We discussed prayer at our 20/30something discussion group a couple nights back. (For those of you who aren’t UU, prayer isn’t much of a UU thing these days, although there are certainly exceptions.) During the conversation I found myself saying that I missed the richness of good old fashioned liturgical prayer, like in the Book of Common Prayer.
And so I am writing some myself. Assembling, really. Using the 1894 Universalist Book of Prayer (that Scott has so kindly posted) as a template, I scoured through the hymnal looking for appropriate material. And, I think, I’ve got something now that might work.
Here’s a PDF of my progress so far. What do you think?
I’m resisting going into all the why’s and how’s of it for now. Suffice it to say, I was trying to put together a service that would produce (and represent) a community I would very much like to be a part of.
I’m going to keep at it and see where this goes. If I feel it’s coming along (and get to try it out a few times), I’ll post it in a subdomain here, similar to what Scott has done with the 1894 prayer book. And an order for evening prayer is also in the works.
This is a fabulous idea, and someting I’ve been pondering for a bit (though not doing anything about it, of course).
I grew up Anglican in a large cathedral and I deeply miss both Morning and Evening Prayer. And I’ve been thinking of working up something like this for private use.
(you’re link to the PDF actually just goes back to Scott’s Universalist Prayer Book, by the way).
Thanks for sharing this!
Ian
Doh! Link fixed.
You’ve assembled some very nice pieces here. Each individually could be the meditation for a week.
The only problem with morning prayers is that, presumably, they are in the morning…a dreadful time to have to acknowledge being alive ;)
You rock, my friend. This looks to be one of the most productive Small Groups we’ve had so far! /me cheers you on.
Hmm. How should I put this? I’ll have to spend some time tomorrow afternoon and write on my blog. I promise to be constructive.
Mr. Uneasily Green,
With the hours I keep these days, morning ends somewhere around 3pm. ;)
Scott,
I look forward to it.
I was curious what you (and Chris) would think while I was putting it together. I only ask that you remember that I’m a panentheist with strong Taoist leanings, not a Christian. Which is to say, I wouldn’t expect that you and I would see eye to eye on the theology of the service, and I hope your post won’t dwell overmuch on our specific theological differences, which could supply us each with a whole series of posts. ;-)
On a somewhat similar note, I was irritated to find that Singing the Living Tradition has such a predominance of “precious little snowflake” readings. It was difficult to find enough readings that had some acknowledgement of the universe outside the Transcendalist mind—that is, enough readings to complete the service(s). I imagine you and I share similar irritations with SLT and its lack of even decent liturgy.
[...] Chutney need not have worried that I was going to judge his morning prayer proposal on theological grounds: I’ve read his blog long enough to know where he’s coming from and I’d fain worry if he did propose a Christian liturgy. [...]
i like it so far, hon. my methodist past craves this stuff!
I commend you for beginning this effort, but I agree with Scott that there’s a heap o’ trouble in the issue of attributions, which a mere reference to SLT won’t fix. eg, it’s a little weird to see Marge Piercy’s poem-cum- “Prayer For Work” attributed as “SLT.” Likewise the opening invocation, from the “Salutation To the Sun.”
I’m sure you can find a way to do this with more thoroughness and integrity.
One of the things I emphasize with my students is to be aware of the “sayability” of worship elements meant to be spoken aloud. With this in mind, I have to say that I find the Ted Loder prayer really hard to get my mouth around. The language doesn’t flow and I can’t think that a worshiping community (even two or three) would have much success reciting this together. Listening to it, I feel drowned in over-long words and concepts.
Rock on.
Peacebang,
Response 1: Copyright
I agree with Scott’s multi-colored assessment of the copyright problems. It is troubling, and I am most troubled by the notion, as Scott puts it, that worship can be owned. It’s frankly offensive that worship materials can be owned. (And this beside my uneasy feeling that the whole copyright/intellectual property scheme is morally suspect when it comes to religion/art/humanities/academia/etc.)
Of course, the materials I’m using are all pre-CreativeCommons. I hope that the next round of denominational hymnals and prayer books are licensed under a CreativeCommons license or similar (with commercial use prohibited without permission, if they like). If they’re not licensed this way, they shouldn’t be allowed in our pew racks.
As far as Ted Loder and Marge Piercey’s copyrighted work, I’m happy to take them out of my draft if they wish. I know nothing of Marge Piercey except what I’ve seen in the hymnal, so I’ll limit this to Ted Loder, a minister whose work I love. If Ted Loder (or his agents) send me a cease and desist order, I would know him for a moral fraud. Judging by his work, I’m sure he knows better than that. In fact, I bet he’d be happy to see me trying to work his stuff in to a prayer service.
If the UUA sent me a cease and desist order, I would start a march on Beacon Hill. The thought of it is morally outrageous.
I worked with ethicists for five years, so I’m well acquainted with the moral issues involved here. “Copyright” and “intellectual property” are not moral categories— they are legal categories gratuitously expanded for the wishes of what our Founding Fathers would have called “the moneyed interests.” And legal does not equal ethical (though they do overlap). When we accept legal categories as moral givens, and we usually do, we are exhibiting a lack of moral imagination which serves neither us nor the greater good. “Copyright” and “intellectual property,” for community-intended works, reinforce the Lie that we are all off on our own, instead of in this together.
We would not have a liturgical tradition today if it were not for creative cut-and-paste efforts like my own here (as lacking as it is). I fail to see how my posting of a PDF draft, with simple attributions included, is any different than the fair use employed by UU communities every Sunday. If we UU bloggers are not a religious community or sorts, then what are we? And if UUs can’t cut and paste the hymnal for (potential) worship purposes, what good is the damn thing? Who is the book for anyway? Copyright holders or the worshipping community?
That said, I think my use here falls under fair use. And if it doesn’t, fair use is morally broke.
Peacebang,
Response 2: Liturgical Feedback
I’ll underscore that this is a draft, even a proto-draft. This is not a finished, published work. The works used at this point are as much place holders at this point as anything else. They’re there because they loosely (very loosely) fit the structure of the 1894.
Feedback about “sayability,” rhythm, and the like are most welcome. As I said, I haven’t even tried this out yet. My draft strikes me as devoid of the rhythm of the BCP, for instance. I think it does have a rhythm of its own, however, though I wouldn’t venture to say at this point whether it’s the rhythm it needs.
My fondness for Ted Loder may be blinding me to his liturgibility. I’ll have to chew on that.
As a frequent contributor to the UU Worship Web, and books of liturgical elements, I’d like to reframe the “ownership” issue. It isn’t that I’m not happy to have people use the words I craft for worship — that’s why I make them available — and it’s not that I would expect anything so ridiculous as residuals for my liturgical contributions. It’s a question of people knowing the sources of favorite beloved works. It’s the difference between liturgical elements and literary efforts. The first is meant to be somewhat generic, the latter is most emphatically not.
In the latter case, the writing is far more distinctive, far more “mine.” To see it included in a service of Morning Prayer without “my” (the author’s) name attached to it bothers me for two reasons: (1) it is being used out of context (oh well, what can you do) and, far worse (2)it has suddenly become a generic thing: a prayer. My name is stripped from it,and the phrases I have labored so long to make distinctive are now being intoned by hundreds of worshipers who have no idea I wrote it. The latter really bothers me. It’s about transforming literature into generic devotional texts.
But listen, I’d rather be having this conversation than not having it. I hope you’ll chutney on with this effort.
P.S. I love Loder, too.
Peacebang,
Hear you loud and clear. Next version will have named names and all. I put the thing together after the late night comedians had started to sign off, so, well, you can imagine my level of attention to detail.
Your generic v. distinctive is an excellent point. At some point I would love to write (with others) real liturgical prayers for UUs, generic and all.
Maybe I should put this thing up on a wiki? Let folks write and edit as they please. Just use the content I’ve got in there now as a place holder, and take it out when there’s original (or generic) work there instead. See what happens.
To further demonstrate my ignorance, I didn’t even know about the UU Worship Web. I’m so glad to see the liturgical calendar draft there. I’ll spend some time looking at that.
My own main interest with this is to come up with the “readings from the living tradition” for the service. I would love to mesh that with what’s already going on over at UU Worship Web.
What do you think? Move the shell of this over to a wiki? Over to UU Worship Web? (Seems like a Wiki would be a god way to go for that project too.)
Tee-hee. Chutney said “god way.”
Naw, keep the wiki (a good idea) on your own space and terms. A Creative Commons license or the GPL (like Wikipedia) would be good.
Chutney — there is a difference between creating a work mainly from the works of others removed from a congregation — since many copyright holders allow local, single-use reporduction — and the orders of worship you mention. Of course, a good number of ministers are guilty of reproducing hymnal resources so that they don’t have to have as many hymnals as needed. The UUA specifically disallows that kind of copying (and is behind the curve in denominational terms.)
Yes, liturgical copyright sucks. I use what I can, avoid what I can’t use without permissions or license, and try to get out what is already in the public domain. But you seem to be standing on two different principles — what should be free vs. going to use it even if it isn’t — and that’s a good way to get burned.
I’m looking forward to reading your draft liturgy, but haven’t done so yet. Please forgive the length of the comment that follows. Two things I’d offer in advance of my reading of your draft:
The UUA’s WorshipWeb — the initial version of which I developed over five months in 2000 before going to work for UU World — drew from some of the models Scott mentions. Because genuinely liturgical worship had already grown rare among UUs, I looked for more “contemporary” models that managed to preserve much of the tenor of the better parts of the 1937 “Hymns of the Spirit.” The part of the site that still reflects my understanding of the strengths of liturgical worship is here, especially in the Learning Guides and Sample Services. These guides are meant to suggest how a range of structures commonly in use by UU churches can accommodate a variety of texts as coherent wholes; I drew on available texts that weren’t under copyright and didn’t write any original texts in the process. (The guides drew on order of service outlines provided in an excellent 1983 UUA pamphlet on leading common worship.) So I feel great sympathy for what you’re attempting.
Part of my practice run for the WorshipWeb was studying the often weird attempts made in “The Book of Hours” by the Congregation of Abraxas (a UU liturgical innovation group in the late 1970s and early 80s). The Abraxas folks were syncretists who drew on “literary” texts, but they were quite serious about reclaiming liturgy for UU ends. I first saw in practice how clumsy literary texts can be in congregational use when I tried adapting one of the Abraxas services for the youth group I was advising in the late 90s: A literary text — especially poetry and drama — often plays with rhythm in ways that are simply too complex or that change gears too quickly for a group of people reading together. (There’s part of the Marge Piercy poem that has always seems to create a congregational stumble, for example.) This is where the Book of Common Prayer is a genuine landmark: It’s literature that was written for group recitation, and its beauty is in the elegance of the vocal patterns, in which subtle changes emerge without throwing the readers off balance — mostly, it seems, by avoiding enjambment.
(Postscript: I don’t think I’ve ever said this explicitly in public, but in selecting and adapting individual texts from UU ministers, I paid particular attention to vocal rhythm and patterning — and occasionally modified texts as lightly as possible to maintain rhythm and patterning. You can see how I amended texts in the source code. Notes and deletions are commented out of texts from the original batch.)
Ya’ll need to take a chill pill with this copywright stuff. Get a grip. Did you see Chutney anyhere saying he was going to publish it and make oodles of money and roll around in it all naked?
No.
And the mental image is worriesome.
Get a grip, and get over yourselves. Jesus Christ. He’s doing it to give him a little guidance, not get hammered on an innae point. Probably half those things in there are so old their are practically public domain now anyways. So, Peacebang, Scott, get a grip. I said that twice now, and I hate repeating myself, but jesus! This is a first, rough draft. You could have said “you might want to include more of the source information” instead of all this windbag nonsense.
Its nice to know that people’s spiritual endevors in UUism have to conform exactly to your set standards to be considered worthwhile and viable and not worthy of scorn.
Glad you ain’t in my covenant group, or I would have blown a gasket over this. Keep up the good word Chutney, and ignore them. This is your endevor and I am quite glad you not only got something out of Sunday, but took it, made it your own, came up with something great that it seemed a lot of people talked about missing on Sunday, and not only created something, but chose to share it with us.
Kinsi, you must be kidding me.
That we pay Chutney the compliment of reading his work and responding with detailed suggestions is nothing for you to have a little nervous breakdown about.
Of course you’ve never been involved in preparing or publishing liturgical materials yourself, so you have no idea how to read this conversation — a respectful brainstorming among UU liturgists. This has nothing to do with money. With all due respect, you don’t know what we’re talking about (for example, your completely innacurate assessment of the sources as being “so old their [sic]are practically public domain”, so why not relax and enjoy the finished product when Chutney gets it out?
If you want to use poems and writings and old prayers in your Covenant Group, you’re welcome to use whatever you can get hold of, public domain or not. Chutney is attempting something much larger, and he knows it will be a big project. He’s a big boy and doesn’t need all your hysterical “Jesus Christ”ing and protective bullying. Get a grip.
Thats right. Because Chutney is planning on introducing this to all Unitarian Universalist congregations in the world, slowly trying to take them over with his poor copyrightedness.
Perhaps you didn’t notice, but Chance is not a minister at our congregation…and not really planning on becoming one. This isn’t likely something to be adopted by our congregation, because, well, the thought of prayer scares the bejesus out of a lot of us at UUCA (except the ministers!) This is a personal exercise he invited comments on, and instead of wanting to burn him at the stake over using inappropriate acronyms, heaven forbid, we should be encouraging, and rooting him on. [insert Arsenial Hall-esque hooting here.] Methinks you misunderstand what the point of him posting this and the point of him working on this is.
You mention that its a great honor we read and comment on his stuff. Well, then I would see it as an utmost honor for someone to use my stuff as part of a morning prayer ritual. And the point for me would not be for me to get any sort of recognition for it, but to honestly help people in their spiritual journey. Yes, I’ve written things and had other people use it…but honestly, my point wasn’t to make money off it or even to have personal recognition, it was to help people. At work, I make my own sources all of the time for kids to use and send them out to the other centers for them to use, but I don’t put my name on it. Why bother…if they’re learning from it, that’s what matters. I want to shun my ego and my egotism. If what I write is used to honestly help people in their lives, then that’s all I need to know. It wouldn’t matter if my name was attached or not. But that is a discussion for a different post at a different time, because this conversation hijacks the original intent of Chut’s post.
You mentioned earlier in the conversation about how there’s a difference between liturgical and literary efforts. I couldn’t agree more. Literary efforts are the efforts you find in bookstores that is the deeply personal where writers create works so they can make money. Liturgy used for prayer has a different purpose to me, where the writers create works to benefit the lives of those who use and read it and not for any sort of special recognition or money.
Does that mean sources should never be attributed? Of course not. But, if Chutney actually uses this in a prayer service, he would certainly put where he got it on the sheet, as he said so above. My point is that this is a first draft of something that for now he only plans to use in his personal life, and offering for others with the same thoughts to comment on it.
Chutney,
I gave the liturgy a brief look over, it looks like a wonderful work in progress.
I am interested in daily UU prayers for the individual, not in the context of a group or gathering. Is this part of your interest/agenda at all?
Louis
While the typical Morning Prayer service feels a bit longish to me personally for daily individual prayer, yes, that would be great. Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer usually come in different flavors, so there could even be short and long forms. And then there’s the more rare Noonday and Nighttime Prayer services. Perhaps those could be the short forms?
I’d love your help with this, Louis.
On Chutney’s morning prayer, part 3…
I’m glad Chutney and Philocrites brought up the WorshipWeb resource that Philo . . . Chris Walton led-up a few years ago. (These pseudonyms make me think we each have a sidekick, a nemesis, and a lair.)
It includes three of the sixteen services …
On Chutney’s morning prayer, part 2…
Every once in a while, you get a Unitarian Universalist who says — in so many words — we’re not Christian and never were, so why do we insist on doing X like the Christians. (The letters to the UUWorld sometimes go there.) But what we…
I have discovered some Congregation of Abraxas materials on the peculiar website of one of its founders, the Rev. Vern Barnet. Mostly UU worship theory and some history of the group rather than liturgical material, but still worth noting.
[...] So, I’m interested if other UUs out there are struggling to have some sort of morning worship or ritual in their lives. I’m also considering if I want some sort of evening one, too. My pal Chutney tried to put one up a few months ago, and eventually I want to have something more in there. But this is good and simple for now. [...]