Archive for March, 2009

Going to church: Church of the Holy Spirit

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

This week my son and I went to Holy Eucharist at Church of the Holy Spirit, the Episcopal church here in Plymouth. We were warmly welcomed when we arrived for the 9:30 service. I met the teenager who provided nursery care and her mother. At CHS, nursery children play downstairs with the caregiver for the bulk of the service (the first two hymns, several prayers, and the sermon) and then come upstairs for the second part (the offering, communion, and the closing hymn). This has the advantage of letting the kids participate in the service (young children may receive a blessing during communion). It could have been a problem for a stuffy congregation, because my son (at almost-three-years-old) is very interested in the liturgy and comments loudly on it. But CHS was charmed and not at all stuffy, so it was no problem.

CHS’s website says they have religious education classes for school-age children, but all the children there on Sunday seemed to be in the service. So perhaps RE classes happen at a different time or location. CHS is hampered in its worship space–the church on North Main Street consists only of a lovely sanctuary and a fellowship hall below it–so perhaps there is no space for Sunday School concurrent with church. They have new buildings on Highland Street. (You’ve seen them if you’ve been to the Plymouth Farmers’ Market in the summer, which CHS hosts.)

The nursery caregiver’s mother stayed with me for the service, showing me where things were and introducing me to her family. She was very friendly and helped me feel included. I liked the liturgy (Episcopal priests get to wear such beautiful vestments) and was reminded of the Episcopal church of my early childhood. Rector Susan Ackley’s sermon was great and delivered without notes! Coffee hour was fun. I was pleased to talk with several friends from around Plymouth and share a connection between Starr King and CHS. Several folks from CHS are planning to attend Starr King’s auction this month, because they are hoping to do a similar fundraiser in the future.

I have felt that our two churches, while having very different theologies and worship styles, are kin in our social justice aims and the friendliness of our communities. It was nice to have that feeling confirmed during Sunday’s service.

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Reference books and libraries

Friday, March 20th, 2009

My husband knows that I love reference books. He has learned he can give me reference books as presents, and that I will be delighted with them. Some gifts have been The Atlas of World History: Concise Edition and a how-to-knit book.

When I was in divinity school, and for two years after, I had a steady part-time job working in Harvard University’s rare books library, Houghton Library. I was a cataloguing assistant. I helped create basic electronic catalogue records for a collection of books owned by the poet Amy Lowell, a collection of books on polar exploration, and an ever-expanding collection of book sale catalogues. I also worked with a former head librarian of Houghton on his project to identify and describe all the books given to Harvard University by Thomas Hollis in the 17th century. I enjoyed my work at the library very much, even as I looked forward to and began the work of ministry.

What I love about reference books and library catalogues is the way they help show the interconnectedness of ideas and information, and make those connections apparent and usable to other people. Insights and ideas are indexed and stored so others can learn from them. Through the work of researchers and libraries, human creativity is preserved and expanded throughout generations.

This leads me to my enthusiasm for writing a scriptural index for our Unitarian Universalist hymnals, Singing the Living Tradition and Singing the Journey. I hope my index will add to the indexes already in the hymnals, to make the information and context of our hymns even more accessible and apparent. Tomorrow I’ll write about the indexes that already exist in the back of our hymnal, and how they are used. Then I’ll show you an example of what I think is lacking in our indexes, and how I hope my project will improve the hymnals’ usability.

PS–I was very pleased to see an appropriation for Plymouth’s Pease Public Library‘s upcoming capital campaign pass without complaint at our town meeting last week. The staff and trustees have done a wonderful job with their work so far, and I hope the capital campaign goes well.

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Found hymns: “God is Love”

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

As an early stage of my project to write a scriptural index to Singing the Living Tradition, I am going through the Episcopal scriptural index to that church’s hymnal, in order to see if any of their hymns are also in our hymnal. (This is more tedious than it sounds, since the Episcopal index is by scriptural passage, not by hymn–I look up each individual hymn number to see what it is.)

Yesterday, I found this lovely hymn, number 379 in The Hymnal 1982:

God is Love; let heaven adore him;
God is Love, let earth rejoice;
let creation sing before him
and exalt him with one voice.
God who laid the earth’s foundation,
God who spread the heavens above,
God who breathes through all creation:
God is Love, eternal Love.

God is Love; and love enfolds us,
all the world in one embrace:
with unfailing grasp God holds us,
every child of every race.
And when human hearts are breaking
under sorrow’s iron rod,
then we find that self-same aching
deep within the heart of God.

God is Love; and though with blindness
sin afflicts all human life,
God’s eternal loving-kindness
guides us through our earthly strife.
Sin and death and hell shall never
o’er us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
o’er the universe must reign.

It was written by Timothy Rees (1874-1939), (“alt.,” the note under the hymn states–hymns are routinely altered for hymnals to fit the theology or ethics of a particular movement or time). Rees was the Bishop of Llandaff in Wales in the 1930s for the Church of England. In The Hymnal 1982, the hymn is set to “Abbot’s Leigh” by Cyril Vincent Taylor (1907-1991).

To me, it is a beautiful, singable hymn with thoroughly Universalist theology. It captures the theistic, Universalist strand in our Unitarian Universalist heritage. For use in a Unitarian Universalist service, I might try to find a way to either eliminate the gendered language in the first stanza, or include female references to the divine (see what I mean about altering hymns?). I don’t have any pre-merger Universalist hymnals–I wonder if this was ever included in one?

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Upcoming musical events

Friday, March 13th, 2009

There are two upcoming musical events in our area I want to let you know about. You may know that I play viola in the Lakes Region Symphony Orchestra. We will be performing next Saturday, March 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Franklin Opera House. You can buy tickets here or at the door. Tickets are $12 for adults and $6 for children and teens. Directions to the Franklin Opera House are here. The program includes Rodgers and Hammerstein pieces, the Moldau by Bedrich Smetana, and the Hebrides Overture by Felix Mendelssohn. This is a great opportunity to enjoy and support community music and musicians in our area.

The following Saturday, March 28, Noah Glynn is conducting the second annual Sergeant Katherine Brunelle Memorial Concert at 7:00 p.m. at the Linwood Public School in Lincoln. Tickets are $20 for the concert, and an additional $8 for a dinner before the performance. Tickets may be purchased from the Woodstock police department at 745-8700 or at the door. The orchestra will perform Star Wars Epic No. 1 by John Williams and Fanfare for the Common Man by Aaron Copland, among others. I played in this concert last year, and it was a wonderful experience to play challenging, interesting music with professional musicians. I’m sorry my schedule doesn’t allow me to join the orchestra this year. The concert supports a scholarship fund in memory of a fallen police officer from Linwood.

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Going to church: Winchester Unitarian Society

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

On Sunday, my son and I attended the worship service at Winchester Unitarian Society in Winchester, Massachusetts. The co-ministers are friends and classmates of mine from Harvard Divinity School.

I liked the service, from the centering words on the order of service, to more centering words offered by the worship leader (in this case, one of the co-ministers), through the pastoral prayer and the sermon. Announcements were solely in the order of service, with the worship leader calling attention, at the beginning of the service, to a particularly important all-church event coming up. The order of service itself was printed on two folded 8.5×14 pages, giving lots of space for information, as well as those centering words I mentioned earlier. The music was excellent and very well integrated into the theme of the service.

Several people greeted me, especially during coffee hour. Behind me in the pew before the service, I heard a very promising conversation between two members and a newcomer. The members took the initiative to start a conversation with the newcomer, and drew her out as to what had brought her to WUS and what she was looking for. They shared their own enthusiasm about the congregation. The whole conversation sounded natural and unscripted. The congregation can be proud that there are folks in their midst doing such a good job of welcoming newcomers.

My only (very minor) complaint was about finding the childcare room for my son. The church building is enormous, and I entered through a downstairs door adjacent to the parking lot, about 20 minutes before the service began. There was no way to tell how to get to childcare (or Sunday school) from there. I flagged down two women who were downstairs on other church business, and one was very kind and led me through the many hallways and over many staircases to get to the childcare room. Once there, the room was welcoming, ready for children, and staffed with a teenager (an additional adult came later). There was a sign-in sheet where I was able to leave information about myself and my son. Still, finding the room in the first place was daunting–and I’ve been to this church before.

However, overall it was a very positive church visit and a spiritually deepening Sunday morning. I’d go back if I were in the Boston area on a Sunday again.

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Thursday, March 5th, 2009

I’m part of a team of volunteer chaplains offering spiritual care at Speare Memorial Hospital. Today I went to one of our quarterly meetings to reflect on chaplaincy and build our skills as spiritual caregivers to people in the hospital. I was asked to share an opening prayer, and here it is:

Please join me in prayer. We gather together today in the name of the Loving Spirit who holds us all in its embrace, who sets our boundaries and opens them up for us, whose Presence relieves anxiety, who keeps its promises, who is our everlasting Friend and Companion:

Help us to be a healing presence to those we serve here in the hospital. Help the patients here know their own strength and find their own path toward healing. We ask that your balm flow through our words and our touch to strengthen the spirits and bodies of those who rest here.

Remind us, Spirit, that our own ministry comes from our own brokenness. Help us remember the times we have needed healing and a comforting presence. Be with us in our own broken places, that we may find our own help as we seek to help others. Help us approach patients in sympathy and fellow-feeling, and not out of feelings of superiority or pity.

Help us always to be better stewards of your gifts and better heralds of your message, as we embody your ministry and help carry your love to a world in need. We ask your blessings on our work here in the hospital and our ministries at large. Amen.

This prayer was intended to help honor the work we all do as ministers, with help from a sustaining source, while also acknowledging that healing happens within human patients and with the help of human caregivers.

If you find yourself in the hospital, I encourage you to have a chaplain visit. All the ministers and priests doing this work are respectful of your spiritual tradition and your beliefs (even if they don’t include God, or are grounded in a non-Christian tradition). They are there to minister to you in the way you need, seeing you as a whole person and not just a collection of symptoms. I have found my work as a volunteer chaplain very rewarding and fulfilling.

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General Assembly

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Today I made housing reservations for General Assembly, the annual meeting of the Unitarian Universalist Association. This year it will be held from June 24 through 28 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

This year’s GA will be especially exciting, since we’ll be electing a new president of the Association. The Rev. Peter Morales and the Rev. Laurel Hallman are the candidates. GA is always an opportunity to have fun, meet Unitarian Universalists from all over the country, and gather ideas for expanding the work of our fellowship.

Even if you can’t go to Utah, take a look at the candidates’ websites. Starr King Fellowship has three votes to cast in this election, which can be cast either in person in Salt Lake or absentee. The two candidates are very different and present different goals for our association.

I attended GA the last time it was in Salt Lake City, in 1999. I was part of the Young Adult Caucus and was a delegate for First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Salt Lake is a beautiful city and the locals were very welcoming. On such a snowy day, it’s nice to think of going somewhere warm and friendly–even if I have to wait until June.

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