Stuck indoors

A half hour before I was going to walk home for lunch, it started to pour. When lunchtime rolled around, I pulled on my trench coat, jammed my hat low over my eyes, and put up my umbrella. The wind came whipping around the corners of the buildings downtown and pulled at my umbrella; swirling around buildings it blew the rain at me now from the north, now from the west, now from the east. My trousers got soaked from the bottom of the trench coat to my shoes.

On the walk back, I put on full rain gear: hat, slicker, rain pants. It was raining and blowing even harder, and rain blew up my sleeves and into my face. I got back in the office and stripped off the rain gear. My shoes were soaked, so all afternoon I walked around the office in sock feet.

By sunset, the rain had stopped, but by then it was too late to take a walk. There are days when I just can’t get outside. I’ve had other jobs where it didn’t matter so much if I got soaking wet. When I worked for the carpenter, we had to be outside in all kinds of weather, and no one cared if we got wet. But ministers aren’t supposed to walk around the church in sock feet.

Working outside in bad weather can be uncomfortable and even draining, but it has advantages over being trapped inside — trapped by the clothes you wear and the conventions you have to follow. Not that I approve of “casual Friday,” where corporations allow their employees to come to work without a tie, or wearing sneakers. But for me as a minister, one barrier to living out ecological theology is this insistence in our society that we stay indoors; and this insistence is enforced in many subtle ways.

Tomorrow is supposed to be pleasant: temperatures unseasonably warm, windy but nice and sunny. My work will keep me stuck indoors most of the daylight hours. I love my job, but ecotheology leaves me vaguely troubled by the insistence that mine is an indoors job.

“UU Voice” now online

The UU Voice, long a journal of independent opinion within Unitarian Universalism, is finally online. The Voice is sometimes cranky, sometimes inspirational, always independent of denominational headquarters. The article on the front page of the winter, 2005, issue, for example, suggests that we Unitarian Universalists should be trying to start storefront churches and “house churches” — and the article is, by turns, cranky, inspirational, and independent of the generally stated position at denominational headquarters.

Of course, what the Voice really needs to do is find someone to run a blog for them….

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.