A paper presented before colleagues in an intentional study group
“Universalism:
how music has challenged us
in times of transformation”
(c) 2017, David Carl Olson
a paper presented to the Fraters of the Wayside Inn
January 24, 2017
My dear Fraters, with deep respect for Yoruba cosmology, I ask us to tend to three generations present in this sacred room.
Let us perceive the generation of the dead, those who have sat around this table and added their spirit to this place, this community. May we hear what the dead demand of us: that we honor their legacy: that we are mindful of their contributions by which we are privileged; and that we live our lives to hold their vision, not without criticism, but with a generous Love.
Let us hear the generation of the unborn, those not yet among us and yet whose place we are creating by our labor. May we allow the unborn to demand of us, to challenge us to create the world which will welcome them, which will invite them to lives of freedom and creativity, which will even guarantee them a Unitarian Universalism where they may live their own full lives, where they may know an eternal and all-conquering Love.
Let us know the generation of my siblings, our generation of fraters and sorors of many genders. We demand of each other that we may be about the transformation of this world; that we may use our extensive capacity to reveal and promote the good, the beautiful and the true; and even in this little world of the Fraters of the Wayside Inn, may we be about building the culture of universalism which will meet the challenges of this day, the challenges of a redeeming Love.
Three generations, all present in this room, in this moment. The dead, the unborn, the living. All present for the harmonious processes of life, all present for balance and integration, all bound in honor and in Love.
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The Movement for Black Lives held a national convening in Cleveland in 2015, and at that convening a group of Unitarian Universalists established the Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism (BLUU) and created an organizing collective. That collective has been organizing Black leadership among Unitarian Universalists, providing a series of four workshops at General Assembly in 2016, along with a BLUU Room, (e.g., an explicitly Black space for worship and meditation away from “the White gaze”). They have encouraged congregations to offer spaces to Black organizers responding to community needs—our parish halls and classrooms, kitchens and sanctuaries—“safe spaces” for Black people and radical organizing culture; spaces where White people are willing to “step back,” to practice not being in control, and to learn humility and generosity; and the organizing collective is now working on a national convening of UUs this year in March in New Orleans. Until recently, one of the members of the organizing collective has been Frater Carlton Elliott Smith.
The first action of the Organizing Collective was the articulation of the “Seven Principles of Black Lives.” In a way, they restated the principles of our Association from a more communitarian perspective, describing a more multi-racial, multi-ethnic and class-diverse communal understanding. These principles deserve a richer consideration than can be given in one paper; but I will refer among them to Principle #7–“360 degree vision: We honor the past struggles and wisdom from our elders. The work we do today builds the foundations of movements of tomorrow. We consider our mark on future generations.”
You may hear in these words the Yoruba cosmology I addressed at the beginning of this talk. What strikes me is the relativism of 360 degrees. 360 degrees could be the full circle that is seen when one rotates entirely around one point—which might be an individual’s 360 degree vision. Or 360 degrees may be encouraging us to think about the circle, about the 360 degrees of vision that can be accomplished when all around the circle are able to share the fullness of their own vision; when the community’s vision, together, can make up for the blind spots, the missing perspective, the shadow side, as it were, that any single individual may have.
360 degree vision is a call to practice what in the movement nowadays is called “step up/step back,” a practice of asking all people to “step up” into leadership. We understand that communitarian and progressive movements are not leader-less, but leader-full. This theological anthropology affirms that each of us has a contribution to make in leading, that all of us have innate worth and dignity, that all our voices and even all our lives matter. But to “step back” asks those of us who are often the ones first to speak, the ones who assume leadership, the ones who expect to be listened to, instead to be quiet, to learn to listen, to consider the perspective of others. In this way, White people and men and others often in control may experience and even admit that we are part of something greater than ourselves, that we are better when the voice of the whole circle, and its vision, guides us in the choices we make.
I had an experience of leading worship this year that speaks of the challenge to me and to many White people of navigating a 360 degree vision. A small group of members at First Unitarian Church of Baltimore advocates for three seasonal services a year. We mark the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring in April, we gather the First Fruits of Harvest in August, and we prepare for Winter in December. I find the festival services to be a time with rich personal reflection, which I see as s a very useful practice, combined with a general tendency to try to do too much in a single service. I’ve worked on my relationship with the Fest leaders so that I now consult with them on the Spring festival, leave them to their own devices in August, and try to work closely with them in preparing for December.
This year, I challenged us to think about “stepping back.” I asked that we consider whether we could shape the service around the stories and poetry offered by four Black members of our congregation who had “stepped up”; that the six or so White folk in the effort might show up and support Black leadership, but “step back” from usual patterns and learn. I hoped that we could learn together they ways we might develop a place of trust, and begin to embody shared leadership. Could we become White people stepping to the edges; Black folk at the center describing a 360 degree vision of Baltimore and our congregation; all of us learning together?
I was surprised by the reactions with one moment of the service. To the beat of a djembe—a West African goblet-shaped drum—we practiced a “people’s megaphone” where everything the speaker said was imitated by the other people in the church. It went something like this (and I’ll ask you to join in): Principle 3 (Principle 3) Spiritual growth (Spiritual growth) is directly tied (is directly tied) to our ability (to our ability) to embrace (to embrace) our whole selves (our whole selves).
This was followed by two players—a Black man and a Blacker woman—reciting the explanation of the principle, she standing at the lectern, and he dancing down the center aisle: “A principled struggle must exist in a positive environment. We must be honest with one another by embracing direct, loving communication and acknowledgment of all that we are and all that we hope to be.”
At this point, the drumming ended.
The four people who created this moment, who led this moment, were satisfied and smiling. It had energy. It was unlike our usual way of being in the Sanctuary. It felt like it were their own. It was another view in our shared culture.
The people who were used to editing the script and refining the festivals were not so sure. “Will people be able to hear?” they wondered. “Is there too much drumming?” one asked. “Is it simply acoustically too loud?” All appropriate questions. But did we need to start with the questions? With the criticism? Could we not first have said, “Thank you”?
I believe that we were transgressing a cultural norm at that moment. “Our church” is a church where drumming, when it happens, takes place during a moment before the service begins. It is heartbeat drumming that greets the worshipper, brings them to a quiet place, slows the heartbeat and invites breath and silent contemplation. To use a drum in a different way—that’s not our culture.
The good news: the first step in group intercultural development is recognizing that the group has a culture.
If we were to describe the culture of Unitarian Universalism, we might look at some of its cultural artifacts. I will consider the hymnals we have published.
In the 1930s, the Universalist General Convention and the American Unitarian Association jointly published Hymns of the Spirit. Before we became one people, we walked together. We created religious education curriculum together. Our groups of laity worked with one another. And we published a hymnal together and discovered that we could share a cultural space. The old red hymnal with its sixteen orders of service, its collections of readings and prayers and even service music, shaped us as we moved to become one people, forming one culture.
In the 1960s, we were anxious—and excited!—to show that our merger had indeed created something new; and so the blue hymnal, Hymns for the Celebration of Life was published in 1964. We published a thoroughly humanistic hymnal, making no mention of prayer in this instance, but encouraging experimentation in worship, with new settings for old hymns, new poetry for old tunes, and even expanding our sources to include Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist readings. We imagined that this was, like us, a religious artifact for the future.
Fortunately, the broader culture humbled us. We learned that our hymn practice and our hymnal were largely inconsistent with the ways the culture and we were beginning to change. We were growing in our respect and reverence for the earth. We were shedding the need to name the divine with male pronouns. And we could no longer accept the use of patriarchal terms to represent the fullness of humanity. Rev. Roger Fritts cited these examples from the blue hymnal in a sermon four years ago:
The Mind of Man
The Man of Integrity
Man-Making
The Man of Life Upright
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
Our Friend, Our Brother, Our Lord
O Brother Man
Man Lives Not for Himself Alone
Happy the Man
The Son of Man
The Parliament of Man
and so on.
“By the mid 1970s” Fritts writes, “there was only one of these hymns that women in the congregation felt comfortable singing. It was entitled ‘Turn Back, O Man, Forswear Thy Foolish Ways.’”
And so when the grey and silver hymnal Singing the Living Tradition was published in 1993, it affirmed our broad desire to create a more inclusive culture. The principles of our Association that had been adopted in the previous decade (a direct result of the Women and Religion movement) were included as a frame for our hymnal; the hymnal reflected the growing interest in spirituality, but it also sought to include women as lyricists, composers and authors; not only readings but music from the world’s religions was included and expanded; and a conscious attempt was made to offer music from the African American and even African experience, with other songs from Mexico, the Philippines, and India.
This trend was even further developed when, under the leadership of our first Black President (of the UUA, that is) we published the teal supplement, Singing the Journey. Bill Sinkford said, “Our congregations will find in this songbook music that will shape our community and give new voice to our values as we move forward, supporting our deepening faith and a more effective voice for justice.”
At a Universalist Heritage Week at Ferry Beach in the year Singing the Journey was published, Rev. David Johnson led us in singing through the teal hymnal. It was when we sang hymn number 1012 that we paused.
When I am frightened, will you reassure me?
When I’m uncertain, will you hold my hand?
Will you be strong for me? sing to me quietly?
Will you share some of your stories with me?
If you will show me compassion,
then I may learn to care as you do,
then I may learn to care.
This song, by Shelley Jackson Denham, portrayed a Unitarian Universalist culture that was unlike any we had published before. Unitarian Universalists: Frightened? Uncertain? Needing to learn compassion? This was something new for us. We were not depicted as the people with all the answers. We were learning that we needed to be learning. And it is with this perspective that we will grow in intercultural competency to live in the rapidly changing culture which surrounds us.
We have much to learn. Each year at General Assembly, our musicians introduce us to new ways of being a people together. We have some old standards of course—will we ever have a large meeting that doesn’t include a grand processional with the singing of “Rank by Rank Again We Stand”? And yet even that changes, as Kendyl Gibbons recasts a verse today, and who knows who will tomorrow, even as our own Frater Carl Seaburg did when “Rank by Rank” was published in the grey hymnal.
Our musicians love the magic that happens when they can work with one another and cross boundaries. Musicians feed on such improvisation, borrowing from one another, hearing things not only for what they are but for what they might be transformed into.
And yet, we understand that not all borrowing is ethically neutral. When a more powerful culture “borrows” from a culture that has been oppressed, the symbol of borrowing can feel to the oppressed not like borrowing but stealing.
A poignant example from General Assembly in Columbus last year was the use of the song “I Need You to Survive.” This is a song that had been performed during UUMA Ministry Days in the manner that it is usually performed at All Souls Church, Unitarian, in Washington, DC.
I need you, you need me,
We’re all a part of one body
Stand with me, agree with me
We’re all a part of one body
It is our will that every need be supplied.
You are important to me,
I need you to survive.
I pray for you, you pray for me,
I love you, I need you to survive
I won’t harm you with words from my mouth,
I love you, I need you to survive.
So far so good, it seemed. Precious and intimate language in which Love and interconnectedness dominate—sounds like Universalism to me! We had a little problem with attributions in that while recording stars Kurt Franklin and Hezekiah Walker had made the song famous, it was actually written by David Frazier (and we didn’t always get that right). But it was after the Ministers Choir sang the song at the Service of the Living Tradition that people raised questions. The song had first become popular in Gospel music circles over a decade ago—it seems to take UUs at least that long to catch on to some popular culture—and so many African American UUs know the song. They pointedly asked: why must Unitarian Universalists change the lyrics of other people’s songs to suit UU norms. Because, indeed, the original lyrics asserted:
I need you, you need me,
We’re all a part of God’s body.
Stand with me, agree with me
We’re all a part of God’s body.
It is His will that every need be supplied,
You are important to me,
I need you to survive.
Baltimore native Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout, Minister of Music and Worship Arts at the Ann Arbor UU Congregation, said “One of the most powerful ways the church offers us an opportunity to be one with another is through the power of music. David Frazier wrote a song he calls ‘I Need You to Survive.’ And I’d like to say that as we endeavor to be a community standing together affirming the worth and dignity of Black lives, we must enter the songs of Black lives with humility, curiosity, and first we must endeavor consciously to resist the temptation to colonize it with the changes that make us more comfortable inside of it. If we can be present to Black faith and Black faiths, then in solidarity we might enter into the blessed relationship that allows us to deserve to be called allies.”
Were one to have the humility and curiosity to ask any number of Black Unitarian Universalists whether they heard in the song’s original lyrics a theology that wasn’t consistent with a broad and inclusive Unitarian Universalism, I don’t think you could find someone who didn’t have the capacity to translate those lyrics and see them included in our culture. Translation has been part of what it means to be Black in the dominant culture. Indeed, as Dr. W. E. Burghardt DuBois taught, to be Black in the United States is to be skilled in moving among worlds. He said in The Souls of Black Folk:
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.
To bring this argument back to where we began, our task in this moment is to allow Unitarian Universalism the space to enter into humility and curiosity, to acknowledge the culture of our movement, its Whiteness, its assumed educational and political power, and to find it an asset for us to learn to “step up/step back,” to get our existing culture out of the center and onto the margins where it—and we—may develop a 360 degree vision.
The symbol for this, to me, comes directly from Universalism. Once, we Universalists learned to move our central symbol, the cross, out of the center. The off-center cross allowed a Christian identity still to remain in the circle, in the faith, but not to dominate. Indeed, by moving out of the center, it opened a place where mystery, discovery, the quest could become the center in that moment of 360 degree vision. If the dominating culture in Unitarian Universalism is able to “step back,” to step to the side, to create the space for the fullness of Black lives and Black musics and Black spiritualities and Black powers, we may shape a new Universalism that overwhelms the partialism of our faith as we have practiced it heretofore. We may be able to affirm anew the cry of Clarence Skinner: “[We must] so expand our spiritual powers that we vastly increase our understanding and sympathy. There is no middle way. It is greatness—Universalism—or perish!”
For our country, which seems to be saying it wants to be great. For the Unitarian Universalist Association. For our congregations, with all our capacity and our confusion. And even for the Fraters of the Wayside Inn. It is Universalism—a renewed Universalism—or perish.
