Contemplation & Sound: Unitarian Universalist Tradition Celebrating Pride at the Rothko Chapel

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Contemplation & Sound: Unitarian Universalist Tradition Celebrating Pride Month 6.2.21 from Rothko Chapel on Vimeo.

The First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston was invited to lead a service as part of the Rothko Chapel’s ongoing series Twelve Moments. It was planned by Mark Vogel and me. The nature of the event means that instead of just posting the sermon, I have decided to go ahead and post the full script for the event. Unless otherwise noted, all words are by me. The exception, of course, is the songs. “We Are a Gentle Angry People” is by Holly Near, “How Could Anyone” is by Shaina Noll, “Spirit of Life” is by Carolyn McDade, and “We Shall Be Known by the Company We Keep” is by Karisha Longaker of Mamuse.

Contemplation & Sound: Unitarian Universalist Tradition Celebrating Pride
Rothko Chapel, Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Participants (in order of appearance): Carol Burrus, Mark Vogel, Tawanna Grice, Alma Viscarra, Karen Carlson, Rev. D. Scott Cooper, Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen

Call to Worship

[Mark and Carol are seated stage left while Ashley is introducing the service. When she’s finished, Tawanna, Alma, and Karen come onto the stage single file. They step forward when they are speaking and then step back.]

Sung (Carol and Mark)

We are a gentle, angry people
and we are singing, singing for our lives

We are a gentle, angry people
and we are singing, singing for our lives

We are a justice-seeking people
and we are singing, singing for our lives

We are a justice-seeking people
and we are singing, singing for our lives

Spoken (Tawanna)

We are a justice seeking people.

For Unitarian Universalists democracy
is a religious practice.

We know that injustice
is a threat to justice everywhere
for we are bound up
together:
what affects you
also affects me.

And so,
we are also a gentle
angry people.

Angry at all of the hurt,
the exclusion,
the racism,
the transphobia,
the homophobia,
the sexism,
the pain
and suffering
that we humans inflict upon each other.

When we gather
we promise each other
to do our human best
to be love each other
and to be not just a justice seeking
but a justice making people
who sings together.

Sung (Mark and Carol)

We are young and old together
and we are singing, singing for our lives

We are young and old together
and we are singing, singing for our lives

We are a land of many colors
and we are singing, singing for our lives

Somos de todos los colores
Así catamos y hemos de vivir.

Spoken (Alma)

Somos de todos los colores,
Tanto jóvenes como ancianos nos unimos
en nuestra comunidad con la esperanza
de poder ayudar a edificar una comunidad de amor.
Y al cantar juntos,
ser un ejemplo de toda una familia reconciliada.

We are a land of many colors,
we are young and old together,
we are a community that comes
together in the hope
that we can help build the beloved community
and embody the human family
whole and reconciled
while we sing together.

Sung (Mark and Carol)

We are gay and straight together
and we are singing, singing for our lives

We are gay and straight together
and we are singing, singing for our lives

We are a gentle, loving people
and we are singing, singing for our lives

We are a gentle, loving people
and we are singing, singing for our lives

Spoken (Karen Carlson)

Unitarian Universalists affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

We are all children of the same long dead star–
breathing, living, star dust.

Queer, straight, transgender, gender-fluid, male, female,
whoever you are,
whoever you love,
we welcome you into this time of meditation
with word and song,
syllable and note,
and say to you
we are all bound up together
and together
we can aspire to a love
beyond belief.

Join with us
for this celebration of human dignity
and LGBTQ pride
as we sing for our lives.

Sung (Mark and Carol)

We are a gentle, loving people
and we are singing, singing for our lives

[As soon as Carol and Mark are done singing, Tawanna, Alma, and Karen walk off stage in single file.]

Bell Meditation

[While Tawanna, Alma, and Karen are walking off stage, Mark steps to the nearest mic. Once they are off stage, he offers his own words on how the bell calls us into a time of worship. Then he rings the singing bowl.]

Chalice Lighting

Spoken (Scott)

[Scott moves onstage and steps to a mic. After reading the words below, he uncovers the electronic candle to signify that the chalice has been lit. As he is doing so, Carol and Mark sing the chalice lighting.]

Unitarians started using the chalice as a symbol in the late 1930s when it served as a cipher for the Unitarian Service Committee in its work to aid refugees fleeing fascism and Nazism in Europe. Today, our congregations throughout the world begin services by kindling a chalice flame. The fire represents the light of truth and the warmth of love that resides within each of us while the chalice itself signifies the way in which we hold each other in community. At the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, we ignite our chalice with word and song:

[Carol and Mark sing the chalice in Spanish and then in English].

Reflection: Singing For Our Lives

Spoken (Colin)

[Colin walks on stage, bringing with him the music stand.]

We are singing for our lives.

What a joy it is to be with you today, in this beautiful chapel where behind me, in front of me, and to both sides of me the ever-changing light touches upon the subtle textures and differing shades of Mark Rothko’s contemplative canvasses (each can fill vision’s field and invite us into a deeply meditative experience). And what joy it is to hear voices joined together in song. For many of us in the privileged country of the United States, life is starting to return to something similar to what it was in the before times–before the pandemic, before COVID, before the horrors of the last fifteen months. The vaccinated among us–and if you have not yet gotten vaccinated, please do–can gather. We can assemble without masks. We can join our voices in song.

And it is so good to sing together. Music has the power to bring people together. Making notes in unison, blending harmonies, or, in my case, stumbling through hymns and protest songs with others, has the transformative wonder of knitting disparate individuals into a community. When we sing, we often breath in chorus, synchronize ourselves, and share the same words and rhythm. You and I become a little more of we than we were before.

We are pleased to present to you this service “Singing for Our Lives.” In it we offer you words and hymns of hope and resistance celebrating Pride month, the LGBTQ tradition, and the work we can do together to build the beloved community. Holly Near’s classic song “Singing for Our Lives” was written in response to the assassination of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California. Our other music celebrates Pride month and the power of song to build communities of love and resistance during these difficult times: when we face the combined threats of a resurgent white supremacy, the pandemic, a global and nationwide assault on democracy, the climate crisis, enduring transphobia, homophobia, gender discrimination, and growing economic inequality. In the face of such times, we are singing for our lives.

[Colin walks off stage, taking with him the music stand.]

Song: How Could Anyone

[Carol and Mark sing.]

How could anyone ever tell you
you were anything less than beautiful
how could anyone ever tell you
you were less than whole

how could anyone fail to notice
that your loving is a miracle
how deeply you’re connected to my soul

Interactive Communion Meditation

[Colin walks on stage, bringing with him the music stand.]

Spoken (Colin)

How could anyone ever tell you
you were anything less than beautiful
how could anyone ever tell you
you were less than whole

In this month of Pride, we celebrate the beauty that resides within each of us and the beauty that is around all of us. Such celebrations are not always been easy or welcome. This year, throughout the country, anti-trans legislation has been put forth in numerous state legislatures. In response to such hate, we offer you these words from transgender Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. Theresa Soto:

you are not hard to love and respect
your existence is a blessing. your pronouns
are not a burden or a trial;
they are part of your name, just shorter.
some of our kin use only their names, where pronouns
would be,
the names they are called, remember that
someone getting them wrong is not a poor
reflection on you. it is not your fault.

your body (really and truly)
belongs to you. no one else.

Soto, and their words, are part of a Unitarian Universalist tradition of celebrating and welcoming that stretches back to into the 1950s–when some Unitarian Universalist ministers began blessing same sex unions. It is a tradition that is not without its own struggles and moments of contention. It was not until the 1970s that the first out gay men were called to serve our congregations. It was only in the early 1980s when the first out lesbians began to be ordained. In 2002, the Rev. Sean Dennison became the first transgender person called to serve a congregation. And in 2004, the first same-gender couple to get a marriage license was Unitarian Universalist–the result of years of advocacy on the part of so many from our tradition and elsewhere for marriage equality.

Here in Houston, the First Unitarian Universalist Church is proud to have been served by an openly gay senior minister from 1982 to 2002. The Rev. Bob Schaibly taught that despite the muck and mire of human life, we should always remember, “that the world is worth saving, that life has loveliness, that joy and beauty are also realities of the world, every bit as much as problems are.” During his tenure First Houston started the Houston Area Teen Coalition for Homosexuals, or HATCH, the state of Texas’s first program for LGBTQ youth and advocated for civil rights and equality for all.

In honor of Bob’s teaching that beauty is ever present, and in celebration of all of the beauty that each of us has been gifted with–no matter what others might tell us–I now invite you to share something beautiful with this gathered virtual community. In a moment, Mark is going to offer us a musical meditation. While he does, if you are comfortable, please type your answer the question, “What is something beautiful that you bring into the world?” into the chat box. Once you have shared with us your words, we will share each other’s words with the entire community. The question again, “What is something beautiful that you bring into the world?” Our beauty shines more brightly when we share it with each other. What is something beautiful that you bring into the world?

[Colin walks off stage, taking with him the music stand.]

Music: Instrumental Meditation

[Mark plays a medley of “Beautiful” and “True Colors” for two minutes and thirty seconds. While he is playing, Tawanna, Alma, and Karen line up by the side of the stage. Close to the end of it, Kelly hands them the ipad on which she has compiled viewer comments.]

Collective Meditation

[Once Mark is finished playing, Tawanna, Alma, and Tawanna file back on stage. They each then read a third of the viewer comments. When they are finished, they pause and then file off stage.]

Silent Meditation

[Scott walks onstage.]

Spoken (Scott)

We pause in awe and wonder of the beauty, diversity and mystery that is life. In the spirit of love, in the spirit of hope and in the spirit of compassion I invite each of you to enter into a time of silent prayer, meditation or reflection.

[Scott stays onstage and meditates silently for 30 seconds. At the end of the silent meditation, he says, “Amen” and then walks off stage.]

Song: Spirit of Life

[Mark and Carol sing twice. On the second time through Carol signs the song.]

Spirit of Life come unto me sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion blow in the wind rise in the sea move in the hand giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close wings set me free.
Spirit of life come to me come to me.
Spirit of Life come unto me sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion blow in the wind rise in the sea move in the hand giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close wings set me free.
Spirit of life come to me come to me.

Reflection: We Shall Be Known By the Company We Keep

[Colin walks on stage, bringing with him the music stand.]

Spirit of life, come to me, come to me.

Carolyn McDade’s hymn is an anthem and centering song for numerous Unitarian Universalist congregations. McDade is a lifelong activist and culture worker whose music has inspired many in the struggle for justice. Her own biography includes leadership in the movement to center women’s voices in religious communties, opposition to the United States’s genocidal policies in Central America during the eighties, and participation in the struggle against South African Apartheid, the civil rights and and the LGBTQ movements in the United States.

“Spirit of Life” comes from a moment of despair. Worn out by her unceasing work of activism, McDade composed it when she felt as if she was “a piece of dried cardboard that has lain in the attic for years.” In response, she did not give up. Instead, she went to her piano, started playing music, and offered her music up as a prayer. The hymn came to her as she sat there singing for her life.

“Spirit of Life” is dear to many Unitarian Universalists. It helps us to find the grounding, the roots, that we need in times of conflict and difficulty when hope is hard to find. The phrase “spirit of life” is suggestive of the way we approach the divine. For many of us, it is a sense, a feeling, an experience that is beyond language and can be encapsulated in many ways–as God, as a sensation of connection to something greater than ourselves, as the beautiful humanist truth that we are all part and parcel of the universe, all members of the great family of all souls, and made from the once shimmering stuff of stars, as something that you can describe in whatever words best fit your own experience. That spirit of life connects us each to all.

The Unitarian Universalist minister the Rev. Adam Lawrence Dyer reflects on the spirit of life in his collection of poetry on black identity, Unitarian Universalism, and queer joy. He writes of

this love that reaches beyond,
That holds one to another
And every other to one.
No matter the color
Or where we’re from.

This is now.
This is we.
This is Love.
This is God.

And this is love beyond God.

Love beyond God, now, we… Words that are needed in this time to invoke what we as a human community so desperately need: a sense of global solidarity with each other. If these last months have taught us anything–if we are to learn something from this time of plague and pestilence–it is that we as a human species are all bound up together. What affects you, affects me. Our fates are woven together in single garment, like it, or pretend it, not.

Our closing song comes from the San Francisco Bay Area. It was popularized by the Thrive Choir, a group that sings “music for the revolution” and celebrates the confluence of its members “many cultures & identities… african-american, latinx, asian-american, native american, middle-eastern, immigrant, jewish, [and] queer.”

The joy, the hope, the love, the possibility captured in the song contain many truths. I close by lifting up two. First, we are at a great turning. Now is the time when we, as a human species, will choose to address, or not address, the climate crisis, the ongoing horrors of white supremacy, the enduring brutality of homophobia, transphobia, and gender discrimination and all of the other pain we inflict upon each other. It is upon us now, to paraphrase James Baldwin, to “like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness” of each other. If we fail in this task, “If we do not now,” to again, invoke Baldwin, “dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, recreated from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time.”

The fire next time, finally, in this month of Pride, in this time of LGBTQ celebration, as the United States emerges from the pandemic, as we must confront all that is before us, we are called to remember another truth. Each us shall be known, shall be remembered, by the choices we make–whether we dare everything, whether we live by love and bring more beauty into the world–and who we choose to sing our songs with. We shall be known by the company we keep.

[Colin walks off stage, taking with him the music stand.]

Song: We Shall Be Known by the Company We Keep

[Carol and Mark sing.]

We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth
It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love.

Chalice Extinguishing

[Scott comes on stage, reads the following and then recovers the electric candle.]

We extinguish this flame,
but not the light of truth,
the warmth of community,
or the fire of commitment.
These we carry in our hearts
until we are together again.

Benediction

[Tawanna, Alma, and Karen file back on stage. Colin follows them and says:]

Thank you for joining us for this service of contemplation and sound. I invite you to stay logged in afterwards for time of question and answer. It will follow shortly. But, for now, we conclude with these words of blessing:

Song, silence, word, music,
beauty inside,
beauty surrounding,
we end this time
with a blessing for each other:
may all of us,
no matter what the world tells us,
no matter the troubles,
no matter the hate,
always remember that we are blessed
with beauty
for we have the power
to bring more beauty into the world
and we all our beautiful in our own way.

Have a wonderful Pride month,
Amen and Blessed Be.

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