Our Faith is Over 2000 Years Old, Our Thinking is Not

On this date (23 January), in 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from a medical school in the United States.  Born in Bristol, England, in 1821, she and her family moved to New York and then to Ohio in 1832.

The Blackwells were active Quakers and supported the anti-slavery movement and the women’s rights movement with great fervor.  Elizabeth was the third of nine children; and even though the family had some means, her father was only able to afford sending her brothers to school.  He did, however, provide for Elizabeth’s education at home.  In her autobiography (1895), Dr. Blackwell wrote that she was initially repelled by the thought of studying medicine:  “I hated everything connected with the body, and could not bear the sight of a medical book… My favourite studies were history and metaphysics, and the very thought of dwelling on the physical structure of the body and its various ailments filled me with disgust.”  Initially, then, she pursued a career in teaching.

Dr. Blackwell claimed that she began her pursuit of medical studies after a close friend who was dying suggested she would have been spared her worst suffering if her physician had been a woman.  Of course, medical schools were not open to women at that time.  Undaunted, she studied medicine in the personal librarys’ of physician friends in order to be better prepared for medical school.  She applied to all the schools in New York and Philadelphia and at least a dozen more in New England.

1n 1847, Geneva Medical College in western New York accepted her application for matriculation; sort of.  They placed her placement to a vote of the student body and required a 100% favorable retrun.  The students, thinking it a hoax, “played along” and promised her “gentlemanly treatment.”  Their bluff was called, she was admitted and graduated.  In 1853, she returned to London and in 1858, under a similar twist of fate, became the first woman to be listed on the General Medical Council’s medical register.   The Medical Act of 1858, while not specifically recognizing women doctors, did require recognition of medical doctors trained at foreign institutions.  Ha-za!

May I escape the shame, inadequacy, self-judgment and self-doubt and embrace what my training has taught me.  May I trust that my love is as needed as my knowledge.  May I remember in me the limitations of humankind.  May I be open to know my darkness and be true to what light I have.  May I be used as a blessing and a friend to life.  Amen.

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The following are quotes from The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.   At the bottom of the post is a link to view and hear his “I Have a Dream” speech.  Additionally, to find a service project in your area, visit:  http://mlkday.gov/

Dr. King’s words are as prophetic as ever.  Prophets do not foretell the future as a crystal ball conjurer; instead, a prophet holds forth a vision of how the future can be if we tend the tree of justice and let the fruit of peace flourish from its branches.  Their words can also be frightful when they describe what happens when we poison the soil in which the tree of justice attempts to send its roots.

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An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns for all humanity.

To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

As long as there is poverty in the world, I can never be rich; even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy; even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way the world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life.

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When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the sages and the shepherds have found their way home, the work of Christmas is begun:  to find the lost and the lonely one, to heal the broken soul with love, to feed the hungry children with warmth and good food, to feel the earth below and the sky above!  So, let us free the oppressed from all chains, let the powerful care; let us rebuild the nations with the strength of good will and see all God’s children everywhere!  (Howard Thurman, alt.)

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In late October, I passed a flatbed truck with neatly stacked and tightly tied cut fir trees: hurtling down the highway were Christmas trees rocketing to their holiday destiny.  I don’t want to be unnecessarily sanguine, but it inspired hope, even if a bit early.

Since New Year’s Day, I have watched as folk toss their spent trees to the curb as recycling day comes to their neighborhood.  Some still look green; others appear to risk higher fire insurance premiums if left in the home.  I don’t want to be unnecessarily melancholic, but a pile of needles remained where I parked this morning.

Just as “the world” rushes us to complete our Nativity, so, too, does it rush us from the crèche; the lights come down and are turned off too soon.  The celebration of Christmas lasts for twelve days (hence, the song) and finishes on Twelfth Night (January 5) and Epiphany (January 6). 

The season of Epiphany is a time for growth and development, and not just of the infant in the manger.  The signature symbols of the liturgical season are seeking sages and a guiding star.  Both are on the move.  To modify a slogan I see occasionally: wise ones still make journeys.  Advent is the journey of the Holy Family and Christmas includes the sojourn of magi who follow the light of a star; perhaps, we would do well to linger just a little longer and attend their stories and, in turn, find our own journeys tended as well.

Beware:  cute babies become trying toddlers and then sometimes tempestuous teens before they become mature adults.  Our patient and faithful care along the way will help determine what is to be and become. 

I don’t know if the Christmas trees met their “holiday destiny” or not, but they certainly have seen the end of their usefulness.  I hope they will be recycled into mulch, habitat for fish, or something else life affirming as they yield their places in our living rooms.  Hopefully, without being excessively sanguine or melancholic, something has been born in us and is seeking maturity.  Epiphany’s light is still rising; I find rays of it in the Howard Thurman poem above and a Christmas Creed from Latin America below.

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A Christmas Creed from Latin America

I believe in Jesus Christ and in the power of the Gospel which began in Bethlehem.

I believe in the One whose spirit glorified a small village, of whose coming the shepherds saw the sign, and for whom there was no room in the inn.

I believe in the One whose life changed the course of history, for whom the kings of the earth had no power, and who was not understood by the proud.

I believe in the One to whom the poor, the oppressed, the discouraged, the afflicted, the sick, the blind and the leprous gave welcome and accepted as Savior.

I believe in the One who, with love, changed the hearts of the proud, and with his life, showed that it is more important to serve than to be served, and that the greatest joy is in giving your life for others.

I believe in peace, which means justice among all peoples and nations and love among all.

I believe in reconciliation, forgiveness and the transforming power of the gospel.

I believe that Christmas is strength and power, and that this world can change if, with humility and faith, we kneel before the manger.

I believe that I must be the first one to do so.  Amen.

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In our household, the approach of Christmas (well before Advent) is signaled by a predictable grumbling chanted by my usually optimistic husband Peter.  It erupts with the first Christmas catalog in the mail or ad on TV – not just because both are too early, but because they represent the retail frenzy that will load up our minds, our calendars, and potentially our credit cards.  ”It spoils Christmas,” he says. “It’s ugly commercialism… Besides, I give gifts whenever I find something just right or am inspired to make something; I give when my heart is moved. I don’t want to buy and give because advertising says I have to. I deplore this …It ruins Christmas.”  A good rant has to have just the right amount of exaggeration.

So, don’t hear Scrooge here. I live with a thoughtful, generous, reverent believer in miracles.  We read and watch “A Christmas Carol” every year, that enduring story of love, redemption, and transformation.  But we watch on DVD, so there’s no cut to a commercial with a gigantic bow plopped on a Toyota.               

We all know excess when we see it.  I also think we’re all conflicted when it comes to Christmas gifting.  Who has not been warmed by the joy of giving and the pleasure of receiving a gift presented with love?  Two themes of advent right there. But those obligatory wish lists and shopping lists and that advertising.  Where’s the line between fostering our children’s wonder and their greed? So much can go wrong here. 

Simpler Christmas has been forced on too many households in recent years – those who lost income in the crash and those supporting the struggling ones. Yet simpler Christmas is the stated wish of most adults I know (and our wish for our children if we’re honest).   At Central, putting the Gospel at the heart of our Christmas has helped guide us to simpler choices:  Forever Family (give first to those in greater need than we), honorary donations in lieu of gifts, and handmade gifts that benefit the crafter’s cause.

But, you ask, aren’t ‘alternative gifts’ like giving underwear for Christmas?  Well I think that depends on who’s giving the underwear to whom, and why. 

In my childhood family, we had no prejudice against the practical gift. Socks and underwear, new and soft and boxed, were an experience of abundance. I still give such items, not to make a statement, but to let another child feel abundance.

The joy of giving, the grace of receiving, remembering the Gospel, steering away from excess. These four we reach for every year.  Experience has taught me that Christmas gifting must not create indebtedness on the part of the giver or the receiver, and that money given with no strings does not cheapen Christmas.  I believe that all loving gifts – made, written, drawn, found in the attic, or even bought – bring joy.  Simply the intentional considering of each on the list is an act of love, akin to a written prayer list.

Shopping won’t save us.  But kindness and thankfulness will.  And I think this is the essence of gifting – the (literally) immeasurable joy of giving, the joy of being remembered, the pleasure in touching a token of love.  Last Christmas I watched Peter open a gift from my 6-year-old grandson in Denver.  It was a potato masher.  Peter cooks wonderful meals when we visit there.  Zack wrapped up a very personal expression of love.  The grumbling had receded for another year – when we will stress and fret and then balance once again.  ”The hopes and fears of all the years” do manifest themselves in Advent, but not in that order.

Geneva Benoit joined Central when she moved to Atlanta from Connecticut in 1992. She and her husband Peter Benoit are co-chairs of the Board of Deacons.

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On June 16, 2009 I lost my mother, Emma Pauline Spearman, (she was known to everyone as Pauline).  Five months later on November 28, 2009 my father Corda Lester Spearman passed away.  Everyone called him “Cordie.”   Of course, to me they were ‘Mother’ and ‘Daddy’.

Dear Mom and Dad,

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over two years since you’ve been gone.  It is Advent season now and today there is a brilliant blue sky outside.  But in Ohio at the farm, it looks like the temperature is a crisp 23 degrees.  This season of the year, Advent and Christmas Day, meant so much to us as a family, didn’t it.   After all, you were married on Christmas Day in 1930.  How much fun it must have been to plan your wedding during this hopeful, holy season!  Did you know, Mother, we found your “royal blue” wedding dress when Sharlene and I were cleaning out dresser drawers.  That was the first time she or I had ever seen or touched the dress, though we had always seen it in your wedding picture.  You picked a beautiful dress, Mother.

This is the 4^th week of Advent : LOVE.  How so very appropriate that Michael asked me to write about my journey and loss during the Advent season.  And the week we decided upon is this week, the advent week of love.  While I won’t know the love of parent to a child, I do know explicitly the love I have as a daughter to her parents is deep and burns in the embers of my heart.  You gave me life and love.  I thought the world of you both and am so very proud that you were my parents.

I miss you even more during this Christmas season.   Nearly every day there is some thought, some sight, some memory that drifts through my mind.  I am trying very hard to move forward and into the second part of my life.  It hurts to know that you cannot be a part of that.   How many times have I caught myself saying, “Oh, I need to call Mother and Dad and tell them!”

In retrospect, I realize the day you died, I said good-bye to a part of myself.  You were such of a part of who I am.  But as time passes, I am learning to become more grateful, with less grief.  Through the sadness, this enormous sense of gratitude overwhelms me.  It moves me to write this letter to you.

I had such a wonderful childhood.  You raised me with boundless love and filled our home with happiness.  You taught me the things that really mattered in life:  hard work, honesty, independence, compassion, caring for others including all the animals!  And how important it was to do my “chores,” my homework and practice my piano.  It was all good.  Oh, why is it we never fully appreciate the things we have, until they’re gone.

There are so many things that I would love to talk to you about today.  Would you believe I really have become a church lady.  And my cancer recovery goes well.   That I’m enjoying my “semi-retirement” as I care for older adults who need a helping hand.  That Lesley and I have a new puppy dog, Georgie, to join Lucy, as she moves into her twilight years.  I want you to know all of this, and through God’s grace and peace and because I pray it may be so, the answer whispers in my ear, ‘they do know.’

So as I close this letter, Mother and Daddy, I want you to know I am happy.  As the words from Stanley Kunitz’s poem, “The Layers,” states “When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey.”

Your loving daughter,

Debbie

Debbie Spearman is a past Moderator of Central and a staff member of the Southeast Conference, United Church of Christ.

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Commentary:

When Michael asked me to write something about Advent, I had to ponder the task a bit.  I was raised a Southern Baptist, and Advent was not part of our Christmas preparation.  (Well, of course it was part of it, but the word was not mentioned.)  I decided to write from the point of view of Mary, and I did a little research into the time period.

Mary would have been very young—14, 15, maybe 16—and I had to ask myself how someone that young would feel about the message that Luke says was given to her.  (Of course, Matthew and Luke don’t agree on this, and really—neither of them were there when it happened.)  Joseph and Mary would have been walking with many others on their way from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

So—I tried to put myself in the mind of a very young girl being told she was going to have the Savior, walking far in late pregnancy, and viewing at night the bright presence of the star (supernova, comet, or other unusual astronomical event).  I also put her annunciation in the context of a dream.  Mary’s words are in italics.

“On the Road to Bethlehem”

Always the star, the light inside darkness.

Always the wind, moaning.

Always the dream, cutting into sleep.

In the dream, the man spoke of prophecy with joy.

Yet, if it is true, where is my joy?

How can I raise a babe to be king?

How can I hold a son then give him to the world?

Always the star, the light inside darkness.

Always the wind moaning.

Always the dream cutting into sleep.

He will come soon—I feel it within.

Fear and Grief overwhelm me—

he whom I labor for will be lost ere I know him.

Yahweh, why must I be the one?

Something in the distance—

light moving into dark,

the joy of anticipation,

then pain, fear a cry,

silence.

Something in the distance—

dark moving to light,

doubt moving to knowing.

Judith Carson is sometimes playfully called “Central’s poet-in-residence.”  She frequently shares her poetry with the congregation and has been a member at Central for 18 years.

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“We have crossed the Rubicon with this disease.”    Those were the words emailed to me by my daughter’s doctor at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center.  He was responding to my latest round of questions as we approached Erin’s stem cell transplant date.  We had known since Erin’s diagnosis at age 15 that, at some point, she would probably need chemotherapy and/or a bone marrow transplant to treat her bone marrow failure disease.  We had watched and waited for 8 years…. pondering (and researching) the possibilities.

Erin had enjoyed good outward health despite the frightening diagnosis.  She had graduated from high school and was close to graduating from college.  But in July of 2009, she contracted a very serious systemic infection.  She was hospitalized and started on a course of multiple antibiotics.  Finding the right combination of antibiotics was a difficult task – many doctors were consulted and Erin suffered side effects and allergic reactions to some of the drugs.  But finally, after 70 days or so, she was finally fever –free and the infection seemed to be at bay.  By this time, though, her bone marrow was no longer producing adequate amounts of cells and she became dependent on blood and platelet transfusions.  There was talk of a stem cell transplant.  Within a few months, however, her overall condition seemed to be improving.  We were hopeful that her underlying bone marrow condition could be controlled indefinitely with drugs, as opposed to the more drastic, life-changing route of a stem cell transplant.  When a perfect donor was found on the bone marrow donor registry, though, plans for a transplant went full-steam ahead – no looking back.

Hence my question (to paraphrase…”Are we sure we need to go ahead with a transplant instead of a milder, less-aggressive type of treatment?”) and to which the answer was  “We have crossed the Rubicon with this disease.”    I had never heard the phrase before and immediately looked it up on Wikipedia (of course).  It refers to Julius Caesar’s army’s illegal crossing of the Rubicon River, thus leading to inevitable conflict.  Once they crossed the river, they were unmistakably committed to their cause and there was no turning back.  They had reached the point of no return.

Erin’s doctors, because of sad experiences with 2 previous patients with the same disease as Erin, had learned that this stage of her illness could not be a time of watching and waiting.  It was time to take decisive action.  The action to be taken was difficult and risky, but it offered the hope of a cure.

I have thought of this “crossing of the Rubicon” often during Erin’s long journey back to health, but it seems especially significant now…during the watching and waiting of the Advent season.   We have the opportunity during Advent to take the time (if we can carve it out of the busy-ness) to ponder the possibilities, some frightening, others wonderful,  that lie ahead in our lives – a time of taking stock of “where we go from here.”  But the time for watching and waiting must, of course, end.  When the hope that is Christmas arrives, it is time for us to journey on, even if the path seems difficult or risky.  The hope we have because of Christmas, urges us to move forward in joy….take chances….live the lives we feel led to live…no looking back.  During this Advent season, may we all ponder the possibilities and gather the faith and courage we need to “cross the Rubicon” not in fear, but in joyful anticipation of the wondrous journey ahead.  

Laura Hudlow has been a member of Central for many years and served on the Senior Minister Search Committee in 2008.

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This Advent, my family has chosen to enter into Covenant with Central. The steps that led us here have not been predictable . . .

Someone once told me that our children do not belong to us, their parents. We are simply there to help them emerge. During Advent, I wonder what it was like for Mary to help Jesus emerge. I think of Mary a lot during Advent – perhaps because twelve years ago I gave birth to my first child on Christmas Eve. The pregnancy and the anticipation of Advent are easy for me to identify with, but as the children get older, I am finding that their emergence is requiring me to change.

I am a cradle Episcopalian. The Indianapolis church where I grew up was well endowed by the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, and the cavernous, cathedral style space held its wealth well. The Director of Music was a young graduate of Westminster Choir College and when I was in high school, he took his co-ed “boy” choir to England. For two weeks we traveled England and Scotland, singing in Cathedral spaces, while celebrating the bicentennial of the first American Bishop, Samuel Seabury. My soul awakened to Gregorian chant, and sacred composers such as Benjamin Britten, Ned Rorem and Maurice Durufle.

Naturally, my children’s baptisms were in the Episcopal church, some of the last times I can remember sitting through an Episcopal Rite of Eucharist. It’s not that we meant to quit going to church, it’s just that with kids, it never really happened. You just can’t feel “spiritual” in church when you know your toddler is screaming his lungs out in the nursery. A few years later, knowing that if we did not look for a new church we would become a church-less family, I went looking. I hadn’t gone far when I stumbled across an incredible preacher at the Methodist church just down the street. His words stayed with me all week; I wanted to go back to hear him again. Pretty soon my husband, Jay, got curious and went too.

It was too good to be true. There was something for everyone at this church, including a great kids’ program. Our son Joseph, who never really liked church, seemed happy, as did his younger sister. I missed the Episcopal church, but accepted this new church as a “stepping stone,” until our kids matured and I could return to my “high church” life once again. It was Advent and all was well.

Then something started changing. Jay and I joined a Sunday School class taught by the Senior Pastor, whose preaching had challenged me. Eventually, we called ourselves “The Happy Heretics” and as a group, we studied Christianity upside down and inside out. We peeled back the layers of the Christian onion, did some crying, and realized there was still a lot of onion left. An 80+ year old physicist shared one morning that he was raised in the Episcopal Church, where he couldn’t bring himself to recite the Nicene Creed. I realized then that the Creeds are more than ancient, beautiful words of my childhood. They are belief statements that reject those who cannot mentally disengage from modern, scientific thought long enough to say “I believe.” I realized then that this octogenarian had something to teach me about my son, Joseph.

Joseph understood the scientific method before he could talk. He lived it; he breathed it. It is who he is. Several years ago I was reading Joseph a story about a quiet, thoughtful boy named Thomas Aquinas. We turned the storybook page and there sat Thomas, contemplating, “I don’t know if there really is a God.” Joseph got excited, pointed to the picture, and said, “That’s what I think!”

We knew there was tension in our church, but we weren’t fully prepared for the explosion. In the Methodist Church, there’s a process for deciding to move pastors. It wasn’t followed, but our preacher was gone, as were many of the friends we had made. To put it succinctly, the Heretics were purged and the Creeds came back.

I foresaw that our previous church was to be a “stepping stone” but I got the direction wrong. We are not stepping to a “higher” church, we are stepping into Central, a uniquely inclusive church. A church where Joseph does not have to give up religion to be a budding scientist; where his sister, Salena, can pray her homemade rosary and not give up her magic; where Jay can experience worship as compelling and purposeful; and I can understand the creeds as how God spoke to ancient people, but know that in our more modern liturgy, God is still speaking. We’re stepping out.

Sally Herrell and her family are the newest members of Central Congregational United Church of Christ.

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It had been a long day.  After the morning service, there was a special program at church.  That was followed by a meeting and a couple of hospital visits.  Not surprisingly, the evening service was not well attended.  It was the Sunday before Christmas and people were simply busy with preparations. 

Having locked the doors of First Congregational Church, I began to turn off lights.  I paused and returned to the dark sanctuary. Lighting the four blue candles of the advent wreathe, I sat alone and in silence.  After a time, in the stillness, I pulled open a hymnal and began to slowly sing the verses of the ancient hymn: O Come, O Come Emmanuel.  With each line, images from the prophetic verses of the Hebrew scripture came to mind.  In that vigil, watching and waiting, I prayed the verses of the hymn for peace, for wisdom, to unlock what has been bound, longing for the realm of the Ancient One to be real in some deep and mysterious ways. 

I don’t recall how long I stayed there.  But the time I sat in vigil on a fourth Sunday in Advent is one of those touch stones in my spiritual life.  It’s a mental image of what it is to watch and wait, knowing something is about to happen. 

It’s now more than ten years since that vigil in a Tucson, Arizona church.  Yet, that vigil continues to inform the vigils I keep each day.  I rarely sit in candle light, but the last five years of my life have been marked by the need to be vigilant.  Over these years, I have been my frail mother’s primary care giver. 

My partner and I have often discussed it.  Having her with us isn’t a burden.  None of the work involved is difficult or demanding.  But her presence in our home calls for a continual vigilance: watching and, yes, waiting.  

My mother is now 84 years old.  Blind from a stroke, her mobility is very limited due to arthritis.  She lives with chronic pain.  Despite her infirmities, she’s warm, pleasant, and very engaging.  Having a contemplative spirit, she’s rather content being in her room listening to National Public Radio throughout the day.  I truly don’t know if I will be as gracious as she as I age.  

Perhaps it was like this for her when I was young, when she kept vigil for me as an infant. I’m always aware of her presence.  I listen past the radio to hear if she stirs in her room.  Unexpected noises cause me to move quickly to her door way to see if she became confused and lost in her room or, worse yet, if she had a fall. At night, if I wake from my sleep, which I often due, I listen carefully:  is the radio playing? What else do I hear?  I often use a late night trip to the bathroom as an excuse to check in on her once more.   

My partner and I now joke about a frequent moment in our first year with mom in the house.  Checking on her as she lay in bed, we’d see the relaxed muscles of her face and perfect stillness and wonder:  is she still breathing? Then she’d leave out a loud snore and we’d laugh realizing that we had become hyper-vigilant. 

In the advent season, we romanticize images of keeping vigil, of watching and waiting.  Now I understand a vigil from a very different perspective:  a vigil is watching for change, very real change.  Of course, change is a part of life.  Yet, change can present difficulties. 

The changes we watch for in keeping vigil for my mother are difficult.  The changes mark her further decline.  In face of that decline and her ultimate passing, she looks forward to the day when she will rest in peace next to my father on a hillside in Western Pennsylvania.  She also looks forward to the day when all her pain will be gone. 

In watching and waiting during Advent, preparing for the coming of the Christ in our midst, perhaps our musings are too romantic.  Or perhaps it’s just more comforting to focus on the prosaic story of the birth of a child.  Anthony Bloom explores in his book, Living Prayer, that the coming of God in our midst is a dangerous thing because, as the scriptures note in many places, God is a consuming fire.  While that fire can warm us, it can also burn us. Sometimes we get confused by the comfort of the warmth and fail to realize that we are actually getting burned.  In Advent, we keep vigil with hope for an experience of the Divine that will change us by warming us.  At the same time, that change has the ability to burn and hurt us in ways we don’t expect.   

While I suspect that Bloom is right about encountering the Holy One who is like fire, I know from my experience over these years that my daily vigil with my mother is both a graced opportunity to care for her as well as a source of pain as I watch her slip away. Yet, as a person of faith, I also keep vigil in hope for her wholeness and peace … as well as for my own. 

And so I remember sitting in the darkened church with the flickering Advent candles:

O come, O Day-Spring, come and cheer

Our spirits by Your drawing near

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night

And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Lou Kavar is an ordained minister in UCC, a psychologist, and spiritual director.  He and his family moved to Atlanta over the summer.  He is a member of the faculty in graduate psychology at Capella University.  He is also the author of seven books on spirituality and personal development.

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As indicated in the following submission from Leona Greenlaw, the choir of Central Congregational United Church of Christ will offer Benjamin Britten’s “Ceremony of Carols” at 11:00 on Sunday, December 11.  Britten was an active pacifist; these carols were written on a perilous voyage home.  They stand, for me, in the middle of Advent’s bi-directional gaze:  back to the forced journey of Mary and Joseph during the time their homeland was occupied by Rome and at the current withdrawal of our troops from Iraq.  As Leona writes: the chosen texts and music focus not on an idealized and romanticized baby, but on the difficult challenge of this child of God to transform this weary world.

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Since pre-recorded time, the artists among us have sought to find ways to communicate ideas using novel means.  By not limiting themselves to the language of those around them, their ideas spread wide and far, igniting others in other times and places, and giving new insights to the subjects of their art.  The mysteries of life lend themselves superbly to the artist’s craft precisely because they cannot be explained through language.

The mystery of the virgin birth, and of God’s choice to not send the anticipated conquering king, but a suffering servant, born of God and woman, has captured the attentions of composers for centuries.  Benjamin Britten’s “Ceremony of Carols” is one of the most enduring musical efforts to communicate God’s choice for God’s people.  The attractions of this piece, which Central’s choir will share with the congregation on Sunday, December 11 during the 11:00 worship service, are many.  On a very basic level, the chance to enjoy the beauty of the harp—the only accompanying instrument—is fundamental.  However, it is the collection of texts which inspire the piece, and which provide the basis for the meaningful music.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), the most important composer of 20^th century England, was a pacifist.  He was a member of the Peace Pledge Union (formed in 1934), and had signed the pledge that stated, “I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war.”  His musical compositions on the topic span from his “Pacifist March,” composed in 1937, to his “War Requiem,” composed for the consecration of the newly reconstructed Coventry Cathedral in 1962.  

In early 1939, as Britain’s entrance into a war with Germany became increasingly imminent, Britten sailed to the United States, where his professional life became enriched by encounters with other composers, many of whom were similarly escaping the pressures of war in their own countries.  Three years later, after the United States had entered the war, Britten made the decision to return to England, hoping to be awarded conscientious objector status.  En route home, he found a collection of old English poetry in a bookstore in Halifax, “The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems,” which became the basis for his “Ceremony of Carols,” composed on that long sea voyage home to a war-torn country.  The piece was first performed on December 4, 1943.

“A Ceremony of Carols” is a collection of eight settings of Middle English texts, most of which are anonymous, encased by a processional and recessional which date back centuries earlier as the propers for mass on Christmas Eve.  The chosen texts and music focus not on an idealized and romanticized baby, but on the difficult challenge of this child of God to transform this weary world.  “This little Babe, so few days old, is come to rifle Satan’s fold.  All hell doth at his presence quake, though he himself for cold do shake.  For in this weak unarmed wise, the gates of hell he will surprise.” 

This world of mortals had not been able to avoid a second major world conflict just two decades after the end of the first.  Was it not time to heed God’s call to a revolutionary method that did not put trust in any man, but in God?      

The congregation is encouraged to invite others to share this moving worship experience this Sunday.  For those interested in an advance perusal of the texts, an excellent website, with insightful commentary on each of the selections, as well as stunning costumes and artwork, can be found at http://www.californiaboyschoir.org/britten003.html. 

Leona Greenlaw is the Director of Music at Central Congregational United Church of Christ.

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