Animal Blessing Ceremony

May the animals in our lives

– indeed, in our world –

reveal to us deeper relationships,

life answering to life;

causing us to revere Life's Spirit

in all manifestations:

in the intricate and beautiful

Web Of Existence, yes,

but even more

through myriad fellow creatures –

especially those companion animals –

whose presence bless us daily.


[The animals and their friends paraded down and around the aisles, then together stopped.]

With intention, compassion, and abiding affection,

we pause to hear the murmur of life

in this hallowed room

as we contemplate

the meaning and presence of our fellow creatures

in sacred silence.

[after the silence]

Say aloud the names
you have given your companion animals.

Now everyone say with me:

“We are all in this together.”

Simple Prayers Wherever You Go

Kindle ebook

It has stayed with me for more than a quarter of a century, James Madison Barr's "I don't pray, but if I did, this is what I would say..."  (Barr, now decased, was longtime humanist Unitarian minister in Memphis.)


Prayer isn't among my personal spiritual disciplines, at least formally.  But when my adult daughter, a member of the Anaheim, CA UU society alluded to her prayer life, I put together a little book for her as a Holiday gift.  I called it Simple Prayers.


In the brief introduction to my ten simple prayers, I spoke of prayer as a matter of self-transcendence.  I explained I sought to strip prayer to its essence with the hope that those who use my offerings will be able to use a particular prayer throughout the day.


Here's one of the ten simple prayers:

9

Mercy and Forgiveness,

Scour my mind and rectify my heart.

I think the resulting book, published on Create Space and available on Amazon, is handsome.  It includes blank pages for journaling--keeping a record of one's prayer life..  It's the sort of book one might keep on the home desk or on a bedside table.

Recently I turned it into a Kindle ebook.  This is the sort of resource to keep with one during the day, easily accessible for immediate inspiration/succor.  Hence, I gave this edition the subtitle Wherever You Go, fulfilling the longstanding UU admonition to make one's life a "prayer without ceasing." 

The Kindle edition has the additional  advantage of making my little book more private for public reading/reference. 

An Emergent Animal Ministry

A few years ago I edited a collection of poetry and prose, In Praise of Animals under the Skinner House imprint.    While the collection was proposed by my editor at SH, I'd long been interested in Animal Rights.  For a couple of decades I'd been calling Animal Rights "an ethical frontier," the next step in a progressing ethic of respect and reverence.

Within Unitarian Universalism Animal Rights has become a more sophisticated movement as ethical treatment thinking has transformed to an animal ministry perspective.  I think this represents, in part, a distancing from a secular animal rights activism.  The emergent Animal Ministry movement looks more to moral suasion  than to confrontational coercion.

I've prepared a Reader's Guide to my In Praise of Animals collection.  I think it is an apt means for the uninitiated to begin to explore what is now being called "multi-species" relationships--our appropriate relationship with our animal kindred as well as the web of life that embraces us all.  My guide is a resource for individual reflection.  But it would also work well in a readers or book discussion group.

Animal Rights is no longer a frontier.  It is a realm of ethical being that is rich and fulfilling.  It is, in my estimation, a coming home for the human species.

An Innate Sense of Life: Moral Grounding

In late September UCH will host a first ever Multi-Species Workshop, sponsored by our Animal Ministry group, in conjunction with an animal blessing Sunday Service.  


I’m awfully proud of our progressive religious ways.  Our relationship to animals  has a deep vein of identity and compassion that's now a burgeoning movement within our ranks.  

The three towering figures of early American Unitarianism are Channing, Emerson, and Parker.

In particular, Channing and Parker are known for their highly developed consciences.  They embody the Unitarian core notion of CHARACTER. 

From the current perspective of animal rights/liberation joined to the emerging  (scientific) understanding of an innate moral sense—particularly “do no harm,” the following two anecdotes are a propos.  In addition, these anecdotes beg the value of moral development and age-appropriate religious/moral education that we UUs have long promoted.

First, William Ellery Channning from a letter:

I can remember an incident in my childhood, which has given a turn to my whole life and character. I found a nest of birds in my father's field, which held for young ones. They had no down when I first discovered them. They opened their little mouths as if they were hungry, and I gave them some crumbs which were in my pocket. Every day I returned to feed them. As soon as school was not, I would run home for some bread, and sit by the nest to see them eat, for an hour at a time. They were now feathered, and almost ready to fly. When I came one morning, I found them all cut up into quarters. The grass around the nest was red with blood. Their little limbs were raw and bloody. The mother was on a tree, and the father on the wall, mourning for their young. I cried, myself, for I was a child. I thought, too, that the parents looked on me as the author of their miseries, and this made me still more unhappy. I wanted to undeceive them. I wanted to sympathize with and comfort them. When I left the field, they followed me with their eyes and with mournful reproaches. I was too young and too sincere in my grief to make any apostrophes. But I can never forget my feelings. The impression will never be worn away, nor can I ever cease to abhor every species of inhumanity towards inferior animals.

Second, Theodore Parker from an “Autobiographical Fragment:”

When a little boy in petticoats in my fourth year, one fine day in spring, my father led me by the hand to a distant part of the farm, but soon sent me home alone. On the way I had to pass a little " pond-hole " then spreading its waters wide; a rhodora in full bloom — a rare flower in my neighborhood, and which grew only in that locality — attracted my at­tention and drew me to the spot. I saw a little spotted tortoise sunning himself in the shallow water at the root of the flaming shrub.    I lifted the stick I had in my hand to strike the harmless reptile; for, though I had never killed any creature, yet I had seen other boys out of sport destroy birds, squirrels, and the like, and I felt a disposition to follow their wicked exam­ple. But all at once something checked my little arm, and a voice within me said, clear and loud, "It is wrong!" I held my uplifted stick in wonder at the new emotion — the consciousness of an involuntary but inward check upon my actions, till the tortoise and the rhodora both vanished from my sight. I hastened home and told the tale to my mother, and asked what was it that told me it was wrong? She wiped a tear from her eye with her apron, and taking me in her arms, said, “Some men call it conscience, but I pre­fer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer, and always guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear or disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and leave you all in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on heeding this little' voice." She went her way, careful and troubled about many things, but doubtless pondered them in her motherly heart; while I went off to wonder and think it over in my poor, childish way. But I am sure no event in my life has made so deep and lasting an impression on me.

In my estimation an innate awareness of the value of life—one’s own and then in compassion with fellow creatures—is both traditional Unitarian and cutting edge, 21^st century progressive UU religion.  I’ll be searching Emerson to determine whether he had a similar childhood experience.

Simple Prayers: Wherever You Go

My daughter Katie, who lives in Orange County, recently joined the UU fellowship in Anaheim. Katie’s in her early 40s and has two young children. Her midlife return to the liberal religion of her youth, though somewhat predictable, nevertheless, pleases me.  My chosen faith is now her chosen faith.

She's become quite involved in her little congregation. She teaches religious education and is on the religious education committee. She's a worship assistant, too.

Now when we talk, the theme is frequently about religion. True to her upbringing, she's an explorer and has eclectic tastes. I'm proud to say, she's her father's daughter.

In one of our conversations she revealed that now and again she prays. So, last Christmas, I compiled a book for her titled Simple Prayers.  Its  brief introduction describes prayer as a means to self- transcendence. The actual prayers are 10 mantra like utterances – each featuring an attribute of the Divine. I also included blank lined pages for recording prayer experiences – prayer journal.

I used the on-demand resources of Create Space, an Amazon subsidiary. I chose a distinctive format, 8 1/4 inch square. The cover illustration was a gnarly old white church door, inviting entry to sacred space.

I liked the end product so much in content and attractiveness,  I made it available for sale as a paperback book on Create Space and Amazon.  Now, I'm making it available in the e-book marketplace. It's on (or soon will be on)  Amazon.com as well as Lulu.com – another online publisher.  The Lulu edition can be read on a variety of popular readers.

Here's my marketing copy:

Simple Prayers is a unique guide, reducing the practice of prayer to its very essence as a private act with powerful affect. In an extraordinary economy of words, the ten prayers touch varied aspects of human aspiration and need.

Created by a seasoned Unitarian minister known for his practical approach to the contemporary spirituality, these simple prayers address aspects of the Universal. It is a suitable resource for persons of all faiths and persuasions.

As a teaser, I present the first Simple Prayer:

1

Providence,

My gratitude is boundless.

Now available as an Amazon Kindle book or in a Lulu e-book edition: Simple Prayers: Wherever You Go. Only $1.99.

A Hate Crime in Knoxville

On Sunday a shotgun bearing gunman invaded a Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, TN, and killed two and injured six. I sent the following message to my Hinsdale Unitarian congregation today:

The congregation of the Unitarian Church of Hinsdale has been affected by Sunday’s shooting spree that killed two and injured six others in a Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville.

Our hearts are heavy for the murdered and injured of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.

Our hearts are heavy for the congregation that must now try to understand and then respond to the single gunmen's hate for liberals and gays directed at them.

Our hearts are heavy for violence that marbles American society.

Our hearts are heavy for what drives a man, such as this gunman, to resort to such an act as the consummation of his 58 years.

The shooting spree on Sunday could have been even more devastating, for the gunman had 73 rounds of unspent ammunition. It's likely that the courage of an usher and others, who subdued the gunman, saved many children, youth, and adults. For this we are thankful.

The Unitarian Universalist liberal religious community throughout America now knows a larger measure of the violence spawned by hate. Yes, this is being categorized as a hate crime by the Tennessee authorities.

Speaking on behalf the Unitarian Church of Hinsdale, I know this senseless act of violence will only increase our resolve to promote progressive values in peaceful and democratic ways, that justice and love will one day prevail over such senseless acts of violence and hate.

The Chicago Sun Times website has a thorough July 29 AP article on the shooting.

A letter to the editor, the text similar to the above, appeared in the July 30, edition of the Chicago Sun Times.

The Seven Unitarian Universalist Principles in Film

In my estimation film (cinema) is our age's primary art form. Films are accessible and popular. In 2007-2008 I'm hosting a film series, "The Seven Unitarian Universalist Principles in Film."

• "Fried Green Tomatoes" (1991), The inherent worth and dignity of every person: Lesbian lovers, an extended African American family, a mid-life woman seeking her identity, an aged woman in a nursing home present layers of the human condition . The story jumps back and forth from the 1920s to the 1990s in the relatively rural South. A capable cast, including Kathy Bates as the over the top mid-life woman, wring out the emotions.

• "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962), Justice, equity and compassion in human relations: This classic and always highly ranked film features Gregory Peck as the American father figure. Harper Lee's bestselling novel of the same name resonated to the great civil rights movement about to happen. Palpable evil and violence testify to a troubling aspect of the American soul.

• "Twelve Angry Men" (1957), The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large: The movie is faithful to the play that preceded it. Henry Fonda once again personified the virtuous American male, who stands alone at first but ultimately persuades eleven fellow jurors to acquit a defendant being tried for murder. The characterizations of the jurors deftly paint portraits of types of men circa 1950. Shot in one room with carefully contrived camera angels add to the films understated power.

• "Joyeux Noel" (2005), The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all: A French film with subtitles, the story recasts an actual event that occurred along the Western Front at the beginning of World War I. Romanian and German troops strike a Christmas Eve armistice with French and English troops. The Holiday Season proved to be a particularly meaningful time to view this offering that questions the sanity of war.

• "Koyaanisqatsi "(1982),Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part: This cult film appeared just when the ecological/environmental movement was gaining traction. Both lyrical and tumbling images build on the sometime liquid, sometime frenetic score by Philip Glass. The title relates to a Hopi term meaning "life out of balance."

• "The Truman Show" (1998), A free and responsible search for truth and meaning: Jim Carrey, playing the title character, has his entire life broadcast on television for the entertainment of all. His world is one big set populated by actors. Directing The Truman Show is puppetmaster Christof, played by Ed Harris. The result is another thoughtful and artful production by Peter Weir, prescient of the current craze for reality shows. Will Truman escape and realize his freedom?

• "The Breakfast Club"(1985), Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations: Five high school students, each a sterotype (a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal) band together against a common enemy, and in the process learn about one another during a Saturday detention in a Northshore (Chicagoland) high school. One of several John Hughes' films about the teenage condition. The message: "We were brainwashed."