A Moveable Pew / Advent Day 16

One of my first impressions of the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Fairbanks my first service, December of 2004, was that I belonged there. It was simple, actually. Every Sunday people light candles and talk about their lives, struggles, people they love, and so on, and place the candles into sand. It was the closest thing I’d seen (which I myself as a pastor hadn’t started) to Taize prayer around the Cross, a simple but moving meditative service from a religious community in France.

The only worship artifact banished with me from Fairbanks Lutheran had to do with Taize worship. It was a set of four boxes on wheels which Jerry Zelmer made and Al Holmberg filled with a pickup-truck load of sand. The boxes could be set in a square, creating between them the shape of a cross for Lent, or placed in a circle for Advent. Turn off the lights. Put in the background the Cello Suites of J.S. Bach. Initially, there are four candles lit, and people are invited to the center of the circled pews to sit or kneel beside the sand, and to light a candle. Let the flame, the heat, the longing, the hope, seep into your soul. I miss these times to sit together in the dim, stirring candlelight.

Yesterday we stayed after the UUFF service to plan the Solstice Celebration, which is coming next week. Again, I received confirmation that I belong in this tradition. First, we’re working with real things, darkness, light, directions, candles, creating a liminal space by words and actions. Second, I get to be the lead drummer of four during chants. Third, and maybe most interesting, without any controversey or church council meetings, we moved the "pews," we circled the seating. From rows to two concentric circles.

No biggie? Well, it’s what Fairbanks Lutheran is reported to have disliked most about my worship style – that I wanted to change the "normal" pew orientation in Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. I set the Fairbanks ecumenical movement back 40 years by moving pews.

Speaking of real things, I’m trying to figure out how to mimic one undeniable strength of Christian worship – that the stories of the book (the Bible) are oriented to the solar calendar. Jana reminded me yesterday that the Christians stole the calendar from the pagans, that all the animists already had ceremonies oriented to the changing year. Christians infiltrated the Saturnalia with the birth of Jesus, and continued to celebrate yearly the pagan spring festival of rebirth with the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In a community which has consciously chosen to live out something different from the many available religious traditions that we are coming out of, or going in to, we tend to have services with a lot of words and ideas. That’s a relief to many, for whom rote and highly charged actions (like holy communion) or the reciting together of creeds or prayers became intrusive or even intolerable.

But watching Jana put together a rehearsal for what was as elemental and sensual as the best that good religion has to offer, I was thinking, there’s a lot of potential here.

At the end of the service next week – after waiting in darkness, calling the circle, north, south, east, west, lighting candles, chanting chants, telling stories about Raven and Hummingbird bringing back the light to the earth – someone will hit the "play" button, and we’ll walk out of the sanctuary into the 11:30 am dawn holding sparklers while the Beatles sing "Here Comes the Sun."