Monthly Archives: January 2006

Meditations

I’ve been working on a booklet containing prayers, meditations, graces, words for lighting a chalice, and affirmations, to send home with families that have children or teens at home. One challenge has been to come up with copyright-free materials that today’s Unitarian Universalist families are likely to use. Another challenge has been to come up with materials that will appeal to the wide range of theologies we have in the New Bedford church.

Most recently, I came up with some prayers based on Bible materials, and I thought I’d share some of these here. First, a recasting of the prayer attributed to Jesus (though scholars say it’s based on a much older Jewish prayer). Traditionalists will cringe, but I rewrote it because I realized that, having heard it every week in the Unitarian Universalist church of my teens, I no longer heard it.

God of love,
your name is goodness and holiness.
May your love be present in all the nations of earth,
just as I feel your love in my heart.
Grant us the food we need today,
grant all people the food they need today.
Forgive me when I fail, and
help me forgive those who fail me.
May I not be tempted by evil or wrong-doing —
may your love watch over me, and over us all.

–a traditional Jewish prayer, adapted by early Christian communities, and further adapted by Dan Harper

Next, a short prayer that uses phraseology from pseudo-Paul’s alleged second letter to the Christian community at Thessalonika. I found a version of this in the old hymnal We Sing of Life, by Vincent Silliman, where it is credited to A New Prayer Book, 1923. I adapted it further.

May I go forth into the world in peace,
and be of good courage,
and hold fast to what is good,
returning to no person evil for evil.

May I strengthen the fainthearted
and help the weak,
and be patient with all persons,
loving all living beings.

So may I rejoice in life,
and give thanks for that which is good.

— adapted from A New Prayer Book and 2 Thessalonians 5.14-18

Finally, I got this old chestnut from Rev. Helen Cohen, minister emerita of First Parish, Lexington, Mass. I traced it to the old children’s hymnal, Beacon Song and Service Book, but I believe it’s older than that. At the request of someone in this congregation, I tracked down the likely scripture references contained in this prayer.

May the truth that sets us free,
And the hope that never dies,
And the love that casts out fear
Be with us now
Until the dayspring breaks,
And the shadows flee away.

— adapted from the Christian and Hebrew scriptures (John 8.32, Romans, John 4.18, Song of Solomon 2.17)

I’m thinking these short prayers will be useful both for Unitarian Universalists who are Christian, and those who have rejected Christianity. I’d be interested to hear your reactions.

Hot jazz

Abe Lagrimas, ‘ukulele master plays with Akamai Brain Collective with Randy Wong on bass and Eric Lagrimas on guitar, and they serve up some hot jazz over on the Midnight ‘Ukulele Disco Web site. Check out their version of Spain. Abe does a nice solo version of Skylark. The band also does a tune called Tocada with more Spanish or flamenco influence. None of this sounds like stereotypical ‘ukulele music — but like the best of Hawai’ian jazz it combines diverse influences into a relaxed swinging whole.

Unfortunately, the cuts from his new solo album that are up on Abe’s Web site suffer from being overproduced. Let’s hope Abe does more of the kind of work you can hear on Midnight ‘Ukulele Disco.

(Thanks to blog Ukulelia for pointing the way.)

Where are you?

This blog’s map [link removed, map no longer active, sorry!!] shows that blog has readers from Alaska to Ireland. Since one of the themes of this blog is “sense of place,” click the link and show where your place is. (Sorry, the blog map does not allow imaginary places yet, although I’m working on it.)

Sunday coffee

The cold returned last night, and a raw damp wind. Snow showers at eight in the morning. Uniformly gray sky. As I walked to the church this morning the bank thermometer said 29 degrees. My glasses fogged up as soon as I got inside the damp church. My mood was damp and gray.

After the worship service, some of us were chatting in the Parish House over coffee when two men passed by whom I had not seen in the worship service, not seen before. This happens sometimes in an urban church. I introduced myself, partly challenging and partly welcoming: Hi, I’m Dan. The tall man, quiet and shy with stooped shoulders, said his name; the shorter man, bluff and hearty said his name. It turned out they were from the homeless shelter across the street, so I welcomed them and said, Now you know, I have to invite you to come to the worship service first next time. They nodded, asked what time it started, and that formality was out of the way. We chatted for a bit. They kind of wanted me to let them get out, but they were kind of glad to chat.

Walking home from the church the bank thermometer said 26 degrees, the wind now damp and bitter. I saw a man walking towards me with his face covered by a scarf, the way he was dressed he might have been homeless. I was just past where the Franciscan friars live; the friars leave their worship space open from early morning to late at night; perhaps this man was headed there. We don’t let everyone in, at any time; we do not have a resident community to supervise our building; on Sundays we have to worry about the children of our church community. But at least we let a couple of men take cups of coffee on Sunday morning. That’s maybe as much as we feel able to do, but it was enough to lighten my mood.

The War

Thursday evening, Upstairs Used Books off Union Street was open for AHA! Night. Among other books, I picked up a copy of The War, a memoir by Marguerite Duras. I love Duras’s writing but find her fiction hard to get through, so I thought I would try some of her non-fiction.

The War is a collection of diary excerpts, memoirs, memoirs thinly disguised as fiction, and fiction; all have to do with people associated with the French Resistance in 1945, before and just after the Allies liberated France from the Nazis.

Duras introduces the story “Albert of the Capitals” thus:

[This text] ought to have come straight after the the diary transcribed in The War, but I decided to leave a space in which the din of the war might die down.

Therese is me. The person who tortures the informer is me…. Me. I give you the torturer along with the rest of the texts. Learn to read them properly: they are sacred.

“Albert of the Capitals” opens this way:

It was two days since the first jeep, since the capture of the Kommandantur in the place de l’Opera. It was Sunday….

Someone says that there’s a man who was a German informer who used to work with the German police. Therese is waiting for news of her husband who was taken away by the Germans to a camp; she doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive. One of the leaders of the Resistance captures the informer, asks Therese to question him, asks two young men to help her. As members of the village watch, muttering “swine, traitor, swine,” the informer is told to strip naked and he is beaten until the blood flows, while Therese conducts an interrogation. They get little information that is of use. Therese wants to leave at first, then she wants him beaten, she wants to see him beaten, then she does not know how to feel.

Housekeeping

(1) I’ve added “ecological theology” as a post category, and also included it as one of the blog themes listed in the upper left corner.

(2) I’m continuing to transfer posts from the old blog over to this site, and have now finished up through April, 2005. (First mention of ecological theology on blog was April 22, 2005.

(3) More and more, I’m thinking that this blog is growing up to be a blog on ecological theology, and so as the first anniversary of the blog approaches a slight name change may be in the works….

Lizards and Einstein

I’ve been reading Down the River, by novelist and environmental writer Edward Abbey. In the essay titled “Watching the Birds: The Windhover,” Abbey makes what I take to be a theological statement:

The naming of things is a useful mnemonic device, enabling us to distinguish and utilize and remember what otherwise might remain an undifferentiated sensory blur, but I don’t think names tell us much of character, essence, meaning.

Apply that to the old book of Genesis: God lets the first humans name things, not because God thinks humans are specially suited to naming things, but simply so humans can function in the world without things and events turning into a sensory blur. Puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it? Humans are not quite so remarkably unique as it seems at first. Not even Einstein:

Einstein thought that the most mysterious aspect of the universe (if it is, indeed, a uni-verse, not a pluri-verse) is what he called its “comprehensibility.” Being primarily a mathematician and only secondarily a violinist, Einstein saw the world as comprehensible because so many of its properties and so much of its behavior can be described through mathematical formulas. The atomic bomb and Hiroshima make a convincing argument for his point of view…

Take that, Einstein — you’re not quite the perfect scientist-hero that some say you are, and your (human) view of the world was limited….

The lizard sunning itself on a stone would no doubt tell us that time, space, sun, and earth exist to serve the lizard’s interests; the lizard, too, must see the world as perfectly comprehensible, reducible to a rational formula. Relative to the context, the lizard’s metaphysical system seems as complete as Einstein’s.

Neither science nor traditional religion offers a convincing explanation for the world as it truly is; both are ultimately too narrow. As is Edward Abbey when you come down to it– narrow, I mean — but at least he tells you so.

Memory

At one time, I went to this one Dunkin Donuts just about every week. It was along Route 62 in Bedford, a stretch of winding state highway in suburban Boston choked by strip malls. From the Dunkins, you could see a faceless chain motel down the road one way, a fair sized shopping plaza across the road, another chain motel next to the shopping plaza, some smaller building with professional offices, a car wash. My sister had once been a chambermaid in one of the motels. In winter, when the trees had no leaves, you could glimpse the backs of small anonymous suburban houses. I don’t ever remember seeing any people around those houses.

I used to take my laundry to the laundromat in the shopping plaza. One end of the plaza was occupied by a high-tech company, made into offices and R&D space. On the other side of the laundromat sat a crummy Chinese restaurant, and on the other side of that sat a couple of big-box discount stores. I had no interest in the discount stores and the only reason to go into the Chinese restaurant was to sit at the bar and have one of those huge bright potent drinks with an umbrella, but I never felt the urge to get drunk while waiting for laundry. So I’d walk across Route 62 to the Dunkins.

This was always on Sunday night, because that’s when I liked to do my laundry. I’d sit there at the counter, nursing a decaf coffee, and maybe eating a chocolate honey-glazed doughnut. The waitress wasn’t ever talkative, and I’d usually be the only customer, so it was either read or stare across Route 62 at the shopping plaza. I’d sit there reading a novel, I was trying to read one great novel a week.

One Sunday, there were actually two other guys sitting at the counter when I walked in. They were staying at one of the motels while doing business at one of the high-tech firms nearby.We wound up talking. Actually, I wound up talking to one of the guys, because the other guy spoke nothing but Turkish.

“He really likes Dunkins coffee,” said the American guy. “Coffee is a big deal in Turkey. They grind it really fine and leave the grounds in the bottom, it’s like drinking sludge at the bottom of the cup. Mostly he hasn’t liked the coffee here in America. But he loves Dunkins coffee. We’ve been over here the past two nights.” He turned to the Turkish guy and said something. The Turkish grinned, reached under his stool, and showed me a pound of Dunkin’s coffee. The American guy said, “He likes it so much, he’s buying some to take back to Turkey with him.” After that, they went back to talking in Turkish.

That was the only conversation I ever had in that Dunkin Donuts. Not long after that, I was in the laundromat and some guy walked in, dumped a whole bunch of clothes into a washing machine, and then took off the rest of his clothes except his boxer shorts and stuffed all them into the washing machine, too. We were the only two people there at the time, which felt a little funny. About a month later, I moved into a rental share house with a washing machine and dryer, so I stopped going to the laundromat, and stopped going to Dunkins.

For years after that, I’d occasionally drive past that Dunkins. Somehow that Dunkins managed to encapsulate something about that year of my life and I’d feel this momentary twinge. Vague memories would drift barely up into consciousness as I drove by, but they’d disappear and I’d be quickly past it without ever stopping to go in again.

More on Theological BarCamp…

I ran into Chris Walton at a meeting today, and he wanted to know what the heck I was talking about in my post on porting BarCamp to religion. Obivously, creating a religious BarCamp isn’t as obvious to others as it is to me, so here’s a more explicit description:

It starts out with half a dozen people excited about creating new liberal religious theology, and excited about spreading that theology through new media like blogs and wikis and podcasts. These half dozen people plug into their social networks and get another dozen people who share this passion. A date is set, a Web site goes up, the words spreads through the blogosphere, people commit to showing up and their names are posted on the Web site. Everyone who attends will be both presenter and participant, and everyone who commits to attending is planning their presentation.

The actual event starts at (for example) eleven a.m. one Saturday. You walk into the site, and you see a whole bunch of blank schedules for the weekend. You write your presentation on the schedule. Since this event focusses on theology, five of the presentations are worship services (opening worship, vespers, evening worship, midnight worship, sunrise worship), times and places where the entire gathered community will embody theology together. You see other presentations: a book discussion, a scripture study, a workshop on embodied theology and dance, a workshop on blogging (bring your own computer), a workshop on producing podcasts, a panel discussion with a pagan and a Christian, an experiential outdoor workshop on ecological theology, several discussion groups on theological topics, a project to read aloud the entire Torah and record it, a group who will work on a liberal theology Wiki together, and so on.

Opening worship is led by a neo-pagan. You go straight from there into lunch, and sit at the table table where people discuss the theological aspects of eating (one is vegan, one’s keeping kosher, one is macrobiotic, one is a hunter who eats what she kills, etc.). The afternoon starts with a workshop on blogging, and you get into a discussion on how Cascading Style Sheets can carry a theological message. You drop on the group doing the Wiki, learn how to edit a Wiki article, and actually contribute a paragraph about liberal theology. You drop into the blogger’s room, which has a T1 line and Wifi, and you do a quick update of your blog. You wind up in the outdoor workshop on ecological theology walking a labyrinth.

Off to Vespers, which is a Taize style worship led by a humanist. Dinner — you signed up to help clean up, and get into this intense theological discussion with a humanist while operating the dishwasher. More workshops and discussions. You had promised yourself that you’d go to bed early, but find yourself at midnight worship, because it is being led by the workshop called “Emergent Liberal PoMo Church,” with music supplied by the “Music-and-Theology Geeks” workshop. Lot of candles, a meditative video assembled in FinalCut during a workshop on video theology, the homily spoken over a meditative hip-hop soundtrack the music geeks put together in GarageBand (both audio and video put up during worship on the event’s Web site), then a swaying moody chant one of the musicians wrote during the scripture reading workshop. Somehow, all the theology you talked about during the day gets totally embodied for you during this worship service, or maybe it’s lack of sleep.

Anyway, you have to get up for the sunrise communion worship led by this guy Scott, and then after breakfast (eaten in silence, as decided by the community the night before), you lead your workshop on [fill in the blank], which is attended by five lay leaders, four ministers, three seminarians, two random geeks, and a denominational staffer. You run to the blogger’s room to do another quickie post. The whole thing ends with the host church’s worship service, the sermon preached by one of the conference attendees. After lunch, you go home to sleep — and to put into practice in your own religious community all the theological insights you gained over the course of the 24 hour un-conference. ((Did someone ask about child care? Yup, the children’s program, run by this guy Dan Harper, did their own theological workshops.))

There you have it. Maybe it’s not exactly BarCamp the way the technogeeks know it. But it’s one person’s vision for what a theological, embodied, geeky un-conference could look like. Totally open source. Totally participatory. Very rich theologically. Totally energizing. And we could make it happen if we wanted to.