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Odyssey & Milestones, Part I: Looking Back Rev. Paul Beckel First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org May 21, 2006
What we call a beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot
It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. Albert Camus
READING “Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters” by Portia Nelson
Chapter 1
GATHERING SONG How Can I Keep from Singing #108 MESSAGE - EXILEA man who had been taking tennis lessons spoke to his instructor with some frustration. He said, “Look, I’ve been listening to you for ten years, but I don’t seem to have learned much. What’s going on? Shouldn’t I be a better player now...with 10 years of experience?” His instructor responded, “Yes, except you don’t really have 10 years of experience. It’s more like you have had one year of experience, ten times.”
On May 25, 1996, I was ordained into the Unitarian Universalist ministry by the congregation in Bloomington, Illinois, where I had just completed my ministerial internship. Ten years (and ten pounds) later, I have to ask myself, have I learned anything? In my continuing role as a practitioner of religion, and a student of history, group dynamics, and the ways of the human heart, have I accumulated any significant experience?
Or perhaps I should be interpreting the tennis lessons story from the other side. In addition to asking whether I’ve been a good student, I must ask if I’ve been a good instructor. That is, have I shared with my congregations 10 redundant years of UU 101, or something beyond this?
Ministry is supposed to involve both comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. One of ministry’s great challenges (I’m sure you experience this as well) is that when you try to guide people along a middle path, they misinterpret the signals -- the afflicted often take it wrong and get all the more afflicted, and the comfortable take it wrong and get all the more comfortable.
A couple of other common phrases used to define ministry are: “Ministry is speaking the truth with love,” and, “Ministry is speaking truth to power.”
And finally: “Ministry is all that we do, together.” As I speak about some lessons of 10 years of ordained ministry, if I really believe that “Ministry is all that we do, together...” you might wonder why I’m speaking mostly about myself rather than championing what we’ve accomplished together...and the flurry of individual acts ministry you all provide to one another and to the larger community. Try to see through this dilemma to recognize that, though I’m now sharing with you my odyssey, I’m able to see this story of my ministry only through the loving mirror that is you. To be that honest mirror, then, has been an important part of your ministry to me.
I put on the cover of today’s order of service that this is Odyssey/Milestones part I. What I had in mind was that this week I would talk about looking back. Next week I’ll do part II on looking forward -- not for me, but more generally -- what can it mean to have plans and goals as an organization, as individuals, and as a society?
*** Exile, initiation, and return. Exile, initiation, and return. This, according to Mircea Eliade, is a root pattern seen within religions around the world, and throughout cultures primitive and modern. Exile, initiation, and return.
Let’s start with some intellectual honesty. I could say that I appreciate Eliade’s descriptions of the religious journey because they make sense -- that is, his analyses are internally coherent and provide a rational explanation for the observable evidence. Or, I could say that I appreciate his work because he was a giant among religious historians of the 20th century. Or, I could admit that there are intangible, coincidental, personal experiences which draw me to Eliade’s work.
Our religious journeys are influenced by our always imperfect syntheses of feelings, relationships, and experiences -- conscious and unconscious. So, I’m undoubtedly inclined to appreciate Eliade in part because of some serendipitous connections to him within my own journey. One day in college as I was idly perusing the bookshelves in the office of my English professor, I pulled out an autobiography of Eliade. I had no idea who he was or why the book called to me, but I was certainly taken by this Romanian scholar who had devoted his life to the study of religious myth, symbol, and ritual throughout the world, and had become editor of the 16-volume Encyclopedia of Religion. I could not have guessed that ten years later I would be a student where Eliade had taught, studying for ministry in a religious tradition I had not yet heard of...and that I’d be living in the apartment beneath Eliade’s elderly widow, Christina.
Christina was a unique character. She chain-smoked in bed, which caused Jane and I some consternation below. But we couldn’t argue with her because we couldn’t understand half of what she said. Every time we saw her she would effusively cry out about how glad she was to see us, and how kind if we let her see baby Rick, and how great it was even to hear him crying at night because it reminded her that she was not alone.
But how did I get to seminary already? I’ve gotten ahead of myself.
I grew up on a farm in northern Minnesota. My mother, Mary, was a nurse; my father, Paul, a dairy inspector. The farm was a hobby, but a pretty intense one, with cattle, sheep, and pigs... and 100 acres of pasture, swamp, and overgrown Christmas trees where I ran and spent many hours alone with my dogs. I disliked feeding and cleaning up after the livestock but look back on this now with some fondness. The sheep would periodically escape across Highway 71 to the golf course (once they even interrupted a tournament that my dad and my brother Jake were playing in). I got used to the necessity of butchering, but I never got over watching animals freeze to death. Even at 40-below zero, these sad and expensive incidents seemed avoidable, if only our facilities had been sufficiently maintained.
My mother modeled a stoic endurance for things as they were -- delegating to 9 children and hoping that we’d come to appreciate the productivity of our work in that enormous garden, which, along with the animals, pretty much fed us.
My father modeled a relentless pursuit of alternatives. For example, he would investigate all 44 possible ways to heat our home. I don’t specifically remember that there were 44 ways, but I do remember that number for the morning -- in the course of his many years of experimenting -- when my brothers and I woke up in a 44 degree basement. My father also invented and marketed fiberglass septic tanks, weed control systems for ponds, and water cups for cows. A very independent thinker, he was always a strong advocate FOR acid rain. In the 1970s he built a passive solar envelope for our house out of 2x4s and plastic sheeting. He bought things at farm auctions and had them welded together in an attempt to create electricity from wind. Last summer, at age 79, he finally got someone to install one of his wind generation systems.
Relentless. The “Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters” captures not his life but any one day of his life -- and probably mine too. There’s no doubt that I now carry some of his most aggravating characteristics into my ministry. I can only hope that -- in the long run -- they’ll be of some use.
Life in the country helped me to understand that we are subject to forces beyond us -- both natural forces like the weather ...and social forces like the price of commodities. Much of my puzzling over life since then has been an attempt to come to terms with these forces: how to accept the things we cannot change, how to change the things we can, and how to know the difference.
I learned that for humans and other animals, life is full of both blessings and trials which we do nothing to deserve. And so, in the tradition of the American Midwest, I became determined to thwart the cosmos whenever it got in my way. I learned to destroy weeds, kill the flies swarming our barn, and remove lamb’s tails and pig’s testicles...in an attempt to re-direct nature. I also learned that machines could temporarily bring order out of chaos, though eventually they too would always break down. For several years I had a barn whitewashing business. This meant that in return for my constant frustration with equipment failure, I made about 5 times the money than my peers took in at the A&W.
*** Two themes filled my life from about age 10-20: freedom, and open space. In third grade I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I still remember closing that book -- that moment of epiphany. The only words that I had for it then was that I wanted to be a writer. But there was more that I didn’t yet have words for: what I really wanted, was to tell the world to go to hell (figuratively, of course). A bit of a ragamuffin myself, living on a river which fed into the Mississippi, I identified with Huck, who was warned repeatedly by his community to follow the unwritten moral codes of propriety and convention. Huck, of course, finds himself the unwitting accomplice to a runaway slave. His moment of revelation still sticks with me: All right I’ll go to hell. I’ll steal Jim out of slavery, and if I can think of something worse I’ll do that too, cuz as long as I’m in and in for good, I might as well go whole hog!!!
I was a happy-go-lucky child. I was not cynical; I had nothing to be bitter about. I didn’t want to tell the world to go to hell because I hated humanity, but because I loved it. Mark Twain, of course, was telling a parable to expose hypocrisy. I couldn’t have articulated it then, but a part of me knew that Jesus’ storytelling had a similar purpose.
*** My dad took me hitchhiking at age 12 and then I started taking little trips of my own around central Minnesota. By the summer of my 16th year a friend and I were hitchhiking through northern Wisconsin. (If any of you remember buzzing through Ashland 26 years ago past a couple of blondies, I’ve finally caught up to you!) The next summer I had my first encounter with the state patrol for hitchhiking outside of Madison on I-94. Later encounters involved officers in Florida, and Wyoming.
Hitchhiking was not just a geographical adventure. It was a grand education in psychology. I got threatened and propositioned a few times, but for the most part my journeys involved quietly listening to peoples’ stories and the fascinating contradictions they spoke with such passion. Often riding for hours at a time I would hear someone’s whole life story, and I would begin to recognize how everyone’s unique twist on reality made at least some kind of sense -- within its own framework of experience.
I attended a Catholic high school seminary, where I experienced a very clear call -- directly from God -- to use my gifts in his service. This may seem odd now because I don’t believe in that God. But it was even more odd then because I knew that I was not being called to the Catholic priesthood. And, as far as I knew, that was the only legitimate religion available. (I will probably always take pokes at the Catholic church. After all, this is what they taught me to do at my Jesuit college: question authority, hold yourself and your institutions accountable, demand coherence between teaching and action.)[1]
I graduated from the Katholiek Universiteit, in Belgium, then moved to Minneapolis where I put my philosophy degree to work as a property manager. In a few intense years I got married, had a child and got divorced -- exhilarating, painful, and humbling experiences to temper my heretofore highly idealistic attitudes.
In the midst of some pretty intense disillusionment, a newspaper ad caught my eye, announcing a meeting of the American Humanist Association. I didn’t know what a humanist was but it sounded vaguely like something I might be. I went and listened as the group discussed how self-contradictory the bible is. I agreed with pretty much everything they were talking about. But I also thought that everything they were talking about was irrelevant.
INTERLUDE INITIATIONThe meeting of the Humanist association was held in the Dietrich Room[2] of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis. I left that meeting disappointed but curious. I picked up a flyer in the church foyer. It described Unitarian Universalism as a tradition which affirmed the individual religious quest while providing a supportive community.
So I went back to the Dietrich Room to attend a young adult gathering. It was 1990, Earth Day, a day of hope and renewal. The group watched slides taken by a guy who had just come back from eastern Europe where he’d found himself in the midst of huge freedom rallies and people tearing down the Iron Curtain both with their hands and with their collective voices. Across the room I saw Jane Brunt.
The next Sunday, the young adult group was playing volleyball on a sand court. Jane says I knocked her down. I don’t remember that. But I do remember asking her out to ice cream. Before long we were traveling to Illinois to visit her parents, Mike and Mary Jane. I even met her minister, David Robins, who was serving the congregation in Bloomington (he still does today after 20-some years).
The young adult group in Minneapolis became my primary support system. Over the course of a few years, four people left that group to attend seminary. But as essential as that social group was to my sanity and hope, I was equally drawn to Sunday worship led by Rev. Khoren Arisian. Khoren preached a religious humanism that I had been longing to hear. His focus was on the ideals of the American experiment: freedom, democracy, religious pluralism. What did these things really mean, and what would it take to put them into practice?[3]
When Khoren wasn’t preaching there was an incredible music program. A 30 or 40 piece in-house volunteer orchestra, which would play for the whole hour on Sunday morning...no one would say a thing, and they’d call that worship. Yes! Another Sunday a couple played spoons on pots and pans. It wasn’t a whole hour this time but it was outrageous and outstanding. It gave me the opportunity to ask “what makes music beautiful?”...at the very same time that I was experiencing it as beautiful.
Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder came to speak about her work to ensure women’s civil rights. Workshops were held to train non-violent protestors to respond to the gang from Kansas who were blocking access to abortion clinics. “Yes,” I said to myself -- “yes, this is a living religion in practice.”
My son Jonathan was 3. I brought him to the Religious Education program which was addressing the topic of “death” with kids of all ages through developmentally appropriate curricula. I quickly got involved as a teacher, choir member, and a leader of the young adult group.
At the time I was working a property manager. I worked at one property with 1300 units, mostly low income families, disabled and elderly individuals, Vietnamese and Ethiopian refugees. Later I managed a 400 unit upscale suburban property. I didn’t know it at the time but property management with these diverse communities was great preparation for ministry. Budgeting and bookkeeping for multimillion dollar properties, supervising dozens of staff, marketing, troubleshooting, and community building. Every summer we’d have giant barbeques, and for Thanksgiving we’d cook turkey for a couple hundred people. Just as in ministry, I got to test the boundaries of appropriateness when Paul Wellstone wanted to use the community room for a campaign stop (I still wear the “Paul” button on my jacket).
As a property manager I lived on-site. I had a normal work-week, but I couldn’t walk down the hall without encountering clients and reminders of work to be done. I groused about this sometimes but I was pretty used to this kind of intimacy between life-and-work after farming, and 4 years at a boarding high school.
*** After Jane and I were married we made a deal. We were both certain that we were not doing the work that we would want to do for the rest of our lives. But neither of us could settle on an alternative. So we promised each other that whomever figured it out first...would get to go first.
One day I told her that I wanted to be a minister. She was skeptical. She called her mom. Her mom calmed her fears. After some serious negotiating, it came down to this: I could go to seminary if it was in Chicago, which was only a couple of hours from her parents; we would have a child as soon as possible so that this child could spend at least his or her first few years near his or her grandparents; I would do my internship in Bloomington, at Jane’s home church, and during the internship we would live with her parents. Amazingly, this all worked out.
These seminary years saw some significant emotional, financial, and familial disruptions, but I’m going to skip ahead to my first congregation, SouthWest UU, which had started just a few years earlier in the Southwest suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. SouthWest UU had very few assets. We had about 65 members and met Sundays in a dingy middle school music room. There were benefits, however, to not having a building. In addition to endless classrooms and an entire gym for after-service playtime, we had incredible flexibility in worship, with no expectations that anything would be done the same way twice. This left a great deal of room to make mistakes and experiment.
But there were downsides to not having a building. We had no visible presence in our community; we couldn’t leave anything out from one week to the next; we couldn’t do anything that required more than a few minutes of set-up; and we were constantly searching for properly zoned, affordable property.
In the meantime our 900 square foot home contained my office. This had some advantages since Rick and Ben were preschoolers. But once we had a guy come in to repair the office copier. After a very long attempt at fixing the ancient behemoth, he apologetically asked if he could use our tiny bathroom. Of course -- I said -- except that Rick was in there taking a bath. But the repair guy said he just couldn’t wait. Several minutes later he came out very red in the face and Rick was saying, “man it stinks in here!”
Another drawback to not having a building was that we would have to beg and borrow to hold gatherings outside of Sunday mornings. Once we held a dinner and a canvass-kickoff show at a Methodist church. We very carefully cleaned up after ourselves, but apparently the janitor found a couple of beer cans in the trash the next day. We were asked not to come back.
We became dependent on our artificially cheap rent at the middle school. So after a few years, when the rent suddenly tripled, we weren’t prepared and faced a bit of a crisis. I learned that it’s not healthy for an organization to get used to living on the cheap.
But whether a congregation has a building or not...or no matter what we have...I’ve learned that we tend to take it for granted. I remember one child who came back to church after having visited her grandparents’ church the prior week. How was it, I asked. “It was OK,” she said, “but they didn’t even have a gym!”
*** When people hear that I’m a minister they often have preconceptions. I once overheard from across a waiting room a conversation between Jane and another woman. “And what does your husband do?” “He’s a minister.” “O he is! O that’s WONDERFUL, I just LOVE Christians.” I busied myself with Ben while she tried to wiggle out of that one.
I’ve never even tried to keep up a respectable appearance around town 24 hours a day. I was somewhat concerned, however, the night I stumbled across my neighbors’ front lawn and puked in their bushes. I can explain. One of my church members who flew his own plane wanted to take me out for a ride and I was thrilled. We tooled around northeast Ohio for hours. I love seeing the things I thought I knew -- from a new perspective. But there was a flu bug going around, and when we landed, everything seemed to come together at once -- the noise, the changes in elevation. I waited and waited for it to pass, not feeling safe to drive home. But finally I had to try...and I made it to within a couple of blocks of home before I had to pull over and literally crawl out of my car. You know the rest of the story. Fortunately it was dark. If the neighborhood was watching, they apparently kept it to themselves.
Our odysseys are journeys through unknown spaces, for unknown purposes, during which we are often drawn to rocky shores of extremes. In the UU ministry, the alluring appeal of opposites include: o The rational vs. the experiential o Alliance vs. individuality o Caring for individuals vs. non-attachment to their decisions o Caring for institutions vs. non-attachment to their outcomes o Passionate minorities vs. passionate majorities vs. meek minorities vs. dis-interested majorities o Being a real person with preferences and talents and weaknesses vs. trying to be an invisible facilitator o Putting my whole self into ministry vs. not letting my own needs and agendas interfere with what is best for the congregation o Giving too much direction vs. not enough
All of these opposites can be seen as disastrous points of no return...or in an equally useful metaphor, they can be understood to balance one another, support one another, even prove the importance of one another. Consider the chalice and the flame, the yin and the yang, and not least of all the Paul and the Jane -- a collaboration of opposites in which the other comes alive.
INTERLUDE RETURN On June 3rd, we’re going to ordain Julie Stoneberg into the Unitarian Universalist ministry. Julie was our ministerial intern last year and she is now serving the congregation in Thunder Bay, Ontario. When I say “we” are going to ordain her, I mean you. The authority to ordain in our tradition exists within the congregation; it does not come down from a hierarchy, or from other ministers. This ordination is going to be a bit unconventional because there are actually two congregations who have decided to ordain Julie -- both Wausau and Thunder Bay. The ceremony will be held half way in between us, in Duluth.
Realistically, I know you won’t all be there. Still, I really hope you’ll consider it -- the Duluth congregation is providing free overnight home hospitality. It’s a powerful experience to be a part of this hands-on act of empowerment. If you can’t make it, please do sign the document which we’ll have up here today and next week. It says, “As members and friends of First Universalist Unitarian Church of Wausau, Wisconsin, we join together with Lakehead Unitarian Fellowship of Thunder Bay, Ontario, celebrating the ministry of Julie Stoneberg by act of ordination on June 3, 2006.
This may be the first ordination that First UU Wausau has ever conducted. Julie was our first intern, and none of the ministers who served this church -- going back 136 years! -- was ordained here.[4]
*** I watched the video of my ordination for the first time this week. It was a happy reminder of the many people who officially wished me well -- Methodist, Presbyterian, and Disciples of Christ clergy along with the Bloomington congregation. A letter was read from Fr. Mike Van Sloan, my high school coach and biology teacher, who I admired deeply. I wasn’t sure how he was going to respond when I told him that I was going to become a UU minister. So it meant a great deal to me that he conveyed an endorsement of my ordination by the entire Crosier order, saying, “Paul’s gift is to ask disquieting questions.... He is respectful of institutions but not confined by them....”
Watching this ten-year-old video, I heard new meanings in the old words. Jenny King pointed out that I would take a bit of the Bloomington congregation with me wherever I might go in ministry. This was important to her because she used to live in Cleveland. Then she read a letter written by Lori Torriero, a member of my Cleveland congregation. How could I have imagined then how important Lori, and all of the people in Cleveland, would become in my life?
I would take a little bit of the Bloomington congregation with me wherever I might go. What a great reminder of the bonds within our association of UU congregations, lateral bonds between equal partners. Touching one another in ways we might never have guessed. Now in Duluth and Thunder Bay there’s a little part of us. Next week when I speak about the journey going forward, I’ll include my hope that a strengthening of bonds and collaboration between ourselves and our neighboring congregations will be part of our future.
Congregations like Stevens Point -- where Rev. Don Wheat still periodically preaches. Don was another mentor of mine; he served Third Unitarian in Chicago for about 30 years before he retired. At my ordination Don mentioned that John Dietrich apparently found himself depressed by his own inadequacy after every sermon he delivered. And then there was Don’s unforgettable line about how preaching is like being married to a nymphomaniac. Just when you think you’re finished...you have to start all over again.
Today I’m wearing Bob Crumpler’s socks. Bob was the supervisor of my student hospital chaplaincy. A week after our class completed Bob’s incredibly intense and intimate internship, he suddenly died. I still hear Bob’s pithy observations about ministry, in his mischievous Carolina drawl: o If you get close to the pain, you’re going to get splashed; o Things are usually what they seem, and/or exactly the opposite; o You can be angry, but that’s not going to change reality; o When you’re up to your eyeballs in alligators is no time to reflect on the existential meaning of alligatorism
In keeping with Crumpler’s sense of humor and transparency, his wife held a rummage sale, laying everything out for everyone to see. I still have his socks.
Much of the music that I selected for my ordination was inspired by Jeffery Tidwell, a classmate who died of AIDS just before he graduated. The songs at Jeffrey’s memorial service included I Wish I Knew How, and How Can I Keep from Singing. I wrote a responsive reading based on this song which we’ll use today as our benediction. At my ordination four people were involved in leading that reading: Betty Semlak, the Director of Religious Education, who has since died of cancer. Lois White, a good friend and classmate, who has since died of cancer. (A piece of Lois’s ministry carries on whenever we do that ritual where we hold hands and recognize our frailties being held in the loving embrace of our neighbor’s strengths.)
Francis Irvin was also part of that reading. Francis has to be in his 90s by now, and I understand he’s in ill health. He was Jane’s favorite RE teacher when she was a kid. Even very recently he was continuing to advocate for racial justice, provide hands-on support for neighborhood youth programs, and traveling segments of the old Oregon Trail. The fourth reader was Andy Schneider, then a 7th grader whose RE class I taught during my internship. I have no idea where Andy is now. I can only hope that, since he’s about the age I was during my exile, he’ll retain a spark of his UU religious education.
Finally, my internship supervisor, David Robins. At my ordination David mentioned some of my qualities which would come in handy in ministry. He said with some regret that the UU ministry has had a long tradition of noble loners. He described my style, by contrast, as “Why do something alone when you can get a bunch of people to do it together?” He described worship services which I had led that year which he said “were developed the way some people make chili. Just go to the cupboard and throw everything into the pot.”
I regret to say that I don’t think my ministry is much like that any more. I’d hate to think that that noble loner thing is inevitable. I suppose this is one of the values of going back to look at old photos or videos or wedding vows -- it can remind us of what we were once capable of, or inspired by, and cause us to re-dedicate ourselves to those ideals.
David also referred to my penchant for building. And he reminded me that, while it is important to build both tangibles and intangibles...to build bridges to the kingdom which already exists within our midst...to build into our lives times and spaces for the care of the soul... that it is equally important to minister to those who have been broken in the building.
David admitted that while he admired my tendency to immerse myself into whatever I did, it caused him some worry. He told of a chicken and a pig, walking along the road on a sunny day. When they came upon a billboard for the local diner showing a steaming plate of ham and eggs, the chicken beamed up with pride and said, “doesn’t it feel great to be a part of all that?” The pig replied with some consternation, “Sure. But for you, it’s a contribution. For me, it’s a commitment.” David knew of my tendency to go whole hog.
*** In conclusion, I return to the beginning. To the ones whose lives have been most intimately affected by this work and the intensity that I bring to it, while not always enjoying the benefits that I receive as the one immersed in these stories and lives and possibilities and hopes.
My ordination began with Jane lighting the chalice, saying these words: “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. May we remember with gratitude those who have lit the flame of hope within us.”
How had I forgotten all of this? How had I forgotten that just half an hour earlier our newborn Benjamin had pooped all the way through his special new outfit and that it was such a mess that Jane had to throw away the whole thing? How had I forgotten that Ben, now 12 days old, had started crying during the ceremony, and so my sister Patty had brought him to Jane to nurse there, facing the entire congregation? How had I forgotten that she then handed him to his grandmother and grandfather? And how could I have predicted that ten years after we moved out of their home, that this week they would moved in with us?!
Yes, some of these spiral journeys are coming around to completion. Jonathan is 18. He has his associate’s degree in computer studies, and a full time job in tech-support. Jane’s finally getting her turn in the deal; after 18 years in Nursing she will soon graduate from Stout with a degree in school counseling.
Oh may I never forget those who continue to kindle the flame within me. And may my life never lack such glorious surprises.
CLOSING HYMN Voice Still and Small #391 BENEDICTION How can I keep from singing, when to sing is to be radically free? I open my heart and, unbounded, my spirit erupts with every feeling; my inhibitions melt away.
And yet I sing of patience, discipline, and endurance. My song, so free, speaks of responsibility and commitment.
How can I keep from singing? With untrained voice, I stumble forward, self-conscious, vulnerable, unsure of ever finding the "right" melody.
A pristine beauty lies beneath my sounds – nature's sounds – that none can mute. The song itself is my strength and courage.
Today my tune, my lyrics, might seem incompatible with yesterday's song. But the chords and scales of yet-unknown generations and cultures call and call to be sung.
The spirit of the song rings across human boundaries, symbols, signs and words. The spirit of the song is universal. In chaos, the sound of longing for peace.
Can I keep from singing MY song, unique to this time and place and the circumstances which brought me here? Can I keep from singing my SONGS: diverse parts whose inter-related whole may never be known except in the singing?
I sing to sing with a friend, and with many. Perhaps I sing with souls unmet, assembled somewhere in common purpose. Together we raise one collective voice – to echo throughout the universe.
[2] After John Dietrich, a founding figure in Religious Humanism as minister there in the 1930s.
[4] Earlier in Universalist history, ordination was done by State Convention. So our archives do show that in 1915, when this building was dedicated, we hosted “The Fourth Joint Convention of the Unitarian and Universalist Churches of Wisconsin.” The program for that convention indicates that the Convention ordained Merton Aldridge, of Markesan, and Alber Altenbern, of Mukwonago, “into the Christian ministry.” |