Monthly Archives: July 2005

Music and religion

Recently, I posted an entry about Mark Johnson, audio engineer and musician extraordinaire. Mark sent me email pointing me to some of his more recent work that he has posted publicly.

So go check out some of Mark’s work, where he has taken recordings from worship services and added some very hip music. Now, I know some of you Unitarian Universalists are not going to agree entirely with Mark’s theology, but I think you will like “God Will Make a Way” even if you have to do a little translating around the word God. (And click on his other two screen names, “Black Mark” and “X Mark” to listen to some of his non-religious work.)

Besides, the theology is what I want to focus on. I want to focus on what somebody like Mark can do with a recording of a minister. Why can’t we make our religious message danceable? And hip? And fun? As Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution” (she really meant to say “church,” not “revolution).

Why is it we Unitarian Universalists stick with four-square hymns and old hippie music and Beatles songs? Those kinds of songs are fine, but every once in a while I would like something a little more… contemporary.

Not over till it’s over

According to the almanac, the sun rose today at 5:34 a.m., and set at 8:24 p.m. On June 21, the sun rose at 5:18, and set at 8:32 — not enough of a difference to really notice, but somehow the quality of the light seemed a little different this evening.

Or maybe it’s just because the sandpipers have already started migrating south. They’re always the first migrants I see. It was with a slight pang that I saw a Solitary Sandpiper along the Fox River on Monday, the first visible sign that we are moving towards fall.

But the days are still unbelievably fourteen and a half hours long, the nights short and restless, the heat has really settled in.

((p.s. happy birthday jean!))

You still have time

Today is Pee-on-Earth Day. Unless you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case it’s December 21. Beer to promote participation is optional.

I know I’m posting this a little late in the day for you to participate, but you’ll probably appreciate the privacy of night anyway. And if you don’t read this until after Pee-on-Earth Day, you hereby have special dispensation to pee outdoors at any later date.

Two sky moments

At nine this morning, a few clouds passed overhead. I was out for a walk, before it got hot, and a few raindrops fell for perhaps two minutes: a trace of rain. Then at noon, dark clouds rolled in from the west. I was at the car dealer getting a brake job. When the rain hit, we all stopped whatever we were doing and watched. The rain began just before one o’clock, the thunder and lightning were furious for five minutes, and the rain and wind lashed down. We could smell the rain. “It’s beuatiful, isn’t it?” someone said. “I like it best when there’s real loud thunder and lightning,” said someone else. “We need the rain,” said the service manager. “I was talking to a farmer who lives near me, and he said the corn is only four feet tall and it’s tassling out. He’s going to get a third less bushels than usual.” By one twenty, the heavy rain was over, and some light sprinkles persisted for another twenty minutes.

An incredible sky this evening just at sunset. The setting sun shone on the upper level cirrostratus clouds turning them pastel orange, pastel yellow, pastel red. The lower cumulus clouds, still boiling up trying to become thunderheads, glowed robin’s-egg blue inside white edges. Presumably they were reflecting the stretch of blue sky straight overhead, but they reminded me of the color of a glacier I once saw: glowing ice blue. I have never seen clouds that color before. It was a beautiful and disconcerting sight. The lower clouds sped eastward, turning leaden as they went. By the time I had reached the depot, a fifteen minute walk, all blue faded away. The sun faded in the west, until even the upper clouds had only a faint rosy edge in places, and the white dimmed to gray, and then to dusk. From the first yellow glow in the sky to dusk took only twenty minutes.

In the Beginning

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a book of stories for liberal religious kids. Just for fun, I thought I’d post a draft of one of the stories on this blog. Obviously, this story comes from the book of Genesis, up to chapter 2 verse 4 (remember that there are two stories of the creation of humanity in Genesis, and I have only included one of those stories here).

*****

In the Beginning

Copyright (c) 2005 Dan Harper

Once upon a time that had no time, a being lived in a place that wasn’t really a place. This being did have a name, but the being’s real name cannot be spoken. Because of this, it’s easiest to call the being “God.”

Before time began, before you could even say there was a before, or an after, God looked around, and saw that nothing had any shape or form to it. All around God, it was just nothingness. Or perhaps there was water, and there was wind, and the wind was God. Either that, or God seemed like wind and all around God was everything that ever was, or is, or could be, but it was all mixed up together as if it were a vast ocean.

God decided to separate out light from darkness, and when God did that, time began. God looked at the light and the darkness, decided that they were good. God called the darkness “Night,” and the light “Day,” which meant there now was evening and morning, and that was the first day of all time. But no one knows how long that first day lasted, for in the beginning time did not flow in the same way it does now.

Eventually God wanted more than just light and darkness, night and day. God separated out some of the water, and made it into a big dome that arched above the rest of the water. God called the big dome the “Sky.” Time moved on, evening came, morning came, and another day passed. But no one knows how long that second day lasted.

When it was time for another day to begin, God gathered together the water that lay under the sky, which meant there was room for dry land to come forth. God called the dry land “Earth.” God asked the dry land to grow plants, and plants grew. All kinds of plants, small plants with seeds, and plants that have spores instead of seeds, and trees, and every kind of plant grew up out of the Earth. It must have taken a long time for all the plants to grow. But time still hadn’t settled down into a regular rhythm yet. Evening came, and morning came, but how long did they last? The plants grew and grew, for a long, long time, but it only took a day. That was the third day.

On the fourth day, lights appeared in the dome of the sky, a big bright light, a smaller dimmer light, and lots and lots of tiny little lights. God put all the lights in the dome of the sky. The big, bright light came out in the day. When evening came, the smaller, lesser light came out, and so did all the stars. These lights in the sky lit up the earth, and helped to separate out light from darkness because now there could be days and nights, and seasons, and years. God looked at everything, and felt that everything was good. No one knows how long that fourth day took, but at last it was done.

The next morning, which was the fifth day, living creatures started to live in the waters, and birds started to live in the skies. God created every kind of animal that lives in the water, and every kind of winged creature that flies in the sky. God told them that they could have babies on their own. God told the sea creatures to fill up the waters, and the birds to settle down on earth. It took one day to create all these creatures, but no one knows how long that fifth day lasted. For all we know, the fifth day and night lasted so long we would call it a million years.

On the sixth day, God decided that the land needed more creatures, so God told the earth to bring forth animals. God made all kinds of animals, from mosquitoes to tigers. God liked all the animals.

God made human beings, too. We human beings say that God made us look just like God, that women and men were created to be the exact image of God. Just like the animals, God told the human beings that they could have babies on their own. And God said to the first human beings, “Because I made you in my image, you are responsible for all the creatures in the sea, and all the creatures who live on land. Rule over them wisely.”

After that, God told all the animals, and the human beings, that they could eat the plants that had come forth from the earth. “Everything that has the breath of life,” said God, “shall eat plants for food.” That was the end of the sixth day. It must have been a very long day, but once again no one knows just how long that day lasted.

At last, God felt that everything was finished. Now there was light and darkness; and the dome of the sky; and the oceans and earth with green plants; and sun and moon and stars; and creatures of the water and of the air; and creatures who lived on dry land including human beings.

But not quite everything was finished. On the seventh day, God made a different kind of day. God blessed this seventh day and rested, and God admired light and dark and day and night, the sky and the water, the plants growing on dry land, the sun and the moon and the stars, all the creatures in the water and all the birds in the air, the animals and the human beings. Some people say that God liked everything existed, but there needed to be a reason for everything to exist, and that was why God made the seventh day.

Finally, on that day of rest, God felt everything was finished.

Finished

Andy Skurka hiked 7,700 miles across the country, finishing last Sunday.

I’ve been following his trip logs since February, when he was at the halfway point of his trip. I find it a tremendously exciting story — that someone could hike close to eight thousand miles across North America in just under a year, crossing the midwest in the middle of winter. It’s just an amazing thing to do — reads like a real pilgrimage — somehow very life-affirming.

Moving, part two

All the books are packed — finally — fifty-five 12x12x12″ boxes. Maybe too many books.

At this point, nearly everything is packed except the things that are fragile and difficult to pack: framed pictures, dishes, tchotchkes. But we don’t have much of any of those things, so it should go quickly.

Right now, the plan is to get everything packed except what’s going in the car with me, so I can have a week to go into Chicago, and work on a couple of writing projects. The sooner I get everything packed, the sooner I get to start that free time — so back to packing!

Is that why…

Went off to Whole Foods in Wheaton tonight to do a little shopping. We got in the habit of going late in the day, because traffic is light and there aren’t any lines in the store.

Next door to Whole Foods is Borders, and needless to say it has become a ritual to go to Borders for a few minutes. It was nine o’clock, and Borders was packed. And wait-a-minute, there’s all these kids…. Then I finally notice the signs: Harry Potter book release party. Of course! –today’s the day.

It was a pretty cool scene. Lots of people in costume. Kids standing around talking about the books. Palpable excitement. What I liked best was all the high-school-aged kids who were there. They have grown up on Harry Potter, and I guess he’s still cool enough, even into high school, to wait in line for the sixth book. And yeah, there were quite a few adults there, too. Too many to be all parents, or people who just happened into the store. It was the adults who looked a little embarrassed about being there.

Why be embarrassed? The Harry Potter books are pretty good. What other book commands enough attention that people will stay up until midnight, book after book, to buy it the day it is released? Maybe I’d be waiting in line right now, except I still haven’t finished the fifth book (I’m a cheapskate, I wait for the paperback editions.)

Here’s to Harry Potter.

12 days of magic…

Though I don’t have time to experiment with online audio for the foreseeable future, while I was packing up some things for our move to Massachusetts I ran across the project that initially made me aware of what you could do with religion and audio.

A year ago, I was serving temporarily as minister of religious education at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, California. The facilites supervisor there was a fellow named Mark Johnson, a talented musician and visual artist, who had a degree in film studies (now you know why he was working as a faciltities supervisor — no money in the arts).

Mark was a Pentecostal, I a Unitarian Universalist, and our religions overlapped in three crucial areas — the importance of Spirit, integrating religion and the arts, and trying to get kids interested in our religious heritage. So one Sunday he recorded a chidlren’s story I did in the worship service, cleaned up the sound, and added a beat and sound effects to it. We put in a minimal amount of time — it took me a few hours to prepare the story but I would have had to do that anyway, and it took Mark about an hour and a half to produce the recording — but in spite of that the results were pretty good. Check out a compressed mp3 version of “12 days of magic” here. It’s the wrong season, but hey….

We talked idly about producing other stories from the Christian tradition, trying to produce something children and youth might actually listen to. But Mark had a new baby in his life, and I moved here to Geneva, Illinois, so we never got around to it.

But wouldn’t that be cool? I mean, podcasts of sermons are fine and good, but they’re kinda boring. The UUA’s “Drive Time” recordings are well-produced and fine for church geeks like me and boring for most people. But wouldn’t it be fun to do something with a little more… pizzazz?

Just throwing the idea out there, hoping someone picks up on it.