What happens when familiar stories of the Bible meet familiar Broadway tunes? We’ll look at some new and refreshing interpretations through the workhorses of musical theater.
Great for anyone seeking a new approach to the Bible
Worship service, Keynote address, or workshop
Online or in person
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Refresh your spirit and your soul! One, two, or three day retreats will be filled with creative worship, space to learn and make art, and art-full meditations.
Great for congregational retreats, chapter or cluster retreats, study groups, etc.
1-3 days
In person
Contact me for more information:
George Bernard Shaw once said, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” Together, we’ll explore what it means to live a life filled with art and tap into art’s power to lead us to truth, possibility, and compassion.
Great for introducing process theology and creativity
Worship service or Keynote address
Online or in person
Contact me for more information:
Unitarian Universalists are called to draw the circle of welcome ever wider, knowing (as UUA president Susan Frederick-Gray has said) “No one is outside the circle of love.” But how welcoming is our worship to people of color, LGBTQ folk, those with disabilities? Together, we will examine the presumptions of sameness our very Protestant worship makes and begin the work of expansiveness and inclusiveness in the precious hour we spend together each week.
Great for congregations who want to be more expansive and welcoming
Keynote or workshop
Online or in person
Contact me for more information:
It’s easy to get stuck doing the same things when it comes to our social justice work. Give your public witness a jump start by thinking creatively about art-full events and services. This two-hour workshop will get the creative juices flowing.
Great for congregations and social justice teams who want to be more creative
2-hour workshop
Online or in person
Contact me for more information:
An assessment of your physical space, with tips for better aesthetics, usability, and flow.
Great for ministers and worship teams
1-2 hours
In-person
Contact me for more information:
Using music, improv, storytelling, and visual arts, we will engage the congregation/leaders in shifting their narratives/work processes/stories of crisis and trauma. This may result in a congregational art project (a mosaic, mural, quilt, etc.), building art-focused covenant groups, or other solutions. The work begins with a two-session consultation with the minister to understand the underlying issues and to begin planning a solution. Solutions may be as short as a service and talkback or as involved as a multi-part creative project.
Great for congregations in need of a narrative/process shift
1-hour initial consultation; remaining to be determined based on scope
Online and in-person
Contact me for more information:
It’s rare to find a congregation that doesn’t love the arts, but it’s often those same art-loving congregations that have no meaningful art happening inside their walls or in their social justice work.
This workshop will help your congregation and your public witness come alive with visual art, performances, classes, and art-inspired justice work.
Great for congregations in need of an arts infusion
1-hour initial consultation, 2-hour exploration; remaining to be determined based on scope
Online and in-person
Contact me for more information:
Wow.
I have a service I love to do called “Holey, Holy, Wholly” about the myth of wholeness and the grace of brokenness as a truer path to healing. It is one of those deeply pastoral services that fulfills the call to ‘comfort the afflicted’ – because we can’t always just ‘afflict the comfortable.’ I have a few hymns I like to do with this service, but some of my choices are, sadly, not ideal – they fall into that category of ‘general hymns, good for any occasion’. In other words, our hymnals aren’t teeming with pastoral hymns.
Except, surprise surprise, this hymn bubbles up – because using the first line as the title is rather misleading. How many of us have flipped past it, thinking it’s another “yay, we’re together” hymn? I sure have.
But this hymn – much like Jeanne Gagne’s “In My Quiet Sorrow,” which we’ll get to in late November – speaks to the person who comes to church for solace that day, not for celebration. It gives voice to the need to be seen and held in all of our brokenness and heartache. It reminds us that this too is part of life, and it shouldn’t be hidden away but rather held in community.
Though gathered here to celebrate,
my spirit’s burning low;
instead of serving, now I wait,
the breath of worship’s not too late,
breathe, let the embers glow.There have been losses on the way;
a parent, partner, friend.
At times I need to grieve and say,
“I have enough to bear today,
be near and help me mend.”The stillness strips the masks away,
exposes lonely hearts;
self-pity must not have its way;
I’ll live my life from day to day,
and now the healing starts.
I hate that it took until now for me to find this hymn – set to a lovely tune by Fred Wooden, which we last sang in January when one of my cats went in for surgery to remove a malignant tumor from his intestine (he’s fine now; his only problems now are living with my other cat again, and hairballs).
This hymn has gotten inside me. I hadn’t expected to be so deeply moved this morning – but I suppose that’s the grace of this or any spiritual practice.
Wow.
If you’re looking for music to accompany a service about anti-intellectualism and fake news, this is your hymn.
Heck, even if you’re just looking for music to accompany a service about James Luther Adams’ five smooth stones, or William Ellery Channing’s Baltimore sermon, or our fourth principle, this is your hymn.
Knowledge, they say drives wonder from the world;
they say it still, though all the dust’s ablaze with marvels at their feet,
while Newton’s laws foretell that knowledge one day shall be song.We seem like children wandering by the shore,
gathering pebbles colored by the wave; while the great sea of truth,
from sky to sky stretches before us, boundless, unexplored.
Adapted from a longer piece by Arthur Noyes, this captures in two short verses the value we place on reason and awe of the natural world. And to be honest, nothing gets me thinking loftier thoughts about God than the latest photos from the Hubble or a previously unimaginable discovery of an animal, or a star system, or a cure.
Pretty much, if you’re a Unitarian Universalist, this is your hymn.
That is, if you can get the hang of the tune.
Composed by Cyril Taylor, this tune is a bit tricky and with an odd rhythm. I find it clunky and – broken record time – I lose the depth of the words because I’m trying to figure out how to sing it. That is not good, if this is sung congregationally. As a solo, perhaps. Now I should note that this was previously in the Celebration of Life, the 1964 hymnal, so it’s got some history. But as much as I love the lyrics, I don’t love the tune. So much so that I’ve scrapped the music altogether and used Noyes’ words as a reading.
Because it’s worth shouting from the rooftops some days.
THE ART OF MEANING 