Blog reader Patty Rubin wrote a comment filled with ideas of how to improve congregational singing. Go read it — I know I will be stealing many of her ideas.
But, um, Patty — is it OK if we don’t sing “Spirit of Life”? I just don’t like that song any more. Or if I do use it, can I use Dwight’s alternate words?
My sister Abby the children’s librarian has been doing some amazing things with felt boards. She has put two posts on her blog about using felt board with Eric Hill’s fabulous picture book Where’s Spot? The first post has photos of some of the felt board creations which she has made — the second post includes a narrative account of how she used actually the felt board in a children’s story hour at her library.
Abby is really good at making and using felt board props. I have to admit that I’m still scared of using felt boards myself, but Abby has got me convinced that a felt board well-used can really add to the story.
This is the second in a two-part series on the ministers of Centre Church, New Bedford. Part One.
Rev. Jonathan Brown, of Naples, N.Y., was the second minister of Centre Church, from 1845-1848. Following his unsuccessful ministry, the congregation “voted not to employ any but Unitarian ministers.” (13) They then called Rev. Moses George Thomas as their next minister.
Moses George Thomas was born on January 19, 1805, in Sterling, Mass. He was graduated from Brown University in 1825, and from there went directly to the divinity school at Harvard. (14) While he was still a student at Harvard Divinity School, the American Unitarian Association (AUA) hired him to travel through the Western frontier, to find out where the AUA might fruitful ground in which to plant new Unitarian churches. From 1826-1827, Thomas traveled some 4,000 miles on horseback, through Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, going as far west as St. Louis. (15)
Following his graduation from divinity school in 1828, Thomas served as minister of the Unitarian church in Concord, N.H., from 1829 to 1844. He was ordained there, and he was the first Unitarian minister settled in that city. He laid the cornerstone of the first Unitarian church building, and gave the sermon at the dedication of that building. In his early years at Concord, N.H., he became good friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had supplied the pulpit there before Thomas arrived. (16) While serving in Concord, N.H., Thomas officiated at Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first marriage, to Ellen Tucker. (17) The next year, 1830, Thomas himself was married, to Mary Jane Kent. Thomas’s time in Concord was later reported to be perhaps the happiest time of his life. (18)
Thomas was settled at the Broadway Church in South Boston in 1845, soon after the church was organized; here again, Thomas was the founding minister of the church. This congregation never owned its own building, but met in rented space; it seems to have dissolved by about 1853. (19)
After leaving the Broadway Church, Thomas came to New Bedford and was installed as the minister of Centre Church in 1848. Continue reading
Charles Morgridge was born in Litchfield, Maine, ion August 28, 1791. He attended Bowdoin College, from about 1817 to about 1820. (1) I have been able to find out nothing about his early life.
He entered Bowdoin College as a sophomore when he was 26 (i.e., probably in 1817), and probably was graduated in 1820 or 1821. At some point, he decided to become a minister in the Christian Connection (or Christian Connexion) denomination. He was ordained as a Christian Connection minister in Fairhaven on September 14, 1821; (2) and thereafter he led a peripatetic life, moving frequently from church to church.
While at Fairhaven, his salary as a minister was inadequate, so he also taught in the Fairhaven high school. After spending a year or two at the Fairhaven church, he went to serve for a year as a minister in Portsmouth, N. H., then perhaps two years as a minister in Eastport, Maine, and then he served at the Christian Connection Church on Summer Street in Boston. He left Boston and was settled at the North Christian Church (later called First Christian Church) in New Bedford from 1827. He left New Bedford in 1831 to become the minister of the Christian Connection church in Portland, Maine, at that time the largest church in that denomination, and stayed there until 1834. He returned to New Bedford to serve North Christian Church in New Bedford from 1834 to 1841. (3) Here’s a first-hand account by one Eleazar Sherman of what North Christian Church was like in 1834:
“This house will seat about fifteen hundred people. — In the time of the great reformation in 1834, this house was opened every day for more than three months, day and night; scores of weeping souls came out of their pews for prayer, and bowed before the Lord and the gazing multitude; and the prayers of God’s people prevailed; the angel of the everlasting covenant presented the humble prayer of the penitent before his Father; the angel of mercy descended and pat the cup of salvation to the lips of the dying sinner, and bade him drink the wine of the kingdom and live forever. Oh, what shouts of praise flowed from young converts, whose hearts were filled with hearenly love at this day of God’s power. Continue reading
OK, here’s a peace hymn that’s not too horrible.
Words: I found the words on Mudcat, made about three changes to make them gender-neutral, and smoothed out one or two rough transitions. I have been unable to track down who wrote these words, so I’m attributing them to “Unknown”; this is not great poetry, but it’s no worse than many of the hymns we sing on a regular basis.
Music: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” I’m providing sheet music for the hymn in two forms: (1) melody and words only, on a 5-1/2 by 8-1/2 inch sheet suitable for inserting into a typical order of service; and (2) full score for choir, SATB on a full 8-1/2 by 11 inch sheet.
After all my whining and complaining last week about why I hate peace songs, I now have a peace song that I quite like. This past Saturday, I went to a music conference and attended a workshop on children’s choirs led by Joanne Hammil, and she taught us a very simple, but effective, peace song. The words are a straightforward prayer or meditation: “May I be an instrument of peace.” The melody works as either a meditative chant to be sung over and over again, or as a round with up to eight voices. We sang it in our church choir on Monday, and I’ve been singing it at home, and I haven’t gotten sick of it yet. So here it is:
Sheet music for “May I Be an Instrument of Peace”
MIDI file of “May I Be an Instrument of Peace”
(Please remember that MIDI files sound dreadful, and you should not judge this song by that file — the MIDI file is just there if you want to learn the melody of the song.)
Bernard Madoff, the perpetrator of what has to be the biggest Ponzi-scheme fraud ever, is planning to plead guilty tomorrow to all criminal charges that have brought against him. Well, I’m no legal expert, so I have no idea what should be done to him from a legal standpoint. But I do feel competent to address some moral points that relate to Madoff’s guilty plea.
First, the scope of Madoff’s crime is so vast, with so many victims, extending over such a long time that I am not convinced that Madoff can be morally rehabilitated. Much of morality is a matter of habit, and the longer someone like Madoff indulges in the habit of immorality, the longer it will take to break that habit. Then too, perniciously evil habits like Madoff’s, which are grounded in simple greed (not desperation), and which are made in full knowledge that they are wrong, are habits that will be much harder to break. Because Madoff has become habituated to crime and habituated to enjoying the fruits of his crime, because he has engaged in his crimes for so long now, I doubt he can ever be trusted to live a moral life on his own.
Second, because Madoff can never be trusted to live on his own again, outside of prison, then he will be unable to make restitution to anyone whose money he stole. Madoff’s crime is one where restitution would make a difference in the lives of the victims (at least, in the lives of the majority of his victims who did not commit suicide). But we can’t ever trust him with any money-making scheme ever again — at least, we can’t trust him to earn another 65 billion dollars to pay his victims back.
The most we could hope for is an apology, but the chances of Madoff making any meaningful apology approach zero. Some people will take comfort in believing that Madoff will suffer some kind of torment and torture after death, but even if I believed in such punishment after death, I would not call that a satisfactory resolution to Madoff’s moral violations. Thus, I hold no hope for rehabilitation, restitution, apology, or punishment after death.
Unfortunately, this is one of those moral situations for which there is no satisfactory resolution. Fortunately, my religious faith does not expect nice neat satisfactory resolution of every moral violation. From my religious frame of reference the best moral response to Madoff’s evil actions is — not to dwell on rehabilitation, restitution, apology, or punishment — but to strengthen the social moral systems that help prevent such actions: — speak out against greed; refuse to let anyone believe that we deserve something for nothing; tell your children why Madoff is evil.
Maggi Peirce gave a talk today at the church about how she and some others started a folk music coffee house in New Bedford in 1967. They had programming every Friday and Saturday evening, to provide a safe place for teenagers during that era of youth unrest. After starting off with a bang in May, 1967, they began having increasing difficulty finding adult volunteers, until things reached a crisis point in July. Here’s how Maggi told the story this afternoon:
“Every time that I would ask for people to help, they sort of faded like snow off a ditch. And then there was one famous night where I had to take care of Friday night. And I turned up, and wonderful Joe Cardoza. We loved Joe Cardoza. He always did the door. He was our doorkeeper, and he was from Pilgrim Church [the UCC church here in New Bedford]. The salt of the earth! And there was another woman there called Florrie; and then Ellen; they worked in the kitchen.
“And when this happened, I arrived on the Friday, but nobody else did. Joe was on the door. And there wasn’t even any coffee that night. And only four kids came. And one of them was P—— and he was from Fairhaven. And he said to me — he had a guitar with him; he didn’t play very well [laughter] — and he said, ‘Is nothing happening tonight?’
“And I said, ‘There is always something happening at Tryworks.’
“And he looked at me, and he said, ‘You know, Maggi, this is sort of typical of New Bedford. Everything starts with a big article in the newspaper, and a big hoopla.’ He said, ‘Remember that first night in May, when we opened?’ And this was about July [1967]. He said, ‘Everybody starts with a terrific hope, and everybody’s going to help, and then it all fizzles out within six weeks.’
“And I said, ‘P——, I promise you. Tryworks will not fizzle out in six weeks.’ ”
Well, to make a long story short, Maggi kept that promise. Tryworks coffee house did not fizzle out in six weeks. Maggi became the first director of Tryworks coffeehouse and ran it for twenty years. After she stepped down, it continued for another fifteen years, and when it finally closed for good in 2003 it was the longest-running folk music coffee house in the United States. More importantly, in those thirty-five years Tryworks made a huge impact on the lives of hundreds of young people.
I guess the moral of the story is this: If only four kids show up for your youth program, don’t give up.
When I went out to put garbage in the compost bin this afternoon, it was snowing: big fat fluffy white flakes blowing and swirling around our building.
Yesterday I heard my first Northern Cardinal of the year. And my car had the first bird droppings of the year splattered all over the hood, probably from the House Finch that was sitting up in the tree above the car and singing his heart out.