SILENT MUSIC: A Story of Baghdad

On the Sunday of our Flower Ceremony, June 7th,  I sang a song based on Miss Rumphius, a picture book, for our Time for All Ages.  Barbara Cooney wrote and illustrated this classic, about a little girl named Alice Rumphius who was inspired by her grandfather (an artist) to help make the world more beautiful, however she might find the way.  Perhaps you remember that she planted lupin flower seeds so they would bloom all along the coastline of eastern Canada and New England....

For my very last Time for All Ages, on June 14th, I told a story ALSO based on a picture book, SILENT MUSIC:  A Story of Baghdad, written and illustrated by James Rumford.  It’s about a boy named Ali who also was encouraged by his grandfather to make something beautiful -- but Ali was even more inspired by a man who had lived many hundreds of years before them, a man named Yakut, who lived in long-ago Baghdad, in the country we now call Iraq.

Yakut was the most famous calligrapher in the world, someone who knows the art of Calligraphy, or the art of drawing letters, by hand, to make beautiful writing... You know how on a computer, we can print words in different fonts, or styles?  Here is our theme for this month, the word "beauty" -- printed in different fonts: beauty, beauty, beauty.  Imagine being able to do that by hand!  I bet it takes a lot of practice to write so beautifully using a brush or pen and ink!

Here is an example of some framed words about UUism that were drawn by a calligrapher for Diane -- she keeps them in her office:  UUism is faith in people, hope for tomorrow's child, confidence in a continuity that spans all time...

And here is the Hebrew word "Shalom" which means "peace" made into a wall tile by a calligrapher who wrote onto clay and then baked that beauty.  (show tile)

 Like the famous calligrapher Yakut, Ali's family also lived in Baghdad, and they were Muslims, part of one of the great world religions called Islam. Islamic people worship in a Mosque, a holy building that often is built with a tall tower or minaret, (where the leaders can climb up high to call the people to come for prayers or services). Muslims use calligraphy to decorate their mosques and to make their holy book, the Qur'an, look as beautiful as possible.  A page of Arabic writing looks like a page of music.... So calligraphy is an important and beautiful part of Islamic culture....( We have a lot of books that can tell you more about these topics in our R.E. Library.)

After all that introduction, I'm ready to tell you about "Silent Music:  A Story of Baghdad."

Ali loved playing soccer in the dusty street with his friends.  He loved loud, parent-rattling music, and he loved to dance.  But most of all, Ali loved calligraphy!  He loved writing the letters of his language, Arabic, and making them go from right to left across the page.  He loved to make the ink flow from his pen -- starting and stopping, sliding and sweeping, leaping and dancing to the silent music in his head.  He said that writing a long sentence, leaving an ink trail of dots and loops behind him, was like watching soccer players in slow motion as they kick the ball across the field.

Ali practiced and practiced writing Arabic beautifully -- he doodled on napkins and newspapers, on old envelopes and faded receipts --even on the bathroom mirror!  Some words were much easier than others -- his sister's name, Jasmine, flowed from his pen, but his grandfather's name, Mustafa, had too many "loops and tall mast strokes" -- still Ali kept on with his calligraphy

Ali's mother would tease her son, and call him Yakut -- the most famous calligrapher in the world.  800 years before Ali was born, Yakut also practiced writing every day, even inventing new ways of making Arabic letters.  Ali knew Yakut was a genius!  He didn't tell anyone, but Ali thought of Yakut as his secret hero, because Yakut could create such beauty, such silent music....

Ali remembered the legend that in the year 1258 C.E., when the Mongols attacked Baghdad, burning the houses and killing hundreds of people, Yakut fled to a high tower, a minaret, where he created beauty -- he shut out the horror of war and wrote glistening letters of rhythm and grace. People throughout the Middle East still recall this old story....

One night not so very long ago, in 2003, Ali did what Yakut had done.  It was a terrible night, when bombs and missiles fell on modern Baghdad and once again, death and destruction filled the city's streets, so Ali followed Yakut's example -- he wrote...

And wrote...

And WROTE, all night long and during the many nights of bombing that followed, he wrote...and wrote, filling his room with pages of calligraphy, filling his mind with peace...

When the bombing finally stopped, and one war became another, Ali kept writing, kept practicing, the easy words and the hard-to-write ones where the loops tangle or the dots of ink smear. He noticed how easily his pen would glide down the long sweeping hooks of the word HARB, the Arabic word for "war" --  and how stubbornly his pen resisted making the difficult waves and slanted staff of the word SALAM --or "peace." Ali knows he has so much to practice, until the word  SALAM flows freely from his pen, and so he keeps writing, keeps making silent music.

I wonder how each of you will find ways to make our world more beautiful?

And because this is my last Sunday with you as your DRE who loves to tell stories, I wish that each of you will find what you love to do in the world, like Ali and Alice, and practice and practice, keep working at it, keep spreading the seeds, as your lives unfold ...

May it be in beauty.  Salam!

A goodbye wish for spiritual growth!

The Canadian Unitarian Council's May 2015 Annual Conference and Meetings (CUC ACM) in Ottawa were hugely meaningful on many levels, and as always I am super grateful for the professional development funds that cover my costs to attend and get inspired. Let me share some highlights and reflections on it all!

After the banner parade for all UUs on Friday night, we celebrated being together with Matt Meyer, the Boston based percussion artist, performer and worship leader who is modeling how to live our UU values in a co-housing community that -- among other traits -- sings together every Sunday night, welcoming in their neighbours. Matt had us sing with lots of call-and-response; often saying something simple and yet profound like “singing pulls us together” words we would repeat. As he put it, he helped us “build a feeling of wholeness among those gathered,” to ‘gather the spirit.’  What a model!

Sunday morning we watched a spectacular pageant-like visual narrative of the history of Ottawa and its mighty rivers, using huge puppets and many many singers and puppet carriers (thanks to the ACM choir and Ottawa area UUs).  I especially loved the Gaia figure with arms and skirts like a giant maypole!

It was a learning experience for me to think about how awesome the production was, and what a huge accomplishment, yet also to wonder what could have made it more worshipful.  How we draw our children, youth and adults into deeper levels of meaning and relationship through shared services and other activities is always an important consideration for me as a religious educator.

My 3rd ACM highlight was Rev Stephen Atkinson’s Confluence Lecture on Sunday afternoon, called “Spirit: The Necessary Foundation of Social Justice.”
Although I would agree with the animator of our CUC 2012 Spiritual Leadership symposium, saying that "spirituality is at its core about LIFE vs non-life," Stephen sidestepped defining “spiritual.”  Instead, he delved into recent neuroscience, citing the brain as our spiritual organ, and affirming that
"Attending to our spiritual lives, individually and together, is necessary for us to be wise, committed and effective in how we address the hurt and unfairness in the world."
Stephen said he is also concerned with “our difficulty [as UUs] finding a common theological ground; not... a dogma, but a common deep, inspiring and path-setting foundation that we all respect. …"
I love how he went on to cite studies in Neurotheology,  explaining that
 "… [current research] doesn’t prove [a neurological "state of Absolute Unitary Being"], but it doesn’t contradict the possibility of a deeper self… in a Universe where all things are one. ... a kind of Rumi’s field where mysticism and humanism aren’t thought of as wrong or right."
He suggests, “...we can meet each other there, and if we can, I bet that what we do together there is grow spiritually as we more deeply accept a comfortable unity of values"....

"If we want to take flight, we need two wings, not just one: one is certainly public social action, but the other has to be greater depth, meaning and purpose, individually and collectively, and I don’t see that coming anywhere but from a spiritual renewal..."

As a Quakertarian who has loved her work in religious education, and who often communes with herons, I embrace Stephen’s thesis that:
"to live a vibrant life, we must continually grow as a person. Growth comes from living consciously: sometimes in therapy, self-help groups or spiritual practice; sometimes by facing and learning from our mistakes. Congregations at their best nourish and make room for personal growth."

If you would like to hear or see the complete lecture, visit www.cuc.ca/ACM-2015/confluence-lecture/

Finally, we all know UUs are good at questions, and Quakers speak of the big questions as "queries," so my queries for you at this time are:
How does each of you nourish your spiritual growth?
How has this congregation already (or might it in the future?) made/make room for YOUR personal growth?

Not only will I be delighted to hear of your responses, but I am sure the entire UCM community would benefit, so be sure to share them widely -- perhaps in our newsletter, or on the ucmtl.ca website.

This month I take formal leave of my role as your Director of Religious Education, with a bittersweet awareness that my body and brain are ready to rest and move on, but I will not let go of my deep connection to the entire institution and to so many of you.  Blessings on your journeys, as I take my own next steps on my own journey to simply being "a great old lady" -- my ambition since I was around age ten!

PASSOVER by Aileen Fisher

The festival of freedom
comes happily in spring;
freedom for a people
and every living thing.

Freedom from a bitter
bondage, long,long ago;
freedom from the bondage
of winter's ice and snow.

Passover is the very old Jewish holiday which comes in the spring, celebrating the exodus of the Jews from Egypt; a seder is a ritual feast for Passover, held in Jewish communities or families when the story of the Exodus is retold annually through everyone reading a special text called a "Haggadah" together.  The word "seder" literally means "order" and there is a specific order of readings and symbolic foods which are eaten by the participants followed by a more general big meal.
I grew up with almost no contact with Judaism, and knew very little about the traditions of my Jewish friends in college.  My first Passover seders were called "liberation seders" and were moving, learning-filled events during the 70s, held by the Toronto co-counseling community.  That peer-based movement focused on people helping one another to heal from both specific, individual hurts and from societal oppressions, such as anti-Semitism.  I was inspired to learn how the liberation of any one group is essential for the well-being of all humanity.  Listening to the Hebrew prayers and songs in the Haggadah, I also found the seder very beautiful. Talking with friends who were Jewish and others who were allies of Jews, I gained many insights into the riches and biases of the Jewish religion and culture, and came to understand many aspects of Jewish life.  And on the very simplest level of shared food, I came to relish the "charoses" mixture of ground walnuts and grated apple, eaten with the unleavened bread, or matzoh that characterizes the holiday, along with horseradish for "spice."
Because seders include specific roles for children old enough to read and ask significant questions about the steps of the ritual, there are also some activities to engage children, such as searching for the special piece of matzoh called the "afikomen." In the mid-1980s my family had the unique opportunity to attend a family seder in Jerusalem, conducted according to Sephardic Jewish guidelines, and I remember the children getting more and more heavy-eyed as the night wore on --we parents were tired, too, by the late hour that we drove home.  Our seder this year at the Unitarian church will probably use a shorter Haggadah, and it definitely won't be as long an evening as ours was in Jerusalem, but the food will be delicious, the songs fervent, and the group sense of gratitude for our freedom today will be tangible.