Nor by an angel band…” (1) In another example, Christmas in Ethiopia is associated with a traditional game that’s a bit like field hockey. A classic Ethiopian Christmas song says: “We are so glad Christmas is here. We can all play the Christmas game. When we do, everyone is equal….” (2) Ethiopia is close to the equator, with little variation in the length of days, with the result that Ethiopian Christmas songs don’t mention cold or snow or evergreens or shortened days.

    Here in the northern hemisphere, however, Christmas does come at the darkest, coldest time of the year. As a result, in both Europe and North America Christmas has come to be associated with the winter solstice — with the longest night; with candlelight and starlight; with rituals to bring back the light and make the days grow long once again. Not surprisingly, we have incorporated a number of non-Christian customs into Christmas. And for us, this has become part of the magic and wonder of Christmas time.

    One of the magical aspects of Christmas time that I especially enjoy is the singing of Christmas carols. Although we think of Christmas carols as being Christian, the reality is more complicated. It appears that Christmas caroling also has roots in the ancient custom of wassailing. Wassail is an alcoholic drink made out of apples. To go wassailing meant to go from door to door singing wassail songs, and at each house where you sang you’d get a glass of wassail to drink, and even gifts of coins. Thus Christmas caroling draws upon both Christianity, and ancient customs relating to the winter solstice.

    We can see this same process at work in other rituals and traditions of this time of year. Santa Claus started out as the Christian Saint Nicholas, went to Holland where he became Sinterklaas, a skinny person whose saint’s day was December 5. Sinterklaas came to North American, put on weight, changed his name to Santa Claus, and became associated with Christmas. (3) Santa was given reindeer by Washington Irving in the early nineteenth century. In 1939, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer appeared in a department store promotional booklet, and then got popularized by a Jewish songwriter. Today Santa leaves presents under an evergreen tree, a symbol of ancient Paganism.

    This mixing of — and invention of — cultural and religious traditions continues in our own day. Some American Jewish households have a Hannukah tree. Some American Hindu households put up a Christmas tree as a way of exposing their children to different cultural traditions. (4) Secular capitalism is another cultural influence: since 2005, for example, the “elf on the shelf” marketing juggernaut has become an integral part of Christmas. (5)

    Today’s Christian fundamentalists and latter-day Puritans tell us that Christmas should be a purely Christan holiday — where they get to decide what “purely Christian” means — and that we should never allow elements of winter solstice celebrations to sully their purified Christmas. And today’s atheist fundamentalists tell us that we should have a perfectly pure secular society, where all religious holidays should only be celebrated behind closed doors.

    These efforts to purify religion, to purify people’s thoughts and feelings, to purify people’s preferred rituals — these efforts mostly fail. Purification might work for a short time but human society keeps on growing and changing. In seventeenth century Massachusetts, the Puritans made Christmas illegal, in part to eradicate the custom of wassailing. But that effort at purification ultimately failed, as new Christmas and Yuletide customs evolved.

    The old Puritans and today’s fundamentalists tend towards religious literalism. But we need not be religious literalists. We can experience religion as cultural production not unlike theatre and literature and music, where deeper meaning is communicated not literally but through metaphor. Thus, those of us who are not religious literalists do not have to believe in the truth or falsity of some Christian Christmas dogma. Instead, we can become alive to a wide range of metaphor and meaning.

    For me, this is part of the attraction of observing the winter solstice. At this time of year, I seem to crave those things that make me feel connected with the cycles of the non-human world. At this darkest time of year, we think about the metaphors that go along with darkness, with the absence of light. In her book Dreaming the Dark, Pagan thealogian Starhawk talks about the many meanings of darkness: There is the darkness that represents “all we are afraid of, all that we don’t want to see — fear, anger, sex, grief, death, the unknown.” But, says Starhawk, there is also the kind of darkness she calls the “turning dark,” representing movement and change. And, says Starhawk, there is also the “velvet dark…[representing] touch, joy, mortality”; and the “birth-giving dark: seeds are planted underground, the womb is dark, and life forms anew in hidden place.” (6) Starhawk finds these many meaning in a metaphorical understanding of darkness.

    And all these images and metaphors are present in the idea of the winter solstice: The dark that goes along with fear and grief and anger. The darkness that is not a color but is the absence of light. The dark that represents the turning of the year, the point at which the days grow longer once again. The dark that gives birth, as the growing sunlight will eventually bring springtime and new life (and perhaps this includes stories like the Christmas story, a story that centers around a new child who is born in the dark of the night). And the velvet darkness, the darkness that soothes and touches and brings joy. All these images can become part of a metaphorical interpretation of this time of year.

    Nor do we need to identify a single simple literal meaning of complex metaphors. We don’t have to fit metaphors into a scientific world view. Sometimes a metaphor is just a metaphor; and sometimes we don’t even have to make rational sense out of a metaphor.

    With that thought in mind, I’ll end with this poem by Mary Oliver:

    Notes

    (1) Translation from the New Zealand Folk*Song website, lyrics for “Te Harinui by Willow Macky, 1957” https://folksong.org.nz/nzchristmas/te_harinui.html accessed 16 Dec 2024.
    (2) Translation from the description to the Youtube video “Munit and z Lovebugs – Asina Genaye (Ethiopian Christmas Song)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoAPXsUaXN8 accessed 21 Dec 2024.
    (3) Ivan Natividad, “For the Dutch, Santa Is Tall and Skinny. What Happened to Him in America?” University of California at Berkeley Research, December 21, 2023 https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/dutch-santa-tall-and-skinny-what-happened-him-america accessed 21 Dec. 2024
    (4) Syama Allard, Religion News Service, “How American Hindus spend Christmas,” December 23, 2022 https://religionnews.com/2022/12/23/how-american-hindus-spend-christmas/ accessed 20 Dec. 2024
    (5) Kelsey McKinney, Vox website, “The Elf on the Shelf is the greatest fraud ever pulled on children,” Dec 15, 2016
    https://www.vox.com/2014/12/10/7361911/elf-on-the-shelf accessed 21 Dec. 2024
    (6) Starhawk, “Prologue,” Dreaming the Dark, 15th anniversary edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982/1997)

  • Jetpig!

    Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make corrections.

    Readings

    The first reading was a short poem by Unitarian poet Celia Thaxter:

    The waves of Time may devastate our lives,
    The frosts of age may check our failing breath,
    They shall not touch the spirit that survives
    Triumphant over doubt and pain and death.

    The second reading was from an essay titled “What Do Unitarian Universalists Believe?” by Duncan Howlett, written in 1967 while he was the minister of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Washington, D.C.

    In the first place, we reject all doctrines and creeds and theologies if they pretend to any finality. We think the fabrication of such systems valuable, but we do not believe one or another of them. But a Unitarian Universalist is not an unbeliever. In fact, a Unitarian Universalist believes a great deal. Our beliefs are of a different order, but they are nonetheless real.

    We believe in humanity, that human beings are endowed with the power to move toward truth.
    We believe that human beings are endowed with the discrimination by which to tell the difference between truth and falsehood and error. Yet we know human beings are fallible. We know that individuals make mistakes.
    We believe humanity is to be trusted — not each human being, but humankind taken together, with the testimony of each checked against each.
    We believe that humankind can find truth, know the right, and do good — again, not each individual, but taken together, with each checked against all the rest.
    We believe human life has meaning, that the high purposes of humanity may be achieved and the spiritual nature of humanity indicates something about humankind and the cosmos as well.
    We believe in the freedom we need if we are to find a sense of selfhood and if we are to find what is the truth for us. We believe in the faculties we possess and in those possessed by others also, for we must believe in our own fallibility, too.
    We believe in the power of love to conquer hate and strife and in its power to suffuse our lives with the glory and the sense of reality that love alone can give.

    In this faith we live, by it we labor, and through it we find the courage to carry on amidst all the tragedy, misery, and stupidity of life.

    The third and final reading was a “found poem” noted by Everett Hoagland at the First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Oct. 2006, titled “So Bet It” (not available online due to copyright restrictions).

    Sermon: “Jetpig!”

    Way back in 1887, William Channing Gannett, minister of the Unitarian church in St. Paul, Minnesota, was trying to come up with a way to unify the Unitarians of his day. This was not an easy task. Gannet was part of the so-called Western Unitarian Conference of the Midwest and the Plains states, a conference which encompassed a great diversity of belief. There were Christian Unitarians who believed in God, loved the Bible, and found their greatest inspiration in the life of Jesus. There were post-Christians who didn’t place much importance in belief in the Christian God, who read sacred texts from many different religions, and who were inspired by Jesus but also by Confucius, Buddha, Muhammad, and other spiritual leaders. And there were even a few proto-humanists as well. Among the ministers, there were men like William Greenleaf Eliot, from an elite East Coast family and with a graduate degree from Harvard. But there were also women like Mary Safford, from a Midwestern farm family and with only one year at the University of Iowa.

    William Channing Gannett saw all this diversity, and tried to formulate a statement that would bring them together so they could work more effectively together. In an essay titled “Things Common Believed Today Among Us” tried to point out the commonalities among people in the Western Unitarian Conference. In that essay, he made an observation which still holds true today. He said:

    “Because we have no ‘creed’ which we impose as a condition of fellowship, specific statements of belief abound among us, always somewhat differing, always largely agreeing.”

    This remains true for us Unitarian Universalists today, with one small caveat. Some of us today no longer want to use the word “belief,” because the concept of “belief” is so central to Christianity; and we want to be even more inclusive. Today, we might rephrase Gannet’s words like this: “Because we have no ‘creed’ which we impose on others, statements of religious identity abound among us, always somewhat differing, always largely agreeing.”

    Gannett was a Unitarian. The Universalist side of our heritage also refused to impose a creed on anyone. They avoided some of the chaos that confronted Gannett by adopting what they called a “profession of faith.” The Universalist professions of faith were agreed upon through a democratic process, and voted on by the delegates to the annual Universalist General Conference. I knew some older Universalists who still remembered the Washington Declaration of 1935, which said in part:

    “…We avow our faith in God as Eternal and All-conquering Love, in the spiritual leadership of Jesus, in the supreme worth of every human personality, in the authority of truth known or to be known, and in the power of men of good-will and sacrificial spirit to overcome evil and progressively establish the Kingdom of God. Neither this nor any other statement shall be imposed as a creedal test, provided that the faith thus indicated be professed.”

    That last sentence, often referred to as the “liberty clause,” is a crucial part of Universalist professions of faith. The liberty clause meant that even though individuals had to be in rough agreement with the sentiments behind the profession of faith, no individual had to agree in every detail. There was a great deal of room for interpretation. This was especially important in the mid-twentieth century, when a growing number of Universalists became humanists. Because of the liberty clause, the humanists did not have to conform to a literal interpretation of the Washington Declaration. The humanists could affirm the spirit of the Washington Declaration — they could affirm their faith in eternal and all-conquering love, while not having to believe in God.

    The Universalist professions of faith had one big advantage over the chaos of Unitarianism: they gave individuals something to hang on to. I’ll give you one example of what I mean. Wells Behee was born in 1925, was raised as a Universalist and in adulthood became a Universalist minister. As a young man, Wells served in the Second World War. When he died in 2011, his friend and colleague Derek Parker wrote:

    “During World War II, Wells served in the Navy. His military service included both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of combat, including the Battle of Iwo Jima. Later in life Wells would frequently comment that the only thing which kept his sanity at Iwo Jima were his repeated praying of the Washington [Declaration].” (1) From Wells Behee’s experience at Iwo Jima, you can see how a profession of faith can be a powerful spiritual tool in times of crisis.

    The Unitarians also had what amounted to professions of faith, statements which they used much like a profession of faith. In the twentieth century, many Unitarian children learned James Freeman Clarke’s “Five Points of a New Theology,” and some of you who have been Unitarians since the mid-twentieth century will remember “the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, salvation by character, and progress onwards and upwards forever.” Those were Clarke’s “Five Points,” and they functioned as a kind of profession of faith. However, unlike the Universalist professions of faith, the Unitarian statements of faith were not developed through democratic process.

    When the Unitarian and the Universalists joined forces in 1961, one of the things they decided to do was to come up with a statement that could help unify these two different movements. So a committee came together and came up with six principles that served as a unifying statement, and these six principles were made official by placing them in the bylaws of the new Unitarian Universalist Association. The six principles were a kind of profession of faith. But while they were worthy and high-minded sentiments, they were not especially memorable. I don’t remember ever hearing about them when I was a child.

    Then in 1985, those old “six principles” were revised to remove sexist language, and they became the “seven principles.” The seven principles were expressed better than the six principles; the prose was livelier, the ideas more interesting . Because of this, the seven principles began to function as a kind of profession of faith. Personally, however, I always found them to be a bit too intellectual and dry, and not something that would give me much comfort and support in times of stress or trouble.

    And this brings me to “Jet Pig.” In the Moment for All Ages today, you heard from the Sunday school about Jet Pig. Jet Pig is an acronym that stands for Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, and Generosity. These are the six shared values that were added to the “Principles and Purposes” section of the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association this past June, during the Association’s annual business meeting. These new six shared values replace the former seven principles.

    When the democratic process to revise the “seven principles” began three years ago, I was pretty skeptical. The first drafts of the revised principles and purposes were even more wordy than the “seven principles,” and (to my mind, anyway) even less memorable. Considered as an addition to the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist association, I found the new revised principles and purposes to be fascinating. But as a spiritual resource, they seemed empty and boring.

    As the democratic process continued over the next three years, more and more got added into the revised principles and purposes. Each time they were amended through the democratic process, they became longer, and wordier, and more painfully earnest. When it came time to vote on them — and I was one of this congregation’s delegates at the meeting in June — I wound up voting for the new revision. But because they were so boring and so convoluted and so painfully earnest, I assumed that they would be mostly ignored.

    I did not take into account the creativity of the religious educators. Someone noticed that the six values articulated in the new revision formed the acronym “jet pig.” Religious educators picked up on this idea, and created Jet Pig characters to make these shared values seem fun and interesting and relevant. The humor of the Jet Pig character helped leaven the painful earnestness of the actual bylaws. I also appreciated that Jet Pig is memorable. I have a poor memory, and I spent nearly forty years not being able to remember the old seven principles. Now, because of Jet Pig, I can actually remember justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, interdependence, and … wait, what does “g” stand for? But even if I can’t remember every element of the Jet Pig acronym, I can easily remember the most important thing — love is at the center. Because that’s what the new principles and purposes say: that love is at the center.

    In short, I like Jet Pig. I also like the fact that even if I can’t remember all six things that Jet Pig stands for, I can always remember that love is the central value. These strike me as positive developments in the wider Unitarian Universalist community. We have some shared values that we can articulate quickly and easily, and thanks to Jet Pig we can even have a sense of humor when we do so.

    But I also remember what William Channing Gannett pointed out back in 1887. We don’t impose any creed or statement of belief, we don’t impose any profession of faith, upon individuals. In 1887, Gannett said, “specific statements of belief abound among us, always somewhat differing, always largely agreeing.” This continues to be true today. We allow, and even encourage, individuals to come up with their own statements of religious identity. In May, teens from our Coming of Age class will present their statements of religious identity during a Sunday service, and you’ll get to hear how they differ and how they agree. The rest of us can do the same thing: we can, and should, develop our own personal sense of religious identity.

    For me personally, however, I need something more than a personal statement of religious identity. I want a communal sense of identity. The new principles and purposes in the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association provide part of that communal sense of identity, but honestly I can’t see myself turning to them in times of personal trouble. Speaking entirely personally, I find more meaning in some of the words we heard this morning in readings.

    I am moved by Duncan Howlett when he said, “I believe in the power of love to conquer hate and strife and in its power to suffuse our lives with the glory and the sense of reality that love alone can give.” That’s something I can hang onto in times of trouble.

    I am moved by Celia Thaxter’s short poem that says:

    The waves of Time may devastate our lives,
    The frosts of age may check our failing breath,
    They shall not touch the spirit that survives
    Triumphant over doubt and pain and death.

    Again, that’s something I can hang onto in times of trouble.

    And I often find myself reciting Edwin Markham’s poem “Outwitted” to myself:

    They drew a circle that shut me out —
    Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout;
    But love and I had the wit to win,
    We drew a circle that took them in.

    This poem has helped me through some rough spots in my personal life. And Edward Everett Hale’s little poem has been one of my constant companions:

    I am only one.
    But still I am one.
    I cannot do everything.
    But still I can do something.
    And because I cannot do everything
    I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

    These words have helped me get through those times when I felt overwhelmed by all that needed to be done.

    So it is that while Jet Pig (with love at the center) is proving to be a good way to articulate our shared values as a wider community, it is not sufficient. We each need to articulate our own personal sense of religious identity. And beyond that, each of us can choose whatever words or poetry work best for us, to help lift us up when we are down — to, as Everett Hoagland says in his short and humorous poem, lift us beyond belief.

    Note

    (1) Derek Parker, “In Memoriam: Mary and Wells Behee,” Dec. 17, 2011, posted on Rev. Scott Wells’s blog https://www.revscottwells.com/2011/12/17/in-memoriam-mary-and-wells-behee/

  • Why Do We Sing What We Sing?

    Sermon and moment for all ages copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading is from the poem “Darshan Singh and Christian Harmony,” by Coleman Barks, Gourd Seed (Maypop Books, 1983), p. 59.

    The second reading was from John Calvin’s essay “Singing Psalms in Church.”

    “As to public prayers, there are two kinds: the one consists of words alone; the other includes music. And this is no recent invention. For since the very beginning of the church it has been this way, as we may learn from history books. Nor does St. Paul himself speak only of prayer by word of mouth, but also of singing. And in truth, we know from experience that song has a great power and strength to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a heart more vehement and ardent. One must always watch lest the song be light and frivolous; rather, it should have weight and majesty, as St. Augustine says. And thus there is a great difference between the music that is made to entertain people at home and at table, and the Psalms which are sung in church….”

    The third very short reading was a Vietnamese folk poem titled “The Singer with a Bad Voice,” trans. by John Balaban, Ca Dao Vietnam (Copper Canyon Press, 2003).

    Sermon: “Why Do We Sing What We Sing?”

    [This sermon was interspersed with five hymns from recent Unitarian Universalist hymnals, as noted below.]

    A question that I’ve been asking myself for some years now is this: why do we sing certain songs in our Sunday services, and not other songs? So I propose that we consider five songs that we often sing, then either sing them or listen to them sung, and think about why we do sing them. We can also think about why it might be strange that we sing them at all.

    To begin, a quick explanation of why we sing at all in our services. In Western civilizations before the Protestants split from the Roman Catholics, most religious services did not have anyone singing singing except for some kind of rehearsed choir; if you weren’t in the choir, you didn’t sing. But Protestants like John Calvin, as we heard in the second reading, decided that everyone should sing.

    The Puritans who started our congregation followed Calvin, and sang only psalms from the Bible. In the 18th century, they began singing hymns, that is, songs of praise to God that were not psalms. In the 19th century, the repertoire expanded further to include spiritual songs and gospel music, in which mention of God was less prominent. By the middle twentieth century, this congregation began singing songs that had no mention of God at all. We have come quite far from John Calvin.

    And this brings us to the first song that I’d like us to consider, a song which has no explicit mention of any deity whatsoever. Let’s stay seated, and we’ll sing just the last verse of hymn #1064, “Blue Boat Home.”

    [The congregation sang “Blue Boat Home,” #1064 in Singing the Journey. Recording of the songwriter, Peter Mayer, singing this song. Note that Mayer sings this song a bit differently from the version that appears in the hymnal.]

    “Blue Boat Home” doesn’t mention God or any other deity whatsoever. Nevertheless, I’d call it a spiritual song. The song gives thanks, and it tries to make sense of the wonder of the universe. Expressing gratitude and wonder should be considered in some sense spiritual. “Blue Boat Home” is often considered an ecology song, which is another part of its spiritual attraction for us — we Unitarian Universalists have found the spiritual in Nature since Ralph Waldo Emerson’s day.

    But why have we latched onto “Blue Boat Home,” and not some other ecology song? For instance, why don’t we sing another spiritual ecology-oriented song that’s just as good, “Swimming to the Other Side,” written by Pat Humphries at about the same time? I’m glad we do sing “Blue Boat Home,” but I see no particular reason why we sing it and not the Pat Humphries song. Oftentimes, our song choices seem to be based on random chance.

    There’s another one of our favorite songs that I can’t figure out why we sing, and that’s the song “There Is More Love Somewhere.” While “Blue Boat Home” is a composed song that sounds like a folk song, “There Is Move Love Somewhere” is a genuine honest-to-goodness folk song. “There Is More Love Somewhere” probably comes from Bessie Jones, who was recorded singing it for folklorist Alan Lomax in November of 1961. As is true of many American folk songs, it’s hard to say exactly where this song comes from. It probably has roots in Africa (Bessie Jones’s grandfather was born in Africa). Bessie Jones sang a couple of Christian verses that we usually don’t sing: “There is Jesus somewhere,” and “There is heaven somewhere,” so it probably has European Christian roots, too.

    I’ve heard that some Unitarian Universalists have changed the words to this song so it says, “There is more love right here.” Folk songs can change over time, but once you start singing “There is more love right here,” I think you’ve just written a new song with an entirely different meaning; a song that ignore the realities of the African American tradition out of which the song originally arose. When we sing “There is more love “somewhere,” it reminds us that we do not live in a utopia; the moral arc of the universe is still trying to bend towards justice. When I sing “There is more love — somewhere,” that reminds me that we are put here on earth to help one another, and to help one another we have to understand that many of us have plenty of problems. This is a song of longing and striving for a better world. With that in mind, let’s sing the song, and see if you agree with me. No need to open your hymnal. We’ll sing two verses, “There is more love somewhere, I’m going to keep on till I find it”; and then “There is more hope somewhere….”

    [The congregation sang “There Is More Love Somewhere,” #95 in Singing the Living Tradition. Recording of Bessie Jones singing this song — Bernice Johnson Reagon’s recording.]

    One of the most popular of all hymns and spiritual songs here in the U.S., across a wide range of religious traditions, is the song “Amazing Grace.” This song was not especially popular until after the Second World War, when professional musicians began making recordings of it. We think we know exactly how “Amazing Grace” sounds, but often what we actually know is the 1970 hit recording by Judy Collins, or the 1946 recording by Mahalia Jackson. Those professionally recorded versions don’t sound like older versions of the song. So the choir is going to sing for us an old version of “Amazing Grace” from 1835, the year the words were paired with the tune we now know best.

    [The choir sang the original arrangement of “Amazing Grace.” Recording of this arrangement.]

    “Amazing Grace” has taken on many different guises since that old 1835 version. Originally, the words were sung to a different tune. Even after the words were paired with the present tune, in 1835, the words continued to be sung to a wide variety of tunes, right up into the 1920s.

    By the 1930s, the editors of songbooks and hymnals somehow settled on the present tune. Once professional musicians like Mahalia Jackson made recordings of it, I guess no one could imagine singing the words to any other tune.

    During the 1950s and 1960s, “Amazing Grace” became one of the most powerful songs for African Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement, providing strength and courage and vision. “Amazing Grace” had been written by a former slave-holder who saw the evil of his ways and reformed; in that story, African Americans fighting for Civil Rights saw hope for the future.

    Sometimes White people heard a similar message in “Amazing Grace.” In the 1970s, country singer Johnny Cash began singing the song in his prison concerts. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Cash said, “For the three minutes that song is going on, everybody is free. It just frees the spirit and frees the person.”

    Since the 1970s, “Amazing Grace” is often played by bagpipers in cemeteries when someone is buried. Then it provides comfort to people who are in grief. (And it keeps evolving — wait till you hear the offertory Mary Beth is going to play, in which the tune to Amazing Grace goes places you won’t expect.)

    The funny thing is that prior to being recorded by professional musicians, “Amazing Grace” belonged to White and Black Southerners living at the cultural peripheries. That poem by Coleman Barks we heard in the first reading describes how the song sounded when the country folk sang it: “The whinge and whang of a loudness I know….” Whinge and whang mean the song did not have the prettiness of a Judy Collins recording, nor the professionalism of a Mahalia Jackson recording. It would have sounded loud, and nasal, and unrestrained, and ecstatic, and — well, that old country singing sounded like bad singing to the educated city folks. To the city folks, it sounded like the kind of singing we heard about in the third reading, singing that causes dogs to bark and bulls to bellow.

    So why did the educated city folk, after ignoring the song for over a century, suddenly decide “Amazing Grace” was worth singing? Perhaps it’s because we are slowly, over time, becoming more tolerant of the different subcultures in our country. So instead of being dismissive of uneducated whinge and whang, we can open ourselves to the strangenesses of other people’s musics. We are coming to realize, as Peter Schickele used to say, “all musics are created equal.” We are slowly broadening our perspectives.

    The next song I’d like to consider with you seems very comforting and familiar, but it’s actually very strange: “’Tis a Gift To Be Simple.” Let’s sing that right now. Don’t bother opening your hymnals, sing from memory.

    [The congregation sang “’Tis a gift to be simple” #16 in Singing the Living Tradition. Recording of Sabbathday Lake, Maine, Shakers singing this song.]

    “’Tis a gift to be simple” — that sounds like a the familiar call for simple living. But in reality the Shaker tradition from which this song came was deeply strange.

    Susan M. Setta, professor of religion at Northeastern, has written that the Shakers “proclaimed the Motherhood and Fatherhood of God, asserted that the second coming of Christ had occurred in the woman Ann Lee, fostered a social and political structure of both male and female leadership, and prohibited both marriage an private ownership of property.” (1) When the song says “’tis a gift to come down where we ought to be,” the Shakers weren’t talking about some sort of personal growth or self-fulfillment in simple living (which is how we might interpret it today). They meant that after giving up all your private property and ending your marriage and fully believing that Ann Lee was the second coming of Christ, you settled into your place in a Shaker community.

    And Shaker worship practices were deeply strange from our point of view. Their worship halls were set up for dancing. In 1961, Sister Lilian Phelps of the Canterbury, N.H., Shakers, described what this was like: “It was the belief of the Shakers that every faculty should be used in the worship of God, and so, various forms of physical exercise were introduced, particularly the March. A group of eight or ten singers, occupied the center of the room, around which the members marched in perfect formation. It was with a graceful, rhythmic motion of the hands as the members marched to the slow or quick tempo of the music.” (2) While this sounds interesting and attractive, it is very different from our worship services.

    Yet even though Shakerism is basically alien to our own religious outlook, we still like the song “’Tis a Gift To Be Simple.” There is spiritual truth to be found in this song — both in the words and in the music — that transcends the narrow denominational boundaries in which we are supposed to live.

    One of the functions of spiritual music should be to help us transcend the narrow religious boundaries that often restrict our understanding of other people. One of the biggest challenges facing our society today is how to deal with multiculturalism. Due to innovations in communications and transportation, our contact with people who are very different from ourselves continues to increase rapidly. Unfortunately, the increase in diversity in the United States has driven the spread of White supremacist movements, people who think their White racial and cultural identity is so fragile that it can’t survive an encounter with other races unless they are in a position of authority. Since we are not a White supremacists, we have a different experience. Our encounters with other races, ethnic groups, and cultures can actually lead us to deeper self-knowledge and a greater appreciation for our own racial and ethnic roots. When we sing songs from other races and other cultures and other religious traditions, we hope to be brought into greater contact with the wisdom of all of humanity. If we allow ourselves to appreciate the otherness of the songs we sing, our souls will be enlarged; we will become wiser and better people.

    This brings me to the final song I’d like to consider: “We Shall Overcome.” Let’s sing that song together. We’ll sing two verses: “We shall overcome some day,” and then “All races together.”

    [The congregation sang “We Shall Overcome,” #169 in Singing the Living Tradition. A recording of this song from the Civil Rights Movement.]

    It’s hard to know exactly where this song came from. It probably comes from an old gospel song. During a strike by Black tobacco workers in North Carolina in 1946, Lucille Simmons started singing “We will overcome.” Then the Civil Rights Movement picked it up, and it became “We shall overcome” in the 1950s and 1960s.

    While this song was originally sung for a very specific purpose — for nonviolent actions during the Civil Rights Movement — it taken on a wider meaning. When the song first became popular, we needed to overcome Jim Crow laws. Today, we still need to overcome racism, but in addition to that we all have personal and communal problems that we need to overcome. “We Shall Overcome” can encompass both our personal troubles, and the wider societal troubles that are all around us. We are encouraged when we sing that someday, we shall overcome. No wonder, then, that we sing this song in our Sunday services.

    “We Shall Overcome” helps us see why we sing spiritual songs. We sing these songs to give us strength to face our many troubles. We sing these songs to give us courage, to help us get through the day without giving up. And somehow, it works better when we sing them ourselves. Yes, it is pleasant to listen to a recording of Judy Collins singing her sweetly polished version of “Amazing Grace.” But when we sing a spiritual song ourselves — even if we sing with a whinge and a whang — we get more out of it.

    When we actually sing one of these songs ourselves, we sing to gain courage and strength. We will find more love somewhere — if we sing it ourselves. We will find amazing grace — when we sing it ourselves. We shall overcome — but we have to sing it ourselves. We don’t have to have perfect voices, or even good voices. We just have to sing with real feeling deep in our hearts.

    Notes

    (1) “When Christ Was a Woman: Theology and Practice in the Shaker Tradition,” in Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives, ed. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross, Wadsworth, 2001, p. 264.

    (2) Sister Lillian Phelps, “Shaker Dances and Marches,” https://shakermuseum.org/learn/shaker-studies/who-are-the-shakers/shaker-dancing-and-marching/ (accessed 2 May 2024)