What I did with my weekend

Sacred Harp singing convention

The view from the bass section as a singer from Bremen, Germany, (alas, I didn’t catch her name) named Eva led well over a hundred singers at a Sacred Harp singing convention this past weekend.

What was it like singing with all those people, you ask? I’ll limit myself to the physiological response. With something over thirty singers in the bass section, I could feel my whole body vibrating to the lower notes. And since this is highly rhythmic music, we could also spend time talking about entrainment from an ethnomusicological perspective.

This, by the way, is why you might want to improve congregational singing so that it’s good, rhythmic, and loud — because when you do that, it feels really good.

William R. Jones writing collective forming

In this comment, Hasshan Batts writes:

“Practitioners Research and Scholarship Institute (PRASI) www.prasi.org is gathering a collective of individuals that have been influenced by Dr. Jones’ oppression theory for an upcoming writing project. If interested please email me at justequality@yahoo.com”

What I did on my vacation, pt. 2

Ms. M and Mr. O, old friends of ours, are adopting two girls. I’m supposed to make two shelf units for them by this weekend. So far, one is completed and ready for finishing. Here’s the completed unit (the fish-eye lens makes it look out of square, but it’s not):

DIY shelves

I’m supposed to have both shelf units completed by this weekend. I don’t think I’m going to make the deadline. The sad truth is that it’s been something like eighteen or nineteen years since I worked for the cabinetmaker, and I’ve gotten out of shape — I can’t put in an eight hour day in the shop any more.

(The details: 28 x 33 inches, 9-1/4 inches deep. Adjustable middle shelf. Solid pine construction throughout.)

What I did on vacation

Some people take trips when they go on vacation. Some people catch up on their sleep. I’m taking a week of vacation, and I decided to finish up the collection of Christmas carols that I’ve been working on for several years, and finally turn it into a book. Here it is:

YuletideSongAndCarolBook“The Yuletide Song and Carol Book” — This is a collection of four dozen Yuletide songs, in easy arrangements for SATB voices. Songs include familiar classics such as “Joy to the World,” lesser-known favorites like “Sussex Mummers Carol” and “Los Posadas,” familiar songs such as “Go Tell It on the Mountains” that are hard to find in SATB arrangements, and a few little-known gems such as William Billings’ “Shiloh.” The texts mostly come from older Unitarian, Universalist, American Ethical Union, and Quaker hymnals and songbooks, and will appeal to most religious liberals. Suitable for carolers, choirs, and informal groups that enjoy singing four-part harmony. 8-1/2×11, 100 pp., $9.99.

Now available through Lulu.com

(Soon to be available for distribution through Ingram, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

One definition

This is from Alfred North Whitehead’s The Aims of Education:

“A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.”

This strikes me as a pretty good definition of at least part of religious education.

We Unitarian Universalists are most likely to speak about duty in connection with our social justice work. However, we are also concerned about duty in terms of personal morality: whenever possible we aim to recognize that other beings are not mere means to our ends, but are ends in and of themselves. This means that we try to get beyond exploitation in our personal relationships; and beyond sexism, racism, and other destructive “isms”; and we try to honor and respect those who can’t stick up for themselves because they’re weaker than we are (e.g., children).

Many of us Unitarian Universalists have a hard time with the word “reverence.” But read over Whitehead’s definition carefully: the present moment holds within in itself eternity, and once we perceive this, we have the foundation of reverence. Notice that Whitehead is not making any claims about divinity, nor is he defining what existence he; he is talking about a kind of knowing. That’s the foundation of reverence: that you can know in the present moment in ways that open up all of time and space to you. Mathematicians and theologians would likely agree.

Going back to the original

In tomorrow’s service, we’re thinking about using a brief reading from Singing the Living Tradition, the current Unitarian Universalist hymnal, that goes like this: “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

In the hymnal, this quotation is attributed to Albert Schweitzer. So I decided to look it up: which of Schweitzer’s works did it come from? I found that this quotation sometimes appears online in a different form — which you would expect, since Schweitzer was not a native speaker of English and the quotation would have been translated from his German original — and the alternative version goes like this: “Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.”

It turns out the quotation comes from Schweitzer’s Aus meiner Kindheit und Jugendzeit (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1924). It is from a short essay titled “Influence” found in chapter five of the memoir. The complete short essay is richer and more interesting than the short quotation in the hymnal, and for the sake of reference I have included C. T. Campion’s standard 1924 translation of the passage at the end of this post.

I still don’t know who did the translation of the quotation that’s in the hymnal; it’s not from Campion’s translation; but at least I can confirm that Schweitzer wrote a German original of this quotation. And I can also say that I wish the compilers of the hymnal had included the next sentence from Schweitzer’s essay:— “If we had before us those who have thus been a blessing to us, and could tell them how it came about, they would be amazed to learn what passed over from their life into ours.”

Continue reading “Going back to the original”

How to feel comfortable, or not

Do you like your congregation because it feels so comfortable? Most of us do. We want to be able to go someplace each week where we can feel at home. But I came across the following statement by Bernice Johnson Reagon that makes me think maybe I shouldn’t want to feel so comfortable in my congregation:

“If you’re in a coalition and you feel comfortable it’s not a broad enough coalition.”

Pete Seeger: a brief appreciation

When my older sister and I were young, our parents used to play this one record that I liked to try to sing along to: “Pete Seeger at Carnegie Hall.” I loved all the songs on that album: “Little Boxes,” and “We Shall Overcome,” and “Guantanamera,” and “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.” I can still remember Pete Seeger’s spoken introduction to “If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus,” when he talks about the violent measures taken against civil rights protesters. I can remember trying to memorize the words to “Little Boxes,” and in the process learning how to be critical of the assumptions undergirding middle class suburban culture, which probably helped lay the intellectual groundwork for my studies of critical theory and Marxism about ten years later, when I was in college. I had already learned from my parents how to be critical of what I was taught in school, but listening to “What Did You Learn in School Today?” made that seem fun and mischievous and delightful, and a few years later when I started working with children the memory of that song gave me a standard by to judge my own efforts as an educator.

Pete Seeger’s greatest strength was his ability to sing for children and young people. He was a teacher as much as, or more than, a musician. When he sang, he taught about big concepts like justice and human rights and racism and social inequality — he taught all these big concepts in a way that a six year old could understand them. His infectious songs and style of singing ensured that the children and young people who heard him sing would remember the lessons he taught for a long, long time. Continue reading “Pete Seeger: a brief appreciation”

How to have sex like a UU?

E., a Quaker and one of my dearest friends, sent me a link to a really good post by Quaker blogger Kody Gabriel Hersh titled “Having Sex Like a Quaker.” In this post, Kody, a self-described “queer, trans, sex-positive, Christian, Quaker youth worker,” outlines some of the basic Quaker ethical and theological principles that should inform sexual ethics and morality:

“Equality. Nonviolence and peacebuilding. Care for the earth. Community. Integrity. The direct availability of God to all people. The presence of something ‘of God’ in every human soul. Listening. Waiting for guidance in our decision-making, and checking out important decisions with our community. Continuing revelation.”

Then Kody goes on to present his own personal “list of sexual of sexual commitments and values,” an evolving statement of personal sexual morality rooted in the above principles.

— So for those of us who are Unitarian Universalists, what would be on our equivalent list of ethical and theological principles that should inform our sexual morality? (And no, the “seven principles” are too wordy and vague, and not equivalent to Kody’s list.)

— Next, based on that, what would be your own personal “list of sexual commitments and values”?

I’ll give my own lists in a follow-up post.

California drought

Good photos of the ongoing Clifornia drought, and summary of long-range forecast possibilities, in a January 25 post at the California Weather Blog.

Here in San Mateo County, our drought level is classified as “extreme,” second highest of the five possible drought levels. The hills of the Coastal Range should be bright green right now, but instead they are dull gray-brown; needless to say, the fire danger is high. We haven’t had any significant rain in over a month, so the air is filled with fine particulate matter. And with a declared state-wide drought emergency, we’re all expecting mandatory water restrictions in the next few months.

On the plus side, we’ve had abnormally sunny and warm weather, with temperatures often in the seventies. while we need bad weather, at least we can enjoy the good weather while we’ve got it.