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Apr. 1st, 2007 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaMost churchgoers celebrated Palm Sunday today. At our church, April Fool's Day was marked by a service entitled "Holy Laughter." Fill in your own favorite Unitarian joke here; I'm not sure if all of them came up, because I left with the children at Religious Education time, but certainly a good many of them did.
(For example: one of our ministers - the painfully earnest one - answered the question "How many UUs does it take to change a light bulb?" with a perfectly straight delivery of: "We choose not to make a statement either in favor of, or against, the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey, you have found that light bulbs work for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb. Present it next month at our annual Light Bulb Sunday Service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life, and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.")
Michael, in his role as church treasurer, was slated to give a brief talk wrapping up the annual stewardship (i.e., giving money to the church) campaign. As he walked to the lectern, the organist broke into "Hey, Big Spender." (Everyone who took part in the service, it turns out, had their own musical motif. Michael was the first to find out.)
But mostly I wanted to post about the hymns. We sang "Coffee, Coffee, Coffee," of course; even at a UU church, some things are sacred. ("Coffee the communion of our Uni-Union, Symbol of our sacred ground, our one necessity. Feel the holy power at our coffee hour, Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.") There was a lovely solo of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Unitarian," as the anthem. And we also sang one that was new to me:
Sung to the tune of "Once to Every Man and Nation":
Not to our denomination
comes a moment to decide:
Every question is kept open,
Never do we take a side.
Hesitation is a virtue,
Now is not the time to choose
Safety is in indecision,
Never win, but never lose.
Circumstances alter cases
One's poison another's meat.
Since we are not sure which we are
It is better not to eat.
We are independent thinkers,
We are not amidst the throng;
Although we cannot be in the right,
We are never in the wrong!
- Christopher Raible
There's just enough truth in that one to keep it from being entirely funny. Which is a good thing: the role of a church, as the saying goes, is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I wouldn't want to go to a church that just let me feel smugly in the right all the time.
Fun service. I kind of wish that it had been my week off from teaching, except then I would have missed my co-teacher's insanely fun and messy lesson on the wonders of sand and soil.
(For example: one of our ministers - the painfully earnest one - answered the question "How many UUs does it take to change a light bulb?" with a perfectly straight delivery of: "We choose not to make a statement either in favor of, or against, the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey, you have found that light bulbs work for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb. Present it next month at our annual Light Bulb Sunday Service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life, and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.")
Michael, in his role as church treasurer, was slated to give a brief talk wrapping up the annual stewardship (i.e., giving money to the church) campaign. As he walked to the lectern, the organist broke into "Hey, Big Spender." (Everyone who took part in the service, it turns out, had their own musical motif. Michael was the first to find out.)
But mostly I wanted to post about the hymns. We sang "Coffee, Coffee, Coffee," of course; even at a UU church, some things are sacred. ("Coffee the communion of our Uni-Union, Symbol of our sacred ground, our one necessity. Feel the holy power at our coffee hour, Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.") There was a lovely solo of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Unitarian," as the anthem. And we also sang one that was new to me:
Sung to the tune of "Once to Every Man and Nation":
Not to our denomination
comes a moment to decide:
Every question is kept open,
Never do we take a side.
Hesitation is a virtue,
Now is not the time to choose
Safety is in indecision,
Never win, but never lose.
Circumstances alter cases
One's poison another's meat.
Since we are not sure which we are
It is better not to eat.
We are independent thinkers,
We are not amidst the throng;
Although we cannot be in the right,
We are never in the wrong!
- Christopher Raible
There's just enough truth in that one to keep it from being entirely funny. Which is a good thing: the role of a church, as the saying goes, is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I wouldn't want to go to a church that just let me feel smugly in the right all the time.
Fun service. I kind of wish that it had been my week off from teaching, except then I would have missed my co-teacher's insanely fun and messy lesson on the wonders of sand and soil.
