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Carpe diem. Que sera, sera. There’s no time like the present. You can’t turn back time.  Learn from yesterday, live today, hope for tomorrow. Time marches on. All the lyrics to this hymn.

Welcome, my friends, to the Henry Blake Cliché Festival (A M*A*S*H reference? Joe Cleveland’s right – I am old) … er, I mean, our hymn about time. John Andrew Storey sets to music (the McKee tune, which we last sang in Freedom Spans both East and West) the cliché of all clichés, that of time marching on and us living in the present.

I mean, it’s a fine sentiment, and useful at those moments when we must haul out all the old wisdom about time marching on; I imagine this would be useful after a significant hardship, or at the New Year, or in services about the eternal Now.

The ceaseless flow of endless time no one can check or stay;
we’ll view the past with no regret, nor future with dismay.

The present slips into the past, and dreamlike melts away;
the breaking of tomorrow’s dawn begins a new today.

The past and future ever meet in the eternal now:
to make each day a thing complete shall be our New Year vow.

But it surely is a bit of a cliché.

Not saying I won’t use it, but only if it truly serves the service.

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On December 9th, this tune first appeared, and I suggested that “later in the hymnal, we sing the usual words.” Well, that ‘later’ is today, and while the first three words are the same as the usual words, that is where ‘usual’ ends. And so I stand here in my wrongness being wrong.

And thank all that is holy that I am.

You see, the original words – from a Dutch hymn written in the 1600s, when they were fighting for their independence from the Spanish – are quite different:

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.

The original is a song of liberation, and gets tagged onto Thanksgiving only around World War I, as it appears in American hymnals only around 1903. The lyrics continue, by the way, in the same “God is on our side in this conflict” vein. Which makes its association with the Thanksgiving holiday even more awful. ::::shudder::::

So much for the usual song with the usual words.

Thankfully, two modern-day Unitarian Universalists, Dorothy Caiger Senghas and Rev. Robert Sengas, wrote new lyrics, for a Thanksgiving Sunday.

We gather together in joyful thanksgiving,
acclaiming creation, whose bounty we share;
both sorrow and gladness we find now in our living,
we sing a hymn of praise to the life that we bear.

We gather together to join in the journey,
confirming, committing our passage to be
a true affirmation, in joy and tribulation,
when bound to human care and hope — then we are free.

Now this is a Thanksgiving hymn I can get behind. Sure, it’s in the Hope section, but it is definitely worth putting on the Thanksgiving list too. And if you really want to do it right, sing the first verse as your opening words and the last verse as your closing words, because they would frame a message of gratitude calling us together and calling us onwards to the work of our faith.

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Today, gentle readers, I offer you A Tale of Two Liturgical Moments. Because indeed, as our man Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

The best of times was when I learned an arrangement of this African American spiritual in my seminary gospel choir; the harmonies were rich, and a tag was added to give it musical interest. We sang this in a chapel service, accompanied by the Psalm from which it is inspired, and a homily from one of our African American students.

Now Psalm 119 is a very long lament to God for mercy. As our writer is seeking protection, so too are they trying to convince God that they are keeping true to the laws and commandments, to show they are worthy of God’s presence through the hardships. So it’s no wonder the enslaved Africans might have heard this psalm and these lines and wanted to ask for the same thing.

The homily talked about hardship in the face of racism, and the prayer that is Guide My Feet was directly connected to the work different groups of people have to do – people of color, to be sustained and keep resisting; whites to do the hard work of dismantling white supremacy from within. It was a powerful moment for me, and it forever changed how I understand this song.

Guide my feet while I run this race.
Guide my feet while I run this race.
Guide my feet while I run this race,
for I don’t want to run this race in vain! (race in vain!)

Hold my hand while I run this race.
Hold my hand while I run this race.
Hold my hand while I run this race,
for I don’t want to run this race in vain! (race in vain!)

Stand by me while I run this race.
Stand by me while I run this race.
Stand by me while I run this race,
for I don’t want to run this race in vain! (race in vain!)

Now the worst of times was recently, as SUUSI, when our morning minister offered a service that was part travelogue, part Odyssey (a review of a minister’s career and lessons learned), and all offensive. Everything that happened in the service used the word “walk” exclusively; first of all, it was a huge problem to use only walking as the means for following a path (our theme was “blessed is the path”) – but more, our intrepid speaker (an older white man) changed the words of an opening reading to include only “we walk this path together” and then had the nerve to change lyrics to songs from other traditions. His homily screamed “walk” to the seemingly intentional exclusion of any other word. By the time he got to the closing, he had chosen to change even THIS song to “guide my feet, while I walk this path.”

That was the moment I could take it no longer and walked out, fuming. Fuming for the excessive ableism, fuming for the lack of context on the songs from other cultures, and fuming for the incredible gall of the man to change these lyrics.

—

So the moral of the story is this, my friends: use songs like this with extreme care. Be really clear you know how to address the abelist language of “run this race.” Be clear that you can use other verses (especially those we don’t include in our hymnal but exist elsewhere), but be very careful to not change verses if it isn’t your song to change. And definitely offer context and explanation, and don’t use this as a joyful song. It’s a song of pleading and lament and a call for God’s guidance.

And in case you wonder if any of that’s true, I’ll leave you with Bernice Johnson Reagon’s version:

But really. Be careful.

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This hymn almost got ruined for me in 2009.

That spring, Saratoga Springs’ minister, Linda Hoddy, went on sabbatical, leaving a congregation well prepared to hold the fort down. As chair of the worship committee, I was also on the sabbatical team, and after a fall spent ensuring we had all our ducks in a row, our meetings were usually ten minutes of checking in on everything, then another half hour or so of general chatter.

Our longest meeting was the one about halfway through the sabbatical, when we all realized that while as a team the worship committee was doing a good job of attracting a wide variety of speakers and tending the scope of topics over the six-month period, we failed to track the week-to-week use of music, and we had been singing Gather the Spirit extremely frequently – easily two out of every three weeks. I know why it was chosen – it’s popular, it’s general in its scope, and – unless it’s played like a dirge – it’s a joy to sing.

But we were singing it a LOT. And it didn’t help that as we were gearing up for our first cluster-wide worship service, the obvious choice for the opening processional hymn was… Gather the Spirit. As worship coordinator for the service, I gulped, wondered if we could find another song, but realized that no, this was exactly the right hymn.

Back in Saratoga, we started waving speakers off this hymn, asking them to choose something else (and eventually offering a few other options that the congregation was familiar with and do the same kind of work). And as I stood at the stairs of the stage our choir and speakers processed onto in the cluster-wide service, I didn’t need any lyrics, because I realized I knew them all. Because we just. kept. singing. this. song.

I still know them by heart, partly because of that spring, but also because it really is a terrific song. And while some of UU songwriter Jim Scott’s pieces can be complex and tricky to sing, this one gets it right.

Gather the spirit, harvest the power.
Our sep’rate fires will kindle one flame.
Witness the mystery of this hour.
Our trials in this light appear all the same.

(Chorus)
Gather in peace, gather in thanks.
Gather in sympathy now and then.
Gather in hope, compassion and strength.
Gather to celebrate once again.

Gather the spirit of heart and mind.
Seeds for the sowing are laid in store.
Nurtured in love, and conscience refined,
with body and spirit united once more.

(Chorus)

Gather the spirit growing in all,
drawn by the moon and fed by the sun.
Winter to spring, and summer to fall,
the chorus of life resounding as one.

(Chorus)

This is a song of warm, open welcome.  Just don’t overuse it… and by all that is holy, do not play it as a dirge! It is meant to dance in a gentle waltz, ushering us in with gentleness and love.

And I am glad it didn’t get ruined for me.

—

Photo is of our first joint service in 2009, with members of the four congregations (Albany, Schenectady, Glens Falls, and Saratoga Springs) coming together for the first time to worship. We asked each congregation to bring their chalices, from which we lit a common chalice. Then St. Lawrence District Executive Tom Chulak (pictured) joined Tom Owen-Towle as our first speakers. The cluster has now expanded, and we continue to hold a service each year, featuring an outside speaker (past speakers have included Thandeka, Kim and Reggie Harris, and Scott Alexander). This year, our service will feature the amazing Glen Thomas Rideout – and I am privileged to be back as worship coordinator.

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I’m finding things a little hard this morning (9/11, Irma, the memories this song stirs), so I’ll let Michael Tino introduce today’s post:

“We confront the complex reality that something can be both insipid and profound simultaneously.”

You see, this song by Carolyn McDade can be awfully sticky-sweet, with its rolling 3/4 time often played too fast or too much like a beer barrel polka. And it seems both universally used and universally loathed. Friends Alex Haider-Winnett and Claire Curole were very clear the other day that they find the tune too boring and too cheery, and the whole “rose in the wintertime” thing either not at all special (because in California, where Alex lives, roses are just all over) or just wrong (because in Maine, where Claire lives, any rose you find in wintertime is the product of a dodgy floral industry).

A lot to dislike. For sure.

But I refuse to dismiss this one out of hand. Sorry, folks. More after the lyrics, which I encourage you to read, not sing:

Come, sing a song with me,
come, sing a song with me,
come, sing a song with me,
that I might know your mind.

(Chorus)
And I’ll bring you hope
when hope is hard to find,
and I’ll bring a song of love
and a rose in the wintertime.

Come, dream a dream with me,
come, dream a dream with me,
come, dream a dream with me,
that I might know your mind.

(Chorus)

Come, walk in rain with me,
come, walk in rain with me,
come, walk in rain with me,
that I might know your mind.

(Chorus)

Come, share a rose with me,
come, share a rose with me,
come, share a rose with me,
that I might know your mind.

(Chorus)

Here’s why this song has meaning:

On December 17, 1984, my father died. I was barely 20, and made any  number of bad choices in how I dealt with his loss – including not really processing it as well as I maybe could have. But I always remembered how beautiful and meaningful it was that whoever designed the graveside service had us put roses on the casket – Mom, a red rose, and my siblings and I, white roses.

Fast forward to 2006. December 17 fell on a Sunday, so I signed up to bring flowers. I ordered an arrangement that included three white roses and a red rose, in honor of my father. The sermon was, not surprisingly, about hope, and this was the closing hymn.

The impact of which did not for a second occur to me until we started singing – not in a lively style, but in a more contemplative tempo and mode. The way we sang it gave us a little time to think about what we were singing. “I’ll bring a song of love, and a rose in the wintertime.”

Cue waterworks.

Because I started thinking about my father, not in terms of all the things I never got to do with him or know about him   which was my usual form or mourning for him, but about all the things I did get to experience and learn about him. I actually grieved for the man I knew, not that man that I wish I could have known. Singing this song, on that day, with that bouquet 10 feet away from me, allowed me to grieve again in a healthy way – and, although I didn’t know it at the time, helped make mourning my mother’s death a year later a little easier.

I can’t sing this song without thinking about my father, and about that experience.

Insipid as the song might be.

 

 

 

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First, I need to say a prayer for Key West, and really all of south Florida this morning. I have friends who are still on the island (mostly they are first responders, public works folk, or other government officials), and they are getting hit so very hard as I type. I’ve seen a few videos of storm surge waters in Bahama Village and trees down on Smathers Beach, and I am holding a fair amount of anxiety right now. And then I go  preach on the benefits of spiritual practice. (And actually, this is helping, this spiritual practice right here… because I had to stop, be still, and be present with myself and God for a few minutes.)

Anyway.

I keep coming back to a line written by Susan Frederick-Gray, and highlighted for me by an amazing service by Erika Hewitt: “No one is outside the circle of love.”

To be honest, it’s really changed my thinking about our principles and even our understanding of Unitarian Universalism’s history – that at every moment we have had the choice to expand the circle of love, or not, both theologically and ethically. I’m still pondering, but this aspiration that no one be outside the circle of love has captured my ministerial imagination.

And I think I just found one of my new anthems – this short, old hymn. The lyrics are by our old friend Sam Longfellow, set to the familiar Winchester New (the same tune is sung for As Tranquil Streams).

I mean, check out this lyric:

With joy we claim the growing light,
advancing thought, and widening view,
the larger freedom, clearer sight,
which from the old unfold the new.

With wider view, come loftier goal;
with fuller light, more good to see;
with freedom, truer self-control;
with knowledge, deeper reverence be.

Our man Sam is calling for us draw the circles ever wider, the circles of vision, and freedom, and knowledge, and goodness.

Not bad, Sam. I didn’t know this one existed, really, so it gets a Hidden Gem tag from me.

And when I am finally ready to preach on this, I have one of our hymns.

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It is always a relief to me to turn to a new section of the hymnal; I think it’s because of the frankly unnatural nature of this practice. i was getting worn out by the Insight and Wisdom section, feeling as though I had little of either by the time it all ended.

But now we are in a section called Hope.

Which seems a bit out of step (which means it’s perfect for this practice). It’s a hard day to have hope, when the Western Hemisphere is bearing the wrath of Mother Nature, and there are so many hard things to bear from the current administration.

But hope it is, and so hope it shall have to be.

And as hope hymns go, this one’s pretty decent. Lyrics by Alicia Alexander, and set to Was Gott Thut (the same tune as When Mary Through the Garden Went (Was Gott Thut), we have a good reminder of where to find hope and why it matters:

A promise through the ages rings,
that always, always, something sings.
Not just in May, in finch-filled bower,
but in December’s coldest hour,
a note of hope sustains us all.

A life is made of many things:
bright stars, bleak years, and broken rings.
Can it be true that through all things,
there always, always something sings?
The universal song of life.

Entombed within our deep despair,
our pain seems more than we can bear;
but days shall pass, and nature knows
that deep between the winter snow
a rose lies curled and hums its song.

For something always, always sings.
This is the message Easter brings:
from deep despair and perished things
a green shoot always, always springs,
and something always, always sings.

Almost like it’s a good wrap up for an Easter service.

I say “almost” because as Michael Tino and I talked about in a Hymn by Hymn Extra, Easter is not Spring – and this hymn makes a direct connection.

Yet putting Easter in a larger context, and drawing us into the entombment metaphor here, does offer some comfort, at least to me. I would still use this as a closing song at Easters when hope is he central theme.

Truth is, despite the Easter/Spring thing (which probably guys Michael more than it does me), I rather like this one.

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I am very tired of the humanist/theist debate. It seems to me that there are so many bigger, more important things for us to wrestle with, especially since – at least in Unitarian Universalist circles – even our most divergent theologies support the principles where we all meet.

And I get that it’s harder to be a religious humanist in America than it is to be a liberal theist. I know that the process of exploration and discovery of a personal non-theistic theology means (as wrestling with our theologies always does) thinking about language, finding entry points, seeking new ways of capturing spiritual connection.

And… I’d like to think that most of our religious professionals take care to ensure there is something for everyone in a service, or over the span of a church year, certainly. Sure, a service about the ten commandments will be heavy on the god language, but a service on awe and wonder in scientific discovery will likely ignore god language entirely. And many social justice sermons are very humanist, because that’s what social justice is: concern and care for humans.

It seems to me we waste a lot of time arguing about whether there is a god or not, when that’s a personal theology anyway, and what matters is how we treat each other and how we answer the call of love.

This soapbox, by the way, is brought to you by the crown jewel of the debate – a poem by William Herbert Carruth, set to an old New England melody:

A firemist and a planet, a crystal and a cell,
a starfish and a saurian, and caves where ancients dwelt;
the sense of law and beauty, a face turned from the sod —
some call it evolution, and others call it God.

Haze on the far horizon, the infinite tender sky,
the ripe, rich tints of cornfields, and wild geese sailing high;
and over high and lowland, the charm of goldenrod —
some people call it autumn, and others call it God.

Like tides on crescent seabeach, when moon’s so new and thin,
into our hearts high yearnings come welling, surging in,
come from the mystic ocean whose rim no foot has trod —
some people call it longing, and others call it God.

A sentry lone and frozen, a mother starved for her brood,
and Socrates’ dread hemlock, and Jesus on the rood;
and millions, who, though nameless, the straight, hard pathway trod —
some call it consecration, and others call it God.

Carruth’s point – which often gets lost – is that we all have different ways of understanding the interdependent web of all existence, and our reactions to it. And none is better or worse – just different perspectives.

Now the truth is, I’m not fond of this hymn. I find it scans awkwardly and has some outmoded language. But it makes the point that Down the Ages We Have Trod also makes – that there are many paths, many theologies, many ways to understand Mystery, so get over it.

My calling myself a theist means that I use theistic language to describe what others would use non-theistic language to describe – in terms of mystery, wonder, connection, and sense of the expansive infinite All. But in all the ways that I understand this world and our call in it, I am most assuredly a humanist – as is probably every UU. So I really don’t see the need for the debate.

I will leave you with this beloved poem, “That Which Holds All” by the late Nancy Shaffer:

Because she wanted everyone to feel included
in her prayer,
she said right at the beginning
several names for the Holy:
Spirit , she said, Holy One, Mystery, God.

But then thinking these weren’t enough ways of addressing
that which cannot fully be addressed, she added
particularities, saying,

Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love,
Ancient Holy One, Mystery We Will Not Ever Fully Know,
Gracious God, and also Spirit of this Earth,
God of Sarah, Gaia, Thou.

And then, tongue loosened, she fell to naming
superlatives as well: Most Creative One,
Greatest Source, Closest Hope –
even though superlatives for the Sacred seemed to her
probably redundant, but then she couldn’t stop:

One who Made the Stars, she said, although she knew
technically a number of those present didn’t believe
the stars had been made by anyone or thing
but just luckily happened.
One Who Is an Entire Ocean of Compassion,
she said, and no one laughed.
That Which Has Been Present Since Before the Beginning,
she said, and the room was silent.

Then, although she hadn’t imagined it this way,
others began to offer names.
Peace, said one.
One My Mother Knew, said another.
Ancestor, said a third.
Wind.
Rain.
Breath, said one near the back.
Refuge.
That Which Holds All.
A child said, Water.
Someone said, Kuan Yin.

Then: Womb.
Witness.
Great Kindness.
Great Eagle.
Eternal Stillness.

And then, there wasn’t any need to say the things
she’d thought would be important to say,
and everyone sat hushed, until someone said

Amen.

Image courtesy of NASA.

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I feel like an apostate for saying this, but I do not care for this hymn.

Now let me be clear: I like the tune (an initially tricky Swiss folk tune called Solothurn). And I like Wendell Berry’s poetry. And I don’t even mind the two together – they seem to fit well, with some musical phrasing that matches the poetic meter beautifully.

I think my problem is this – and it’s something I’ve encountered before in this practice but didn’t quite have words for until this moment (which is nearly an hour coming…this has been a hard write today): I want hymns to move the plot, not describe the scene. And I know that’s unreasonable, since every good musical has at least one descriptive song, usually in the beginning (“Fugue for Tin Horns” from Guys and Dolls, “Another Openin’, Another Show” from Kiss Me Kate, “Six Months” from Damn Yankees); of course, even those set up the situation or the setting (New York gamblers, theater people, baseball fanatics). This hymn doesn’t even do that. It just describes a particular part of the interdependent web.

It does describe that part beautifully, of course:

O slowly, slowly, they return
to some small woodland let alone:
great trees outspreading and upright,
apostles of the living light.

As patient stars they build in air
tier after tier a timbered choir,
stout beams upholding weightless grace
of song, a blessing on this place.

They stand in waiting all around,
uprisings of their native ground,
downcomings of the distant light;
they are the advent they await.

Receiving sun and giving shade,
their life’s a benefaction made,
and is a benediction said o’er
all the living and the dead.

In fall their brightened leaves, released,
fly down the wind, and we are pleased
to walk in radiance, amazed.
O light come down to earth, be praised.

I just don’t know why it’s a hymn. And I don’t know why it’s in the Insight and Wisdom section, and not the World of Nature section. And again, I don’t know that a congregation singing this will get the grace of Berry’s poetry unless they spend time with it. And I don’t know where or when I’d use it as a hymn. As a reading, absolutely. But this doesn’t do the work of a hymn, in my opinion.

Perhaps it’s a failing of imagination on my part. But I am not feeling it.

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I am in a Lichtenstein painting: “Oh no! I forgot to read George Santayana!”

And I’m a bit embarrassed, largely because he wrote about spirituality and aesthetics, and this is the area of my ministry and while God knows I have read a ton of literature in my area of ministry, how is it I’ve never read – or frankly, been directed to read – Santayana. What’s crazy is that I know more about Orlando Gibbons, the 16th century English composer of our tune, than I do about 20th century Spanish philosopher Santayana.

Sometimes this spiritual practice of mine is an unexpected wake up call.

What it isn’t, today, is a love of this particular hymn. Now hear me out: I love the tune (Song 1) – partly because it’s Gibbons and partly because it’s another Vaughan Williams arrangement. And I love the lyrics. And I don’t even mind them together (their mood matches). What I don’t love is the same thing I didn’t love about our setting of Frost’s poem in O Give Us Pleasure in the Flowers Today: I want time to savor and explore and think deeply about the words, not rush through them because of the demands of the music. Seriously, take a few moments to delight in these words:

O world, thou choosest not the better part!
It is not wisdom to be only wise,
and on the inward vision close the eyes,
but it is wisdom to believe the heart.
To trust the soul’s invincible surmise
is all of science and our only art.

Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine
that lights the pathway but one step ahead
across a void of mystery and dread.
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine
by which alone the mortal heart is led
unto the thinking of the thought divine.

And this leads me to wonder whether this should have been included instead as a reading – would it be used more, or less? I honestly have never used it nor remember ever singing it, but I wish I’d been more aware of it before now – not just because I haven’t read enough Santayana, but because I would have used it in at least three different services.

Grateful, however, for this practice.

Now off to read some Santayana.