Threshold Choir

Today I went to a workshop led by singer and choir director Kate Munger of Threshold Choirs. These are small groups of singers that sing at the bedside of people who are dying. Kate Munger has amassed a repertoire of over 300 songs appropriate for Threshold Choirs, and she has developed a style of soft-voiced yet clear singing that is quite powerful.

The Thershold Choir Web site describes their mission this way: “The all-women Threshold Choirs honor the ancient tradition of singing at the bedsides of people who are struggling: some with living, some with dying. The voice, as the original human instrument, is a true and gracious vehicle for compassion and comfort. The choirs provide opportunities for women to share the sacred gifts of their voices at life’s thresholds.”

Yes, the original Threshold Choirs were for women only. You could argue this point, but I think Kate Munger is on to something when she limited her original choir to women, though: our culture does tend to prefer to have women in our sickrooms; and there may be something to the idea of having voices singing in one octave only. Indeed, Kate Munger said of the perhaps three thousand people singing in Threshold Choirs across the country today, she know of only four or five men. But some newer Threshold Choirs (including the one that formed a year ago in Littleton, Massachusetts) do include men, so this may change over time.

My interest in this workshop was two-fold: first, I wanted to know more about Threshold Choirs so I could see about helping one organize down here in southeastern Massachusetts; second, I had sung some of the songs Kate Munger has written and I wanted to learn more of her songs.

Only time will tell if we can get a Threshold Choir off the ground in this area; but I can tell you right now that Kate Munger taught us a dozen or so songs in today’s workshop, and I already know that I will be using most of them in worship services in the year to come. These are songs that anyone can sing, that are deeply spiritual and religious, and that move us towards positive change and transformation. Some of the songs were a little like Mimi Bornstein’s “Comfort Me,” one of the favorites in the new Unitarian Unviersalist hymnal supplement — like “I Will Be Lifted”…

I will be lifted.
I will be held.
I will be rocked.
I will be comforted.

I will be carried.
I will be cleansed.
I will be drenched.
I will be purified.

…a song with a simple, driving melody that’s easy to sing,with fabulous harmony parts that will please more advanced singers, and with a message of healing and transformation. And some of the songs are simply fun, like “The Elephant Song,” which seems silly if you just see the lyrics, but which is powerful to sing, and powerful to listen to.

In any case, I’m giving advance warning to whomever assembles the next Unitarian Universalist hymnal: some of these Threshold Choir songs had better be in there.

Just for reference, Threshold Choirs are not the only musicians reaching out to people who are dying: there’s The Music for Healing and Transition Program, a certification program for musicians “to provide live, therapeutic music at the beside”; in northern New England there’s Hallowell Singers, who are affiliated with Brattleboro Area Hospice.

Not monotheistic

April DeConick, a scholar specializing in early Christian texts, has this to say about the first two centuries of Christianity:

“Then there are all the polemics among late first and second century Christians about who is worshiping angels, who is asking angels for intercessory favors. Christians or Jews? Then we add to this all the polemics that developed in the late second and third centuries among the rabbis about the TWO POWERS heresy and how authentic Jews only worship YAHWEH. Then we find poor Arius caught in a ferocious battle over whether or not it is desirable to continue to call Jesus an angel and worship him as second in command.

I could go on and on. My point is this. Early Judaism and Christianity were not monotheistic religions, but were at best monolatrous (=worshiped one god but allowed for the existence of other gods). It was because of this that Christianity was able to be born out of Judaism as a Jewish expression of a new form of Yahwehism, and Gnosticism could become the fancy of Jewish intellectuals living in first-century Alexandria. This must mean that the program of some of the post-exilic priests to make Judaism a monotheistic religion DID NOT WORK, as in fact the wisdom literature and Sophia traditions prove in my opinion. This had to wait until the rabbis came along and created what many consider the basis for modern Judaism, and insisted that all forms of worship other than YAHWEH be banned. Whether or not the bishops and church theologians ever really made Christianity monotheistic depends on how well one thinks that the Nicaea decision and later the doctrine of the Trinity really worked.”

Link to post. The comments are definitely worth reading. DeConick also has a follow-up post.

I found this discussion interesting because the general principles can be applied to the history of the Unitarianism that originated in North America. As a child I learned that Unitarianism was all about monotheism, but historically that’s not true — it’s probably more accurate to call the early “Unitarians” here in New England “Arminians” — and in the 19th C., “Unitarian” theology was all over the map, with some “Unitarian” Transcendentalists heading off into various pantheisms, a few spiritualist “Unitarians” taking polytheistic positions, and some Western “Unitarians” headed into non-theistic positions. Presently, individuals in congregations which are the inheritors of this “Unitarian” tradition might hold theological positions that range from extremely polytheistic to radically non-theistic, with only a few genuine unitarians somewhere in the bunch. At this point, our “Unitarian” label is little more than a name, theologically speaking.

File under “Q”…

File this under “Q” for “Question Everything.”…

Now I’m a political naif, and I still don’t understand why a “red state” is red, while a “blue state” is blue. However, in newspapers I keep seeing maps showing that most of the states in the United States are “red states.” Therefore, since I live in a “blue state,” I must live in a political minority area, right?

The real answer to that question is — not really, or sort of. The “red states” do cover more area, but what counts in an election is population. Back in 2004 and again in 2006, for the national elections in those years, Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman of the University of Michigan created red-state-blue-state maps called cartograms, “in which the sizes of states have been rescaled according to their population.” They created several different cartograms absed on differing analyses of election data, and you can see their cartograms here.

Their cartograms go beyond the red-state-blue-state dichotomy, showing that the political divisions in the United States are not as clear cut as those red-state-blue-state maps you see in the newspapers. Obviously, showing a deeply divided nation makes for better news graphics, but it also makes for less accurate news graphics.

I guess the moral of the story is: Question Everything, especially in the news media.

[Via.]

Another obscure Unitarian poet

The Poets and Poetry of America, ed. Rufus Wilmot Griswold and published in 1855, includes four poems by the Unitarian Ephraim Peabody. While they’re generally forgettable poems, one of them probably arose from Peabody’s travels in the Midwest in the 1820s and 1830s, and so is of some historical interest:

RAFTING. [p.388]

As August night was shutting down,
   The first stars faintly glowed,
And deep and wide the river’s tide,
   Through the mountain gorges flowed
The woods swelled up from either side,
   The clear night-sky bent o’er,
And the gliding waters darkly gleamed,
   In the shadows of the shore.

A moving mass swept round the hills,
   In the midst a broad, bright flame;
And flitting forms passed to and fro
   Around it, as it came.
The raft-fire with its flying light,
   Fill’d the thin river haze;
And rock and tree and darkling cliff,
   Stooped forward in the blaze.

And while it floated down the stream,
   Yet nearer and more near,
A bugle blast on the still night air,
   Rose loftily and clear.
From cliff to cliff, from hill to hill,
   Through the ancient woods and wide,
The sound swelled on, and far away
   In their silent arches died.

   And ever and anon they sung,
      Yo, heave ho!
   And loud and long the echo rung,
      Yo, heave ho!

And now the tones burst sharp and fast,
   As if the heavens to climb;
Now their soft fall made musical,
   The waters ceaseless chime.
Then all was hushed, till might be heard
   The plashing of the oar;
Or the speech and laugh, half audible,
   Upon the silent shore.

We flung to them some words of cheer,
   And loud jests flung they back;
Good night! they cried, and drifted on,
   Upon their lonely track.
We watched them till a sudden bend
   Received them from our sight;
Yet still we heard the bugle blast
   In the stillness of the night.

   But soon its loud notes on the ear,
      Fell faint and low;
   And we ceased to hear the hearty cheer,
      Of Yo, heave ho!

Thus quickly did the river pass,
   Forth issuing from the dark —
A moment, lighting up the scene
   Drifted the phantom ark.
And thus our life. From the unknown,
   To the unknown, we sweep;
Like mariners who cross and hail
   Each other o’er the deep.
EPHRAIM PEABODY.

Sounds like something out of Mark Twain, until you get to the last stanza. Peabody was the Unitarian minister in Cincinnati from 1831 to 1838. In the introduction to Peabody’s poems, Griswold calls him “a western poet”:

“Mr. PEABODY’S writings, in prose and verse, are marked by a charming freshness, and some of his descriptions have a truthfulness and picturesqueness which can have been derived only from a loving study of nature. Several of his best poems were produced while he was in college, and others, as their subjects indicate, while he was residing or travelling in the valley of the Mississippi. Mr. GALLAGHER, in bis “Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West,” published in Cincinnati in 1841, claims him as a western writer, and quotes him largely. Few western poets have written so frequently or so well of western themes.”

From Cincinnati, Peabody came to the Unitarian church in New Bedford, and from here went to King’s Chapel in Boston — quite a change from his first frontier ministry.

“On slipp’ry rocks I see them stand…”

Tonight I drove up to Newton to sing with one of the Boston-area shope note singings. In New England shape note singing groups, anyone can call out the number of a hymn and stand up to lead it.

“Number 183,” someone called out, adding: “This one is dedicated to all the Wall Street investment bankers.”

People started chuckling as they turned to number 183 and saw the words which had been written by Isaac Watts back in 1719:

“Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I,
To mourn, and murmur and repine,
To see the wicked placed on high,
In pride and robes of honor shine.

“But oh, their end, their dreadful end,
Thy sanctuary taught me so,
On slipp’ry rocks I see them stand,
And fiery billows roll below.”

Universalist though I am, I chuckled too. For a moment. Until I realized that those Wall Street investment bankers have placed us all on slipp’ry rocks, financially speaking….

Be that as it may, we all sang the song with great gusto.

Hooray for Connecticut.

From the BBC Web site today, a story about “US state legalises gay marriage“:

“Connecticut’s Supreme Court has overturned a ban on same-sex marriages, making it the third US state to legalise such unions….

“The governor of Connecticut, Jodi Rell, a Republican, said she did not agree with the ruling but would uphold it…. The governor said she believed any attempt to contest the decision, either legislatively or by amending the state constitution, would fail.”

Hooray for Connecticut.

Unitarianism: theological and denominational boundaries in New Bedford

Earlier, I wrote about Centre Church in New Bedford. Here’s more about links between Christian Connection and Unitarian churches in New Bedford….

Referring to Duane Hurd’s History of Bristol County, I find that there were three Christian Connection churches in New Bedford when Centre Church was organized. North Christian Church (later called First Christian Church) was founded in 1807 by a group who were originally Baptists under the care of Elder Hix from Dartmouth. Then “in December, 1826, Elder Charles Morgridge, of Boston, was settled as minister…. During the fall of 1831, Mr. Morgridge resigned his pastoral charge….” and another minister took over. Then, “on the retirement of Mr. Lovell, Rev. Mr. Morgridge again renewed his connection with the church, and remained with it until the spring of 1841.” *

In 1837, while at North Christian Church, Charles Morgridge wrote treatise supporting unitarian theology, a book titled “The True Believer’s Defence: Against charges preferred by Trinitarians, for not believing in The Divinity of Christ, The Deity of Christ, The Trinity, etc.” Publishing information is listed on the title page as “New-Bedford: William Howe, 26 North Water Street. 1837.” (That means it was published just a block or two from our house, but I digress.) Here’s a sample of the prose style (yes, all the italics are in the original):

“SECTION V.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY NOT ASSERTED IN THE BIBLE.

“No passage of Scripture asserts that God is three.

“If it be asked what I intend to qualify by the numeral three, I answer, any thing which the reader pleases. There is no scripture which asserts that God is three persons, three agents, three beings, three Gods, three spirits, three subsistences, three modes, three offices, three attributes, three divinities, three infinite minds, three somewhats, three opposites, or three in any sense whatever. The truth of this has been admitted by every Trinitarian that ever wrote or preached on the subject. No sermon has ever yet been heard or seen, founded on a passage of scripture which asserts that God is three. Dr. Barrow, whose works are published in seven vols. 8 vo., has left us one discourse on the Trinity. But, unable to find any passage of scripture that asserts the doctrine, he took for his text, Set your affection on things above. — Col. iii. 2. He considered the three persons in the Godhead incomparably the most important of all the things above, on which we are to set our affections.”

This book is available online via Google books, if you want to read it yourself. It is also available in a reprint edition from BiblicalUnitarian.com.

We have to wonder why Morgridge only lasted less than two months as the minister at Centre Church. It appears that his unitarian theology would have been agreeable to a congregation which eventually decided to call “only Unitarian ministers” — so why did he leave?** We also have to wonder what First Congregational Society of New Bedford, which was then the name of the Unitarian church in town, thought about Morgridge and his book. Did Ephraim Peabody, then minister at the Unitarian church, hang out with Morgridge? The co-existence of Centre Church and First Congregational Society poses some interesting questions about denominational boundaries vs. theological boundaries.

* The other Christian churches in New Bedford were Middle Street Christian Church in downtown New Bedford, organized in 1828; South Christian Church in the South End, organized c. 1851; and Third Christian Church, organized 1826 and known as the African Christian Church until 1840 when it changed its name, located on Middle Street not far from the Middle Street Christian Church (it later became a Freewill Baptist Church, and went out of existence in 1859).

** After leaving North, or First, Christian Church in New Bedford, Morgridge was two months at Center Church; probably at First Christian Church in Fall River from 1847 to 1848; probably in Barnstable at the Congregational Church in the 1850s.