What started as a silly exclamation after drinking at the pub one night turned into two major projects that I undertook at seminary.
The exclamation – interjected as a group of us at Union Theological Seminary discovered a mutual love of musical theater – was “we should do a Broadway Revue!” A few months later, we were making that silly notion a reality, and we created and produced “In the Beginning: A Broadway Revue Inspired by Genesis.” A year later, we created and produced “The Other Side” which was inspired by Exodus – complete with a three-credit course led by one of the world’s top Biblical scholars.
It was really a silly idea. We had heavy work loads, field education, other interests. Yet it sparked a creativity that would not be relegated to ‘silly idea.’
Fast forward to now: a colleague’s son is in the hospital with a sudden illness; to cheer her up, another colleague suggested we post funny/made up memories of her on Facebook. The entries were funny, sweet, and sometimes fantastical. But one of them – suggesting that they were doing a service that was replaced by a Golden Girls script – was the silliest of them all. And sparked an incredible conversation that is now leading us to create a “Thank You For Being a Friend” Sunday – coordinated worship services across the country, focused on the wonderful lessons of friendship, generosity, acceptance, worth, family, storytelling, cheesecake, and shoulder pads.
A silly idea. A REALLY silly idea. But now we’re plotting and planning and, as I experienced in the Broadway revues, feeding and being fed off others’ creativity, spirit, and yes-and attitude.
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Just yesterday, I was remarking to my internship supervisor that I felt a bit exiled – not just the geographic exile of being at the end of an archipelago where the Atlantic meets the Gulf of Mexico, but also exiled from my support systems, from connections, and most of all, from my own – and others’ – creativity. Somehow being physically separated from the people who stir my creativity led me to being separated from my own.
But a silly idea has brought me back from the brink.
A silly, creative, meaningful idea that can be accomplished and activates all that I love about the creative process – collaboration, expansive thinking, inspiration – has brought me back from the brink.
Saying YES-AND to this silly idea has reminded me to say YES-AND to myself, to that which I call God, to the universe, to others, and most of all, to my call.
But it’s not just personal; as career coach Bob Proctor points out, it’s the silly ideas that are “the most stunning, spectacular concept you could possibly imagine. Something there’s an enormous market for. Something that millions of people are absolutely crying for someone to provide them with.”
Imagine what happens when we use the power of silly in our spiritual settings… we might get a raised eyebrow or two, and hear the seven deadly words “but we’ve never done it this way.” But we may often have found the most spectacular concept we could possibly imagine, something millions are absolutely crying for someone to provide them with – healing, comfort, joy, awakening, enlightenment. It happened for me, and it keeps happening.
Below is the video and script for my thesis project, a 30-minutes chapel service called Nameless, held Monday, March 3, 2014.
Juliana Bateman– Samson’s wife (Judges 14)
Natalie Renee Perkins – Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11:34-40)
Ranwa Hammamy – Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10)
Ashley Birt – Lot’s wife (Genesis 19:15-26)
Jessica Christy – Job’s wife (Job 2:1-10)
Shamika Goddard – the witch of Endor (1 Sam 28:3-25)
Emily Hamilton – the woman from Tekoa (2 Sam 14:1-22)
Sandra Rivera – widow of Zarephath (I Kings 17:8-16)
Lindsey Nye – guard
AJ Turner – the narrator
Zach Walter– the rhythm
As people enter, Lindsey will be seen guarding the Tomb of the Unnamed Woman.
Zach will be lightly playing a military beat on the cajon.
AJ:
Samson told his father and mother, “I saw a Philistine woman at Timnah; (Juliana perks up) now get her for me as my wife.’ But his father and mother said to him, ‘Is there not a woman among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’ But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, because she pleases me.’ His father and mother did not know that this was from the LORD; for he was seeking a pretext to act against the Philistines.
As he returned to Timnah, a young lion roared at Samson, who tore the lion apart with his bare hands. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done. Then he went down and talked with the woman, (Juliana perks up again, a little) and she pleased Samson. After a while he returned to marry her, and he turned aside to see that there was honey in the carcass of the lion. He scraped it out into his hands, and went on, eating as he went.
His father went down to the woman, (Juliana a little less enthused) and Samson made a feast there as the young men were accustomed to do. When the people saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him. Samson said to them, ‘Let me now put a riddle to you. If you can explain it within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments. But if you cannot, you shall give the same to me.’ So they said, ‘Ask your riddle.’ He said, ‘Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.’
But for three days they could not explain the riddle.
On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, (Juliana visibly and audibly annoyed) ‘Coax your husband to explain the riddle to us, or we will burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?’ So Samson’s wife…
Juliana:
Sheesh.
AJ:
…wept before him, saying, ‘You hate me; you do not really love me. You have asked a riddle of my people, but you have not explained it to me.’ He said to her, ‘Look, I have not told my father or my mother. Why should I tell you?’ She wept before him every day that their feast lasted; and because she nagged him, on the seventh day he told her the answer. Then she explained the riddle to her people. The men of the town said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, ‘What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?’
And he said to them, ‘If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.’
Juliana:
Seriously?!? (stands, begins ranting)
AJ:
Then the spirit of the LORD rushed on him, and …. (Juliana confronts him) … WHAT?
Juliana:
“Samson’s wife” this and “Samson’s wife that.”
AJ:
That’s who you are… isn’t it?
Juliana:
I have a name! Without me, this whole stupid vendetta against my people wouldn’t be close to fulfilled. Without me, there is no story. Samson gets a name. Even his second wife, Delilah, gets a name. What’s MY name?
(AJ is visibly shaken with the realization, sits)
Juliana:
All I did was fall in love with a handsome foreigner. I didn’t know I was going to be used. I didn’t know I was going to be accused of being unfaithful and deceitful just to further some warrior’s tale. The least you could do is the courtesy of a name. What’s my name? WHAT’S MY NAME?
(whisper, in time with drum) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Ashley:
I supported my husband Lot when he asked us to leave my home. Of course I turned back to look once more on Sodom, the town I loved. I sacrificed my life for my husband and daughters, whose own future was uncertain in these terrible times, whose lives I could have protected. But you only call me Lot’s wife. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Ranwa:
I saved a Hebrew child in an act of civil disobedience, knowing my father had ordered all the Hebrew children to be killed. I raised him like my own son, and risked further exposure when I let him go to his people to lead them out of Egypt. Without Moses, there is no Exodus. But you only call me Pharaoh’s daughter. What’s MY name
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Jessica:
I lost everything too. I lost my home, my friends, my children, my livelihood too. I stood by my husband Job through all of the pain and suffering. I was angry at God too, but I also remained faithful to my husband and to my God. But you only call me Job’s wife. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Shamika:
What people forget is that Saul came to me. He sought counsel, and even though I eventually recognized him, I saw how terrified he was, and I not only helped him seek wisdom from the spirit of his father, I fed him. Without me, Saul might not have become a great ruler. But you only call me the Witch of Endor. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Emily:
I stood before King David to lobby him on behalf of Joab. I alone was strong enough to stand before the king, using my wits to political advantage. And I wanted to – I wanted to ask this king why he had planned destruction of the people of God. I was a powerful political voice for my time, but you only call me the woman of Tekoa. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Sandra:
I was a widow without family or means, the poorest of the poor, when Elijah arrived in my town. He demanded of me a meal, when I could not even feed myself or my young son. Yet this man was compelling, and I did feed this stranger, who went on to become a beloved prophet and miracle worker. But you only call me the widow of Zarephath. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Natalie:
My father was returning, triumphant from battle. How could I know he had made a vow to God that would put my life in jeopardy? I only wanted to welcome him home, but he blamed me for bringing him low, when I was the one to be sacrificed. I lost my life because of my father, but you only call me Jephthah’s daughter. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Lindsey:
(stops marching as guard) What of all the other unnamed women? The widows? The wives? The daughters? The sisters? The lovers? The sick? The faithful? The outspoken? What of their names?
All:
(joins whisper, which now gets LOUDER) What’s my name? What’s My Name? WHAT’S MY NAME?
SILENCE.
Natalie moves to “her” headstone, places a rose, and sings “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”. At end, Zach begins to drum a heart beat.
Kimberley:
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today, to remember these women.
These women – who walked among us.
(Juliana places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who lived and breathed, who loved and lost.
(Ashley places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who played as young girls, who learned to cook and sew, who learned to love their family and their God.
(Ranwa places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who felt and thought and sang and prayed.
(Jessica places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who made choices.
(Shamika places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who were chosen.
(Emily places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who are only known in relation to someone else.
(Sandra places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone; Lindsey sits near the tomb of the unnamed woman.)
These women lived in a long ago time in a far away place… but they have been living in me for nearly three years. Their stories – their heartbreak, their pain, their suffering, and their joy – have filled my thoughts. I want to stand next to Lot’s wife as she makes her final goodbyes to the home she loved. I want to comfort Samson’s wife as she finds herself torn between the men of her family and the man she loves. I want to hold Jephthah’s daughter to shield her from her father’s shocking pronouncement. I want to stroke their hair and hold their hands and call them by name.
But we have lost their names, and with them the fullness of their stories.
In this holy book, this Word of God, women are largely unnamed, unnoticed, unremarkable.
But let us be clear. God didn’t do this. This is not God’s problem. We did this to each other. Over centuries and millennia, through tellings and retellings, through writing and redacting, through additions and deletions, women’s names got left on the cutting room floor.
What we are left with is a text that along with serving as inspiration, is a model of how we are to live with each other. This model, which says it’s okay not to name women, even women without whom the story wouldn’t happen. This model, which says it’s okay to withhold names as long as the woman has no family or no means of support. This model, which says it’s okay to rape and dismember, as long as the woman is a concubine. This model, which finds no reason to name daughters who don’t obey… or daughters that do. This model, which says women do not actually get counted, but simply come along, among the masses. This model, which says even powerful and influential women don’t need to be remembered by name.
You might think that God is okay with it. But God didn’t do this. We did this to each other.
And God’s not okay with it.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who gave their lives in the Triangle Shirt Factory fire, or in the name of women’s suffrage, or in one of the many devastating wars we have fought, or in back alley abortion clinics.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who cross the borderlands and give up their given names in order to escape the notice of INS officials.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who are losing their lives while protesting in the streets of Turkey and the Ukraine and Venezuela.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who have been sold into slavery or the sex trade.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who have been raped and who are shamed into hiding the truth of their trauma.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who sleep on the steps outside our buildings and whose basic needs cannot be met by a system that is increasingly ignoring them.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who serve us and care for us and protect us every day – the woman at the front desk, the housekeeper, the visiting nurse, the beat cop, the barista, the cashier, the soldier.
These women have names. They have stories. They have influence. But they too are in danger of not being remembered, of joining the unnamed in the great cloud of witnesses.
But we don’t have to keep the cycle going. The scribes and clerics gave us this sacred text, full of women placed in only one particular part of the story, known only in relation to someone else, known only for a place where they existed, known only by the terror of their texts. These scribes and clerics gave us a model we must reject. What happens when we actually speak their stories? Phyllis Tribble suggests that we must speak for these women, to “interpret against narrator, plot, other characters, and the Biblical tradition – because they have shown … neither compassion nor attention.”
Imagine if we give them our attention – how much harder it would be for us to accept some of the situations the Bible describes for us. What if we knew that Jephthah’s daughter was musical and had learned new songs to play for her father when he returned from war? What if we knew that the widow of Zarephath had been known to bake the best bread in town, back when there was plenty? What if we knew that Pharoah’s daughter found out she could not bear children of her own yet loved them desperately? If we had stories like these, suddenly, we might not accept the fate of these women – we might not accept that they weren’t that important to the stories in which they appear, and we would not accept that we should not call them by name. Just as we cannot accept the damage and disregard namelessness does to women today.
Today, let us make a change.
Dearly beloved, let us pray.
God of many names known and unknown,
hear our sorrow as we mourn these unnamed women…
in their death, we are all diminished…
their stories are alive, but all is not well.
Hold us as we take one step today to right this wrong,
to stand for these women,
to hear their stories and bear witness to their power,
to feel their presence and confess their present reality.
God, be with us in our struggle to make sure everyone is known,
to show even the long forgotten their inherent worth and dignity.
Bless us, God, with ever opening and softening hearts
as we remember the women.
Amen.
We will never know the names of these unnamed women in the Bible – those are lost to history. But there are names of women who have touched our lives that should not be forgotten. They are mothers, and aunts, and cousins. They are teachers, and counselors, and neighbors. They are activists, and preachers, and thinkers. We have all been touched by the lives of incredible women, without whom our own stories would not progress. Let us celebrate and name those women – let us turn this tomb of unnamed women into a space of remembering women and their names.
Folks are invited to write these names on stickers we pass out, and place them on the tomb. Meanwhile, the beat changes from heartbeat to an Afro-Caribbean rhythm.
As people gather, Ranwa leads us in Israel Naughton’s “I Am Not Forgotten”
I love their power to evoke emotions, actions, ideas, images. I love how a carefully crafted phrase can roll gracefully and deliciously like a warm cinnamon bun, or jar us like an unexpectedly bitter orange.
And more, I love that as Unitarian Universalists, we delight in words, and all that they can evoke. We memorize quotations from great thinkers and doers, we wrestle with words long laden with pain, we use as many words as we can to understand our world and the Divine. We continue to find new ways to describe the expansiveness of our extravagant welcome. We continue to explore theological and philosophical ideas in our deep-seated earnestness to understand the understandable through reason and fact.
This is why I am a reader. I want to see how others are thinking about things, describing things, wrestling with things. I love those moments when a phrase catches me and lives in my mind for hours or days or weeks. My vast collection of books are filled with post-its marking pages, sections highlighted, words underlined, and occasionally a conversation with the author scribbled in the margins.
This is also why I am a writer, and why I continue to blog, whether I have one reader or thousands. I love using words and playing with words to explore the joyful, thoughtful, and painful. I love writing papers for my courses. I frankly even loved writing the essays for the Regional Sub-Committee on Candidacy (but don’t tell anyone).
I am also a talker. I’m one of those people who best processes ideas out loud. I make decisions best when I talk them through with someone. I love class discussions and small group discussions and Q&A sessions. I love preaching and teaching and leading workshops.
Yes. Words matter to me. To us. Our fourth principle, the responsible search for truth and meaning, relies largely on words.
But are the words we say to each other enough? Is it enough to read each other’s blog posts and sermons, to absorb books and podcasts, to relish in the reading and the talking, to let words rule? What of the UU who says “worship is my least favorite part of being a UU”? What of the UU who says “I dislike music in a service. I’d rather just hear a sermon and some readings”? What of the UU who says “I don’t want spiritual experience, I want to do social justice”?
If we followed their lead, we probably wouldn’t need to come together for services.
If we followed their lead, we could sell off the beautiful buildings and instead build server farms where we host blogs and online books and occasional chats.
If we followed their lead, we would stop being a religion.
Obviously, I am not saying we don’t need all the words and intellectual stimulation. But I don’t think it’s enough.
In 2009, I chaired our congregation’s Stewardship campaign; part of our campaign included a call for pledges of Time, Talent, and Treasure. In our planning, we all agreed that members should be willing to make an investment in all three, but what did Time mean, exactly? Was time the hours spent in Sunday services and at church-wide events? Or was it okay if someone didn’t come to church but attended a small group ministry once a month? Do we ask for a commitment to the one hour a week that everyone shares (as opposed to the many more hours we share in small groups, committees, task forces, etc.)? What of the people who feel like the Sunday worship was a waste of time – a wasteland of intellectual stimulation?
To them I say that worship still matters, whether you think you’re getting anything out of it or not.
Without worship, we are nothing more than an intellectual social club with a service focus. Without worship, we forget how to enact the deeper parts of ourselves, which long remember the rituals of our ancient ancestors. Without worship, we become isolated, away from the interconnected web of which we are a part. Without worship, we lose touch with the sacred.
And more…without all the elements of worship – sights and sounds, touch and scents, words, music, movement, and silence – we are missing ways to access our own Divine spirit, as well as that which we define as Divine that is outside ourselves. We can think about, write about, talk about, intellectualize about this spiritual dimension all we like. But that thing inside us – the divine spark, the soul, the spirit, the human consciousness – that thing needs to be activated and engaged for us to really understand. There’s a scene in The Matrix, where information is uploaded to our hero’s brain:
The scene doesn’t stop there. Lawrence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus, takes Keanu Reeves’s character, Neo, into a room where they actually fight.
Engagement matters. And for most of us, we find that the habit of weekly worship provides the best chance we have of that engagement. And it’s not just about our individual selves getting engaged; it’s about the group experience. For several years, I was what they call a solitary practitioner in the pagan tradition. I held rituals, by myself. I meditated, sang, danced, incanted, by myself. And half the time, I gave up before I had finished, because it felt empty or I felt silly. When I was in ritual with even one other person, suddenly there was meaning. A shared experience. A connection. What I read and studied suddenly became real.
It’s this connection that then leads me on to act. just being with other people in scared space makes me want to be a better person, more engaged, more connected. They don’t tell me to, I feel it. I sing it. I smell it and touch it and taste it. All the books and blogs and discussions in the world cannot replace that.
So what do we do about it? How do we create communities that have room for all of it, such that even the woman who dislikes worship can find and make meaning?
I think back to the question my stewardship team wrestled with – what we mean by Time. As we reimagine what congregations look like, when and where they meet, we need to recognize that every opportunity to gather is both an opportunity to engage our intellects and to worship. And this is more than lighting a chalice before a committee meeting starts. It’s about action – doing something besides talking (like singing or meditating to start the meeting), or taking an intellectual idea and physically applying it to the world (like going down the street and showing the homeless woman you value her inherent worth and dignity). Every time we gather, we should be making meaning, engaging our minds and our bodies. Every time we gather, we should be engaging in worship – in making worth and meaning.
This isn’t easy. it’s one thing to say that the Buildings and Grounds Committee are “stewards of our sacred space” – it’s another to make taking out the trash a spiritual endeavor. It’s one thing to say the pot-luck should be a communing of our spirits – it’s another to let go of the random gossip and griping and actually show care for each other.
But it can be done. We need all the words – and touches and tastes and actions and images – we can get our hands on. Our souls demand it. Our denomination’s future depends on it.
Today, I read an essay by Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt entitled “Worship: Its Fundamental Place in Liberal Religion.” Reinhardt explores briefly the history of worship with an eye to what we have inherited; that we have always sought public religion to unify us “in the common search for the Ultimate Good” and that we aren’t creators of something new, but simply reinterpreters of something ancient, “in the light of eternal truth and new knowledge.”
Reinhardt diagnoses some of the problems facing congregations – particularly in our denomination: that of a lack of beauty and significance. “Inquring as to the reason for monotony and threatened vacuity,” she writes, “one learns that it is the result of an effort to give a minority of the congregation due right. Criticism has eliminated the thing critized, but the creative processes have brought into being nothing to take the place of the rejected.”
Strong words – words we need to hear. I know that some congregations are doing innovative things in worship, exploring ways to get out of the “two hymns and a lecture” pattern found on many Sunday mornings. Reinhardt’s words are vital reminders of what we’re facing as we enter the next fifty years of our denomination, as we look at the shifting demographics, as we continue to wrestle with making our socially-responsible outsides look like our Sunday morning insides.
Reinhardt is on topic – and she offers a great deal of hope. She reminds us that we inherit not just the idea of worship but thousands of years of prayers, songs, stories that can be used/reimagined for today. She reminds us that “worship is one of the sources out of which new creations in the art of living arise.” She reminds us that “a service of worship is a poem written by the lover of God, a song sung by the lover of God.”
Fresh, amazing thoughts for this religion of ours in this time and place.
Of course, it was written in 1936, for the Commission on Appraisal, in a AUA report called “Unitarians Face a New Age.”
Yep.
So this new age we’re facing? It isn’t that far different from the new age our forbearers 75 year ago were facing. We have fixed some things, but we still have some of the same problems, the same concerns, the same pesky foibles.
Maybe… just maybe… we can do better this time around, so that the readers of essays in 2092 don’t identify so clearly. I know this is a huge part of my call; to Aurelia, I say “thank you for your eloquence” and “amen.”
I grew up in a musical family – meaning, we loved musicals. We performed in them, we watched them, we sang them, we bought the cast albums. I grew up in the country, the youngest by 13 years, only a couple of other children living nearby, with a performer’s spirit. And… a large 6-foot by 6-foot mirror prominently displayed in the living room, next to the cabinet where the stereo lived. Many afternoons were spent in front of that mirror, acting out the musicals I played over and over. While I had intimate knowledge of musicals like My Fair Lady, Carousel, Camelot, and Hello Dolly, it was the modern rock musicals that attracted my attention. Let me correct that: it was the modern religious musicals that attracted my attention.
Simply put, I was hooked on Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
While Joseph holds a special place in my heart (both from my youth and the performance we gave at UUCSS in 2005), it is the first two that are driving this post today. It is those first two that I realize have shaped, more than anything else, my understanding of who Jesus was and is.
I don’t know if this is a fact or something I made up, but I think it may be true that no matter what we learn as adults, our initial impressions and ideas about religion are formed before puberty. We may reject those ideas, but they are our starting point. Now if that’s true – and I will make the case that at least for me, it is – then I learned about an incredible man with incredible things to say about how we live.
From Godspell, I learned parables – the sheep and the goats, the prodigal son, and the good Samaritan. I learned how he treated the least among them (the adulterous woman). The Jesus in this show is warm, funny, loving, insightful. He dislikes hypocrisy and greed. He feels deeply. He teaches with patience, humor, and honor. He remembers his people and their past – during the last supper scene, they sing Psalm 137, a lament from the days of the Babylonian exile.
From Jesus Christ Superstar, I learned about his final days – the burdens of celebrity, the difficulty in teaching and reminding his fellow Jews the lessons of the prophets (Amos, Hosea). I learned of his patience, and of the political situation he was teaching in. The Jesus is also warm, but detatches in very human, somewhat Zen ways, when he needs distance. He is forthright and stallwart in the face of those who would be his enemies, but he is not combative (the moneychangers scene excepted).
Both representations of Jesus end with the crucifixion. We hear the pain of those final moments – sung heartwrenchingly in Godspell, desperately spoken in Superstar. And this is where it ends. We are left to accept or reject the resurrection, to make up our minds whether we buy it.
As a child, despite the lessons from the Methodist Sunday school my parents sent me to to learn about religion, I did not buy the resurrection. It wasn’t part of the story I knew, but it also didn’t make sense to me. I know it didn’t make sense to my Unitarian parents.
As an adult, I spent many years not even thinking about Jesus, no less considering the resurrection or the divinity of Christ. It’s only been in the last couple that Jesus has been in my sights again – and I admit to truly struggling with what I believe, what I think is true, and how to parse my childhood understanding of Jesus with my adult spirituality. And I don’t know. Believing in the resurrection seems a long stretch, one that contradicts other things I hold to be true about Jesus, his life, his divinity. I am deeply Unitarian in that sense… so parsing an understanding of Jesus and the resurrection in that paradigm becomes a bit of a struggle. It is even more so as I am now attending a Christian seminary, where in order to understand some of the theologians we read, we must understand that they take the resurrection event as a given circumstance, not a point for debate. And so I struggle – and I just don’t know.
What I do know is that the portrayals of Jesus being pushed by some of the more conservative and fundamentalist preachers is not the Jesus I know… theirs is certainly is not the Jesus whose most important sermon was the Sermon on the Mount. The Jesus I know is the Jesus who washed John the Baptist’s feet, who hugged the leper, who spoke with the Canaanite woman, who loved and laughed and cried.
I don’t know if I’ll ever know for sure what I think. But I do know that Stephen Schwartz and Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice were wonderful teachers and gave me a picture of Jesus that feels true for me.
A few weeks ago, the lovely and delightful Alie , one of our congregation’s youth who had just graduated from high school, asked me to sing Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game” at her service. She was to talk about growing up in our congregation and heading out to the next phase of her life.
Alie is a delightful young woman – the very model of what we wish every child could be. She is articulate, deep thinking, compssionate, active. She has put her faith into action, traveling to El Salvador and Guatemala to work in impoverished neighborhoods. She worked tirelessly to help improve our building by getting a playground installed. She is bright and funny and beautiful inside and out. I have often thought that if I had had children, Alie is the kind of child I’d have wanted to raise.
So when she asked me to sing, the answer was, of course, ‘of course’. What a delight and honor to be asked!
Now I have loved this song for years – but never before did it bring me to tears, until this moment. I spent two weeks listening to the song and trying to practice it, but I could never get through without crying. But, trooper that I am, I bucked up and found ways to distance myself from the song. I figured I was in pretty good shape.
Sunday morning. I read the order of service and it includes more tearjerkers: A Rose in the Wintertime and Let it Be a Dance. Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Traveled.” Andrew Gold’s “Thank You for Being a Friend.”
I was toast.
But… I am a professional, so I cried during the hymn and responsive reading and spent the sermon listening but also girding myself. Alie was talking about lessons she had learned about caring – various events, various people. She talked about Kevin O’Brien, whose organization Nueva Esperanza Del Norte was her entree into international charitable work. And then, she mentioned my name.
I gasped.
She relayed the story of how contentious Joys and Sorrows are in Worship committee; some believe it’s too long as it is. Others think we don’t give enough room for those who are sorrowful to be cared for. And what of the juxtaposition of joys with sorrows? Does it honor or dishonor those who have spoken?
Alie told about a time a couple of months ago when I shared a sorrow. My Uncle Flavio had died – meaning all of my aunts and uncles, along with my parents, are now deceased. Flavio had four children – and sometime in the early 90s, the second son, John, had fallen out of favor with his mother. John had reconciled with his father and his younger sister Cindy, and I think even with his mother before she died. But sadly, oldest brother Marc and youngest brother Robert still harbored ill will… and thus, Flavio’s funeral and memorial service became incredibly painful affairs. My sorrow was not as wordy – I expressed sadness at the loss but also hurt at the pain my cousins are facing. I got choked up – Alie mentioned this – and sat down.
The next person to speak was a man who had a joy (neither Alie nor I can recall who it was). Apparently, I sat and listened, wiped the tears, and celebrated this man’s joy. I don’t remember… I know it was cathartic just to share the concern, to know that someone who had a similar situation might offer some comfort afterwards. But to Alie, it was evidence of something bigger…that when you live in a caring community, we do provide what is needed.
Well..needless to say, that did it for me. She mentioned ME, of all people. Getting through “The Circle Game” was a challenge, offset happily by the congregation singing with me on the chorus and me not making eye contact.
Afterwards, I spoke with Alie’s father – also full of tears at the beauty of the service. I mentioned how honored I was to be asked to sing and to be mentioned in the sermon. He said “Alie really likes you.” I smiled, and he continued. “You don’t understand. Alie is pleasant to many, but she doesn’t like many people. She likes you.”
And this leaves me scratching my head. I didn’t really know her until I joined Worship Associates in late 2008; I have never done anything with youth groups or religious education classes. And yet, just my Being apparently matters.
The lesson? Be. Be true. Be authentic. But just BE. You never know who you’re going to affect.
Fast forward to now: a colleague’s son is in the hospital with a sudden illness; to cheer her up, another colleague suggested we post funny/made up memories of her on Facebook. The entries were funny, sweet, and sometimes fantastical. But one of them – suggesting that they were doing a service that was replaced by a Golden Girls script – was the silliest of them all. And sparked an incredible conversation that is now leading us to create a “Thank You For Being a Friend” Sunday – coordinated worship services across the country, focused on the wonderful lessons of friendship, generosity, acceptance, worth, family, storytelling, cheesecake, and shoulder pads.
THE ART OF MEANING 