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There’s a terrible film from 1999 called The 13th Warrior featuring Antonio Banderas playing a 10th century Arab ambassador to northern Europe; he somehow finds himself included in a group of Vikings setting out to deal with a threat in a distant Viking land.  At the start of this quest, Banderas understands no Norse and can only watch events unfold. But as time goes on, he occasionally picks up a word here or there. The filmmaker’s one good idea in an otherwise awful movie was having the occasional English word pop up in the dialogue of the Vikings…then a few more, then finally the entire group is speaking English, showing that Banderas’ character understands the language now.

It’s a remarkable idea, the assimilation of language, and it was beautifully revealed despite the otherwise violent and plot-hole-filled nature of the movie. And I resonate with it, because while I studied Latin in college, anything I know of other languages I assimilated through Sesame Street, food, and music. I mention this, because while I don’t speak Spanish, I can read just enough of it – and the Latin, of course – to have a general sense of the song’s meaning. But more, I find it falls on the ear more beautifully and feels rich and authentic without even the most elegant of English translations.

Now I say all this because I am a bit embarrassed that I don’t know a second language and I should. But I also say this because I think we need to be more open to singing songs like this in English speaking congregations, with the Spanish lyrics, because given repetition, practice, and a helping hand, the lyrics will begin to make sense and the language will being to seep in, bit by bit. And maybe we can get outside ourselves a bit, too.

It helps to have a great song like this – great to me, anyway. Singer-songwriter (and poet, painter, and ecologist) Salvador Cardenal Barquero (who died at age 50 about seven years ago) wrote beautiful and rich melodies, making him an extremely popular figure in Nicaragua and Central America.

Revisa tu corazón
Para hallar el amor en un rincón.
Pero busca el amor.
Ni placer ni passion.
El amor lo que hace al otro bien

Chorus:
Busca el amor en ti.
Se multiplica si lo repartís.
Busca el amor en ti.
Sólo él que ama puede ser feliz.
Busca el amor en ti.
Se multiplica si lo repartís.
Busca el amor en ti.
Sólo él que ama puede ser feliz.
Busca el amor en ti, en ti.

Registra tu camaleón.
Cuando cambia el color del corazón
Y te estalla la flor.
Un pétalo del sol.
El amor lo que hace al otro bien

Chorus

English translation:

Examine that heart of yours,
As you look for the love on your high shelf,
Past the pleasure and passion
for your own self,
for the love that’s reaching someone else.

Chorus:
Seek out the love in you,
And find the joy that comes to those who care.
Seek out the love in you.
It only grows whenever it is shared.
Seek out the love in you,
And find the joy that comes to those who care.
Seek out the love in you.
It only grows whenever it is shared.
Seek out the love in you, in you.

Your heart’s a chameleon,
Ever open to change like any flower.
Spreading out for the sun,
petals bursting with power.
To be love that’s reaching someone else.

Chorus

I love the sentiment, too. As our UUA Song Information page says,

This song sums up the composer’s simple personal theology. Salvador Cardenal Barquero is a fifth generation Nicaraguan. He studied to be a Catholic priest as a teenager. He, as many of his generation, answered the call for regime change by forming Duo Guardabarranco with his sister Katia. His original songs explore the need for love. He is a devotee of evolving spiritual thought. He has set music to words of St Francis of Assisi, Rabindranath Tagore, and the Sanscrit Vedas (Srimad Bhaghavatam). His plaintive song Cualquier Hombre (Anyone) has poor people calling to God in all different names and “not asking for leftovers.”

Yes. Yes.

We need love, because it’s the only thing that works.

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Throughout this practice, I’ve happened upon many hymns that were inspired by (or were outright settings of) poetry; that makes sense, as lyric forms seek out one another naturally. But this is the first time I’ve encountered one inspired by paintings.

As noted on the UUA’s Song Information page,

The lyrics of this song come from the French title of a famous oil painting by Paul Gauguin created in Tahiti in 1897 and 1898. It is currently housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. The three groups of women, read from the right to left, represent the three questions posed in the title of the painting. The women with the child represent the beginning of life “Where Do We Come From?” The middle group, represent the daily existence of adulthood “What Are We?” The old woman facing death is asking, “Where Are We Going?”

Wow.

It’s an amazing painting; the photo I’ve used here doesn’t do it justice, I’m sure. (When am I in Boston next? I have some art to look at…) It is haunting and asks for a meditative encounter, not a quick glance and go. It’s deceptively intricate in its simplicity, and it sticks with you.

Much like this song, which can be sung as a canon, a round, a chant, with about as many permutations as you can imagine. It embodies the questions and mood of the painting in haunting and meditative countermelodies.

 Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Where do we come from?

Mystery. Mystery. Life is a riddle and a mystery.

Where do we come from? Where are we going?

And these are questions I’m asking myself a lot lately. As I facilitate a couple of UU Wellspring groups, I have the opportunity to both be present to myself and look back at the pre-seminary me who took this for the first time. The questions I had then aren’t the questions I have now, but I still seek answers as I look to where I have come from. And then more generally, where do we come from and what does it mean to dwell in such a time as this, wondering where we are going and how to be present in those riddles.

This is a small song, taking up only half a page.

But it is actually one of our biggest.

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Sometimes you have stories you just tell. Othertimes, you have stories that definitely have titles. I call this one “Snoring for God.”

Our scene unfolds as my then boyfriend, Carl, and I are driving in New England. We’d started in White Plains (where Carl’s flight landed), drove over to Connecticut and hopped on Route 7, stayed overnight in Bennington, headed eventually to Rutland, then finally back into New York and home. Carl had had a busy few weeks, and  while I navigated the rolling turns of the road, Carl viewed the beauty of the Green Mountains through his eyelids. In the quiet, I began humming some of my favorite spirituals: “Over My Head, I Hear Music in the Air” … “There Is More Love Somewhere.” Eventually I landed on this piece, by Mimi Bornstein:

 

Comfort me, comfort me,
comfort me, oh my soul.
Comfort me, comfort me,
comfort me, oh my soul.

Sing with me, sing with me…

Speak for me, speak for me…

Dance with me, dance with me…

Now I got through the first two verses easily, but instead of singing Bornstein’s lyric “speak for me,” I began to sing “speak TO me”….

And God said, “I have been. I never stopped. You are the one who stopped.”

Blink.

Look over to Carl.

Sleeping soundly.

Radio isn’t on.

Phone hasn’t rung.

Blink.

And so I asked, “I haven’t heard you. How have you been speaking to me?”

God’s answer came immediately as the napping Carl let out a loud, forceful snore.

Which made me realize – though tears and light so strong that I had to pull over – that God always speaks, through the divinity in each of us. Through long conversations with trusted friends and colleagues… through poetry and music that makes us weep from their beauty… through books and ideas and sermons and films and television…  through the little moments of grace we witness and are blessed with. All of them, messages from the Mystery, all of them hoping that in the spirit of Kierkegaard, we would recognize them in retrospect.

For me, this was a key moment in my call narrative – because it was opening myself up to direct experiences of transcending awe and wonder that would result in some sense of communication (prayer?) that helped me deepen my faith and my sense of vocation. It allowed me to hear other messages that pointed me to ministry.

This song, y’all.

And it’s a beauty. Easy to sing, lush and gorgeous in its construction, soulful and meaningful. And I’m not just saying that because God speaks through it to me; I’ve found this to be a useful, helpful, healing song in many circumstances.

But I also can’t sing it without a part of me quietly chuckling.

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You could call this one “How Is This My Life?” or maybe “God Bless the Revolution.”… and you’d certainly use the hashtag #MyUnion. But I think we’ll call this one “Our Rock Stars Are Not Your Rock Stars.”

Now the rock star in question is not composer Ysaye Barnwell, although she is a rock star, and I’ll talk more about her when we get to We Are… on January 10th. No, the rock stars in question right now are feminist theologians Bev Harrison and Carter Heyward.

One of the advantages of going to Union Theological Seminary is that we had the opportunity to meet some amazing people in our field, and I had a lot of “how is this my life” moments when sitting in a living room with Harry Belafonte, or singing from the same hymnal with former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, or catching a glimpse of Mos Def in the hall as he heads to sit in on a class with Cornel West.

Such is the case on one beautiful, bittersweet afternoon, when Union held a memorial service for Bev Harrison, who had been a professor at Union and made major strides in the field of Christian feminist ethics. I never met her, but the stories being told at the service made me wish I had known her, because she seemed to be loving, gregarious, expansive, and always willing to challenge the status quo. In one of the reflections about her life, someone shared her words for blessing the food:

Some have food.
Some have none.
God bless the revolution.

It was a powerful experience learning about her life and her work. And then… the seminary choir, of which I was a part, got up to sing the second of two songs we had prepared for the service; I don’t remember the first, but the second was Breaths. I was honored to sing one of the lead parts with my dear friend Lindsey Turner, with the rest of the choir backing us up with the deep, pulsing rhythms that keep time and move the song along in rich harmonies.

When Lindsey and I walked to our places, we realized we were right in front of Bev’s partner, Carter Heyward. For those who don’t know, Heyward is a lesbian feminist theologian; in 1974, she was one of the Philadelphia Eleven, eleven women whose ordinations eventually paved the way for the recognition of women as priests in the Episcopal Church in 1976. Her life and her work is groundbreaking.

Yes. We were being asked to sing to Carter Heyward. This was like being asked to sing to Michelle Obama, or Madonna, or Oprah Winfrey – someone of that magnitude. In those first moments I felt a combination of terror and excitement and amazement.

Our rock stars are not your rock stars.

Of course, we pulled it together quickly, recognized our role as pastoral, and sang this song to Carter, who is now a friend on Facebook. Lindsey and I found the healing pulse of the music and breathed into the healing lyrics, evoking the ancestors, and in particular the loving presence of Bev.

This song… this beautiful song, now graces our hymnal.

Refrain:
Listen more often to things than to beings,
listen more often to things than to beings,
‘tis the Ancestor’s breath when the fire’s voice is heard,
‘tis the Ancestor’s breath in the voice of the waters.
Zah Whsshh Aahh Whsshh

Those who have died have never, never left.
The dead are not under the earth.
They are in the rustling trees,
they are in the groaning woods,
they are in the crying grass,
they are in the moaning rocks.
The dead are not under the earth.

Refrain

Those who have died have never, never left.
The dead have a pact with the living.
They are in the woman’s breast,
they are in the wailing child,
they are with us in our homes,
they are with us in this crowd.
The dead have a pact with the living.

Refrain

Now I can’t go without saying a thing or two about the piece as it appears in STJ:

Thing one: YAY! It’s an amazing song, easy to sing, written by a beloved hero of mine and many others. The lyrics, based on a piece by Senegalese poet Birago Diop, are as close to my theology of the afterlife as you can get without me having written them myself.

Thing two: Part of the magic of this song is the vocal orchestra that weaves together rhythm and harmony in a unique but utterly singable fashion; and while I applaud the attempt at a piano arrangement, the results tend to be – at least in my experience – less than the rich, rhythmic breaths Barnwell’s song evokes.

And still. I am glad it is here, in our hymnal, bringing that healing, pulsing breath of life and afterlife together.

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I AM SO EXCITED I could plotz!

Not only am I cracking the cover of the next hymnal this morning, I am singing one of my top ten favorite hymns, composed by the delightful Jason Shelton.

This venture into Singing the Journey will look a little bit different than our time with Singing the Living Tradition. First, our main resource shifts from Between the Lines to a Song Information page at the UUA website. Second, in a number of cases, I am friends with the composers, thanks to my activity in the UU Musicians Network. Hopefully some of them will offer additional insights. It will be interesting to look at the “teal hymnal”, still considered new by many congregations’ standards, yet even in 12 years since publication will already show the same aging that we noticed in STLT; things like our language expanding and our cultural understanding deepening.

But first and foremost, as always, this remains a spiritual practice, where I get to sing.

And OH how I love to sing this one. While written in 4/4, the rolling triplets call for a 12/8 feel, which brings energy and vibrancy to the piece. The soaring phrase in the chorus beckons the sun and our energy, which is – not surprisingly – intentional. As noted on the Song Information page,

This song was composed for and debuted at a morning worship service during the 2001 UUMN conference at the Mountain in Highlands, NC. As the story goes, it had been rainy and gray all week long, but when the time came to debut this song the sun came out and shone gloriously through the chapel windows. Ah, the power of music!

It is, for me, the perfect opening hymn more times than not, and I have to resist the urge to not overuse it.

Morning has come, arise and greet the day!
Dance with joy and sing a song of gladness!
The light of hope here shines upon each face.
May it bring faith to guide our journey home.

A new day dawns, once more the gift is giv’n.
Wonder fills this moment shared together.
The light of peace here shines upon each face.
May it bring faith to guide our journey home.

Open our eyes to see that life abounds;
open hearts to welcome it among us.
The light of love here shines upon each face.
May it bring faith to guide our journey home.

And okay, yes, it doesn’t do a lot more than set the scene for the day. I know I have gotten annoyed at songs that just sit there not doing any work, and I suppose a case could be made for this song being the same way, except then you’d have to toss out the Kalidasa reading we all love too – because “look to this day! For it is life, the very life of life” does the same amount of work as this song. Namely: ‘wake up! We’re here! Hurrah! Now open up and get ready for all that will come.’

And that’s plenty of work for a hymn to do, especially since it sits at the open door of this hymnal, welcoming us onto this journey too. I mean, they could not have chosen a better first song, right?

This hymn… yeah. It works for me on so many levels.

I just love it.

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Despite the gloomy morning… despite the terrible news… despite this head cold… this one makes me feel like dancing.

And not just because it’s a joyful song that people dance to, but because I’m a bit delighted by this choice as the final song of this hymnal. You see, for all the seriousness of the work to assemble a hymnal, I imagine there were moments of great wit, laughter, and joy. Of course the Hymnal Commission decided to end with this traditional Jewish song, whose literal meaning is “We have brought peace to you.”

This delights me, because while I am sure there was plenty of controversy, debate, and possibly outright fights… and while there are still a fair number of controversies, debates, and outright fights, and I am sure you knew that would be the case even as you did your very best to bring peace to us.

Well played, Hymnal Commission, well played.

Hevenu shalom aleychem,
heveno shalom aleychem,
hevenu shalom aleychem,
hevenu shalom, shalom, shalom, aleychem. (Repeat)

And so we go out of Singing the Living Tradition laughing and dancing.

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I was talking to friend and colleague Diana McLean yesterday about the moment I am fast approaching – the moment when I sing the last of the hymns in Singing the Living Tradition, and begin a 75-day trip through Singing the Journey. I remarked on the growth of this practice, and how it has shifted from purely my experience of singing to something of a resource.

But it’s more than that. What I realize is that in singing through this hymnal – lovingly assembled 24 years ago with a broad charge (make it more inclusive) – I have had the opportunity to see the shifts in our theologies, our congregational life, our work of justice. Twenty five years ago, the Cold War had just ended and a new, uncertain world lay ahead. The specter of the 21st century and the 50th anniversary of the Unitarian Universalist consolidation loomed in the distance. Thus, song choices to meet the moment might feel to us, well, not quite right (I think I need a good German word here because the English ones aren’t working).

But more, what I recognize is that when we hold STLT in our hands, we are holding evidence of the moral arc of the universe bending toward justice. Issues that come up for us now when we sing songs like Sit at the Welcome Table and Dear Mother-Father of Us All, and even Singing for Our Lives are evidence that we are growing, changing, becoming more and more expansive and seeking more and more justice. Sure, we have a long way to go, but wow, look how far we’ve come in such a short time.

And musically too, we’ve come far. Since STLT was published, a young UU Musicians Network has grown, encouraging new and vibrant hymns and other music; it has developed a credentialing program for music professionals; it has educated not only musicians but also clergy and lay people on the role of music in our faith. And, as I have often asserted, they have been writing our living theology. And thus, our music is shifting from being that which we inherited from our Protestant roots or the folk movement to being organically and authentically ours, reflecting who we are and who we want to be.

It’s amazing. And I don’t know that I would have gotten that had I not engaged this practice. It’s not done, of course, but it’ll be interesting to enter Singing the Journey with this in mind.

—

So… what about today’s hymn?

Not much, really. It’s a sweet recessional by Vincent Silliman, set to a tune from a Bach chorale. It’s light, but not quite as simple as one might expect. For me, a change to a different tune would make sense – I’d set it to Tom Benjamin’s Woodland (Down the Ages We Have Trod, among others). But that’s me. I think, given my discourse above, taking it off Bach and setting it on one of our own makes sense.

As we leave this friendly place,
love give light to ev’ry face;
may the kindness which we learn
light our hearts till we return.

Tomorrow, we sing the last song of this grey hymnal. Already. Finally.

—

The photo is of my well-worn hymnals, complete with bookmarks.

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If you are a fan of a film or tv show with highly quotable lines, you may find yourself giving the next line almost out of habit:

“Inconceivable!”
“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

“To make a long story short…”
   “TOO LATE!”

“My father hung me from a hook once..”
“Once.”

“Surely you don’t mean it.”
“I do. And stop calling me Shirley.”

“Darmok and Jilad at Tanagra.”
“Darmok and Jilad on the ocean.”

And so on.

We like things that repeat. It helps firm them up in our brains. The call and response connects us. It’s also a bit of a shibboleth, a password of sorts that lets us know we’re on the same page.

We see it all the time in Protestant liturgy:

May the Lord be with you.
     And also with you.

The Word of God.
     Thanks be to God.

Now as Unitarian Universalists, we don’t have much of this in most of our congregations. Our liturgies are much more freeform (despite many of them still modeling what Glen Thomas Rideout calls “Puritan Standard”). Yet for many of us, there are words or phrases that lead us almost instinctively to respond, perhaps most frequently (in my experience),

Please say with me the words for extinguishing our chalice.
     We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth…

For me and many of us, there’s another trigger of ritual response:

And now the children may go to their classes.

If you’re in one of the hundreds of congregations that uses today’s hymn as a children’s recessional, what comes next are those first four notes – G, C, D, G – repeated as an intro to our lyrics:

Go now in peace. Go now in peace.
May the love of God surround you
everywhere, everywhere you may go.

You probably already started singing before I got to it, didn’t you?

Now I know many congregations use other songs as their recessional; Bloomington, IN, uses a verse of a different hymn each month. Others have pieces written for them. But for those congregations, the song is still part of a habitual call and response. We say we don’t like ritual, but we crave it. And this song, by Methodist composer Natalie Sleeth, is a major piece of our ritual.

I should say a thing you likely already know: the lyrics are “may the love of God” because that’s how Sleeth wrote it and required it be printed in order to give us permission. I’m sure members of the Hymnal Commission can tell more about the story, but the bottom line is that we’ve not been given permission by a living artist to change her lyrics to anything, including the popular “spirit of love.”

Go now in peace.

 

I don’t know what was going on at Westside UU in Seattle that day, but I love the pic of the kids under a bridge made by adults.

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Gentle readers, there is a chance I will let you down today.

You see, I am feeling utterly and totally uninterested in where this hymn came from, who wrote it, and why we sing it to this tune.

Which is kinda funny, because that’s exactly what my mom would have me do: activate another part of my brain and lose focus on the part that’s dwelling in sadness. It may explain why I struggled so much with my depression as a youth; where this worked for her, it didn’t always work for me, and it wasn’t until well into adulthood that I was able to name it and experience it more fully.

But the truth is, one week out from the tenth anniversary of her death, I am finding it hard this morning to do anything but mourn as I sing this hymn. Partly because it’s a hymn specifically for this purpose, but partly because there are things in here Mom has said to me, almost verbatim without really knowing the hymn, about death and mourning. I remember her complimenting the country pastor who conducted my father’s funeral, because he had talked about how the dead live on in us and our stories, which was something she believed was true. And she was so fascinated with all we were learning about space and physics. Once we watched A Brief History of Time, and she spent the rest of the weekend having those deep thought moments as she tried to wrap her head around black holes (it was something that continued to come up every now and then, because it continued to flummox her).

This hymn seems like it could have been written by her – and certainly beloved by her.

Let hope and sorrow now unite
to consecrate life’s ending.
And praise good friends now gone from sight,
though grief and loss are rending.
The story in a well-loved face,
and years and days our thoughts retrace,
are treasures worth repeating.

With faith, or doubt, or open mind
we whisper life’s great question.
The ebb and flow of space and time
surpass our small perception;
yet knowledge grows with joyful gains
and finds out wonders far more strange
than hopes of resurrection.

And here’s the truth: music has the power to do a lot of things; it helps us rejoice, consider, release, meditate, explain, laugh, and yes… mourn. I am not upset that this came along when it did – it’s probably right on time, and it has allowed me to share more about this remarkable woman who raised me.

Thanks, Universe.

—

Picture is of my mother as a young woman, probably around age 25.

 

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Hmmm.

I really don’t have much to say, because I don’t know how I feel about this one. (Also, I’m squeezing this reflection into a day full of fall house cleaning.)

What I can tell you is the lyrics, by Sarah Flower Adams (of Abide with Me fame), set to the Charleston tune (which you may know from There’s a Wideness in Your Mercy), is lovely and well matched.

Part in peace! The day before us.
Praises sing for life and light.
Are the shadows lengthning o’er us?
Bless thy care who guards the night.

Part in peace! With deep thanksgiving,
rend’ring as we homeward tread,
love and service to the living,
gentle mem’ry to the dead.

Part in peace! Our voices raising,
in thy presence always be.
This the worship and the praising,
bringing peace to you and me.

I’m not sure I would use it for a memorial or funeral, but I would use it as a closing for a Memorial Day or All Souls service.

Anyway… not much from me today, as it didn’t feel as much like spiritual practice and more like duty today. And I guess that happens. I look forward to your reflections in comments.