In Celebration of the UU Church of Olinda’s 140^th Anniversary the following two publications are now available for you to have your own copies.

1. Universalists in Ontario by Louise Foulds
   A Centennial Project of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Olinda – 1980 Revised Second Edition for the 125^th Anniversary of the Church – 2005

2. The Little Church at the Crossroads By Jane Innerd
   A Brief History of the First 120 Years of The Unitarian Universalist Church of Olinda together with A History of the Years 2000 to 2020. In Celebration of the 140th Anniversary of the church.

To order, please download either the pdf or the word version of the attached flyer and complete the order form on the second page.

In-person Services suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic

The Executive Committee of the Board together with the Minister of the church are monitoring advisories on the current coronal virus outbreak. At their meeting after the service on March 15, they elected not to offer in-person worship services until further notice. The in-person services are being replaced by new online materials and virtual services using Zoom. For future worship services, the situation will be re-evaluated with the latest medical and societal information then available.

Please check back on this site for updates, and visit canada.ca/coronavirus for more information on the virus.

Services begin at 10:30 AM on Sundays and last about one hour. Children are invited to attend religious education classes during the service. Weather permitting, we meet every Sunday between Labour Day and the end of June and once a month in July and August. About three services every month are given by our new minister, the Reverend Rod Emilio Solano-Quesnel and typically include an engaging sermon on a  timely topic. Other services often feature an invited guest speaker. Services are usually followed by good tea, coffee, and conversation. Please see the monthly newsletter on this site for scheduled sermons, speakers, and musicians. We welcome atheists, agnostics, and theists, pagans, humanists, Christians, members of other religious faiths and from LGTBQ communities and others seeking fellowship, knowledge, and inspiration.

You are welcome here!

Time for All Ages – Rise Again by Leon Dubinsky
Performed by Voices Rock Medicine
a Toronto-based choir of Women Physicians

Sermon – Rising from the Rabbit Hole – Rev. Rod

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Read: [Print-ready PDF available for download]

Easter always brings a great deal of imagery: life coming back from the ground that appeared so dead for so long; lifeless eggs cracking open, revealing the life hidden inside; bunnies emerging from their burrows, buried deep within the earth, after being seemingly entombed over the winter.

Rabbit holes, as it happens, are a great place to be at times when we need to hunker down and let the harshness of the outside pass over.

And in a broader sense, they can also be places of unexpected inspiration.  Just as the storybook Alice chased a hurried rabbit and fell down the rabbit hole to find an unexpected land of wonder, so do we sometimes find ourselves unwittingly falling down rabbit holes that capture our imagination and invite us to expansive exploration.

Over the past few months, we’ve all had the need to stay inside for longer than we’d like… and not just for the winter.  For many of us, that might have also meant more time spent online, or digging through some of the books on the shelf that haven’t been seen in a while – or perhaps haven’t been visited at all, since they were placed on the shelf!

These rabbit holes have existed long before the internet after all.  Another way you may have found yourselves into this kind of setting is on a forgotten corner of the library, with many books about the same subject lumped together on the stacks.

For me, falling down an internet rabbit hole has become a regular occurrence.  One of my characteristic pandemic rabbit holes has been browsing through virtual choirs, which have already been around for several years, but have experienced a boom over the past year – for obvious reasons.  And I was amazed by the qualities of many of these creations.  Not only were many of them well put together, but they were also playfully put together, witnessing to the harsh realities of our current times, while also finding reasons for – and moments of – levity, seeking and finding spots of joy to shepherd many of us through these times.

Along with the sheer entertainment and inspirational value that they bring, I’ve also found that these proverbial rabbit holes tend to reveal small subcultures you might not have even realized were there – but enough people who share niche interests and talents can get together to really make a kind of cottage industry about specific needs – and excuses to get together, even if it’s “only” online.

I was quite piqued by the fact that there were many amateur choirs made up of medical professionals, which I didn’t know was a thing.  And many of them were in fact Canadian medical professionals.  Voices Rock Medicine is specifically a group of women physicians in Toronto, who share joy, and offers support to each other – and to the rest of us – by getting together, while apart, and singing.

A few of us here at Olinda have even gotten into the virtual choir racket… just this week, some of us sent our recordings for a Canadian Unitarian Universalist song that will be added to a composite choir and unveiled at the Canadian Unitarian Council’s national service in May.

Among the other rabbit holes that I’ve found myself falling into, I’ve also found a few other interesting subcultures that offered me experiences I didn’t even realize I’d enjoy.

For instance, I’ve always liked music by Enya.  (And if you don’t know who I’m talking about, Enya is a unique singer who is hard to categorize – she’s sometimes labelled as “New Age”, but could also fall under Celtic… although she’s really a genre unto herself.)  Essentially, she sings beautifully about beautiful things, and she arranges her songs with multiple layers of her own voice.  For about four decades she has been singing oddly ethereal music that is both uplifting and oddly relaxing.  Chances are you’ve heard one of her songs – perhaps you’d recognize her classic hit Orinoco Flow, with the iconic refrain “Sail away, sail away, sail away”.

So, over the past months, I found that there’s a whole subculture of DJs who specialize in making Dance Club remixes of Enya’s songs.  And I love it when a good remix or mashup can show me a new dimension of an old favourite.  Surely enough, there’s an entire catalogue of electro-dance versions of Enya’s iconic Orinoco Flow, as well as many of her other hit tracks (and there are many of those).

Speaking of channels that transcend musical genres, I also ran into a rabbit hole of channels that feature re-imaginings of current pop songs as medieval-style music, complete with medieval instrumentation, and some rewording of the lyrics to have a more “older” feel.  Quickly, I discovered that there’s an entire cottage industry of this kind of medieval adaptations, to the extent that the genre has its own label: Bardcore.  Some go to quite extensive lengths for authenticity’s sake, with one creator not satisfied with using slightly older Shakespearean-style lingo, but doing full-on Old-English translations (the kind of ancient English that looks and sounds like German, and has letters we don’t use any more).

And just over the past couple months, you may have also heard that sea shanties became all the rage, with many younger folks getting into revivals of the old genre, and inviting their friends to collaborate – remotely – on multi-part harmonisations of classic sea shanties and maritime hymns.  Among the most common of these were endless recreations of the old classic The Wellerman.

Professional musician Adam Neely has a hypothesis about why these maritime genres have experienced this kind of revival at this particular time – he thinks that sea shanties and maritime anthems have the perfect structure for singing collaboratively over electronic media because of their antiphonal call-and-response structure, which allows people to work with the time-lag effect that is so prevalent on online communication.

And yes, I even found a Bardcore medieval-style cover of Enya’s Orinoco Flow, sung as a sea shanty.  Amazing what you can find when you go deep enough into a rabbit hole!

I suspect many of you have also had your own rabbit holes to dive into.  Certainly, many of us have become “armchair epidemiologists” with a newfound fluency on the lingo of R-numbers, efficacy rates, exponential transmission, and the mechanisms of mRNA technology to produce protein spikes provoking antibody production as an immune response [which we can all talk about leisurely over dinner, or Café drop-ins].

Of course, few of us have become true medical experts, and we have been reminded of the value of trusting medical expertise, recognizing the realities that the field is not static, and therefore decisions need to be made with imperfect – and shifting – information.

And here’s where we come into the double edge of rabbit holes.  We’ve heard about these on the news, as folks get dragged into unfounded fears, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.  And they have real impacts – we’ve seen these with dubious personalities hawking dubious remedies, or denying the real risks of disease.  Most recently, on January 6, we saw some of the effects that follow large parts of a population getting stuck at the deep end of a conspiracy rabbit hole.

And perhaps this is a reminder that a well-balanced life invites us to emerge from rabbit holes – to rise from the entombed caverns of isolated exploration, to reconnect with the outside world and re-embrace it in its complexity… perhaps with a measure of new perspectives and a new depth of knowledge – but more importantly, with better questions about how we can better engage with our interconnected web.

On the other had, staying in a rabbit hole for too long – especially those that risk leading us astray – can develop into something that we might recognize as an obsession… an excessive preoccupation that can alienate us from all those other areas of our lives that offer value to us as we enrich each other.

By contrast, when a newfound interest – or an unexpected expansion of that which feeds us – invites us to look at our world in a new and richer way, with fresh motivation, and with a clearer sense of inspiration, we might say that we have… something else that is typical Easter lingo – a passion.

Passion, my friends is that fresh energy that leads us into… taking up a new hobby, getting physically active, learning a new language, getting involved with our communities, offering something to that which is larger than ourselves – to be of service to humanity.  My friends, passion is what leads us to be church together… passion is why I answered a call to ministry, and passion is why we share a ministry in this fellowship.

My friends, over the past year, we have taken some time to explore… to dig deep into some questions about how we can do church and be church – now and in the future.  We’ve taken some much-needed time to recoup and regroup.  We’ve explored some important rabbit-holes, growing our sense of who we can be, and how we can be.  And in the coming months… with some stops and starts… we can rise from the rabbit holes.  And continue to embrace our passion.

So may it be,
In Solidarity and Love,
Amen

Copyright © 2021 Rodrigo Emilio Solano-Quesnel

Closing Hymn #63 Spring Has Now Unwrapped the Flowers

Words: Piae Cantiones, 1582
~)-| Music: Thomas Benjamin, 1940- , © 1992 Unitarian Universalist Association
Tune BLACKBURN
Sung to the Tune TEMPUS ADEST FLORIDUM

Posted by Melissa Oretade (Vocals), Piano by Francesco Blackmore (17 January, 2021)

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They were called the Stacks, the primary shelving area for the library at the University of California at Berkeley, one of the major libraries of the world.  The Stacks had a character all of their own.  Access to them was limited to faculty, graduate students, visiting scholars, and library employees.  Hundreds of thousands of books with narrow aisles between, and surprisingly few people.  The Stacks didn’t have floors; instead they had tiers.  Many years ago each floor had been horizontally divided into two tiers, so that the ceilings were very low, touchable.  The tiers were made of glass — mottled, translucent glass — which you could not see through, but if there was someone on the tier above you, you could see the soles of their shoes, black silhouettes just above your head.  You could also get occasional glimpses of the people on the tier above or below by standing very close to the shelves, for the shelving was continuous vertically, not ending at each tier, but rather uniting the whole building along an axis which extended from the nether regions to the highest heavens.

            For a few years, I had a study carrel, a metal cubicle with a wooden chair, down on the very lowest tier of the Stacks.  I very rarely saw another person down there on Tier One.  People just didn’t come down that far very often, at least not on purpose.  It was a desolate land of outcasts, exiles, and a few lost souls looking for a way back into the real world, a passage only possible on Tier Four.The books on Tier One were outcasts too.  Most of the books were PL-480 books, volumes which the library received in monthly doses from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.  The United States had made a deal with these countries at sometime, known as Public Law 480, in which it promised to purchase copies of everything (literally everything) published by any state or federal printing house in any of these countries.  It was a way for these countries to offset some of their debt to the United States.  All of the PL-480 books in English were weeded out by the library for cataloging, and the rest, in Hindi, in Urdu, in Singhalese, and in a variety of other languages were simply deposited onto the shelves of Tier One, uncatalogued and unordered.  Occasionally, I could observe an employee stacking PL-480 books onto the shelves, but I never saw anyone take one off, except myself.  The only other books on Tier One were double-folios and triple-folios, all grossly oversized books which couldn’t fit on the shelves where they belonged, and were therefore exiled to Tier One, where they lay heavily and disarranged.

            If there is a Hell for bad books, this was it.  And it was there, amid the dust-odoured air and the low drone of elevator engines, with jet-black feet walking just above my head, and with thousands of never-read books surrounding me, where I began to get some first inklings of a meaning of salvation.

            One afternoon or morning — one could never be sure which it was when buried on Tier One — I decided that I had worked too many hours on a term paper, so I ambled over to the triple-folio section to pick up where I had left off.  It had become my own private library to be used on breaks.

             I even had a paper marker, never disturbed by anyone else, to show my progress as I methodically went through these mammoth books like a paleontologist marking each bone of some yet-to-be-constructed dinosaur.  Yet this day was a little different, for even in the lowliest of places we are sometimes struck with a new revelation.  A huge book lay before me on the floor, the only place large enough for me to be able to read it.  Facing me were immense, detailed, hand-coloured, black-and-white photographs of Istanbul at the beginning of the 1900’s.  The pictures were of the prominent sites of the city, but in some I could also see children playing in the streets, and in one photograph there was a beggar, just barely visible in a darkened doorway at the very edge of the print; a beggar of whom I still wonder whether the editing eye of the photographer missed him or saw him standing there.  I was moved by these grand pictures of a very foreign city.  On the inside back cover of the book, a yellowed circulation slip was neatly pasted.  There were no marks upon it.  I turned the heavy pages back to the front of the book, where a University of California stamp told me that the book had been acquired in 1921, and I realized that in all of those years, the book had never been checked out, not even once, not by anyone.  Quite likely no patron had ever looked inside of it, and perhaps no one besides me, not even the photographer, had ever seen that beggar standing in the doorway.

            The book was quite a handful with its heavy photographic paper.  I had to awkwardly cradle it in both arms as I lugged it up to the checkout aisle on Tier Four. I felt a bit of a cold shiver as I watched the innocent student employee methodically stamp a date in the back.  Of course he had no idea what he was really doing.  Then, I walked the book out into the lobby and around the desk, over to the return book deposit and slid it into the slot — only it didn’t fit so I had to leave it on the counter.  In a few days it found its own way back down to the Tier One sorting shelves, from where I personally took it back to its proper place on the shelf, right next to my paper marker.  But before I put it back, I opened the back cover.  There, clearly marked in black ink, were these significant words, “Due 30 days after the date stamped: May 2, 1972.”  And below that, in majestic purple ink, “Returned: May 2, 1972.”  The book was truly saved.  Not only had someone used it for the purpose for which it had been created, but that fulfilment was also physically marked upon it in a way that could be universally recognized.

            After that day, I spent many of my breaks wandering throughout all of the tiers of the library looking for books to save.  It did not really matter what they were about; my only criterion was that no one had used the book for fifty years or more.  I would take the books home for a few days, so that the check-out and return dates would not be identical, which could suggest some accidental borrowing rather than a true and meaningful use.  Always, I would read a little in them to discover what they were about, and thus the stamp of use was honest and not a sham.  I saved many books that year.

            A number of years later, I happened to be stuck over night in Sacramento, California.  I had a place to sleep, but it was such a hovel that I chose to walk around the city until it was very late and I was very sleepy.  I passed a man sitting at a table in a park. 

            “Hey buddy,” he called out to me, “what’s the hurry?” 

            I hesitated.

            “D’ya got a minute?”

            “Sure,” I said.

            He was living on the street.  He talked about his wife and children.  He hadn’t seen his son in twelve years.

            “I’m just an old wino, I know.  It’s all my own doin’, but it don’t mean it don’t hurt sometimes.  Like I kinda wonder what my boy is doin’.”

            And we talked for about an hour.

            “Thanks,” he said when I finally chose to leave.  “Ya know, I ain’t never told this to no one before.  Thanks.”

            At the time, I did not think of the unused, unread, and unfulfilled books in the library, but I have since.  I walked on alone, along the street paralleling the park.

Someone else called out, “Hey, you got a quarter you could spare?”

            I raised my gaze and saw that there were quite a few homeless men in the park, some in groups, some alone.  Tier One Sacramento — but it could have been anywhere — a place where people get deposited when they don’t fit on the normal shelves of our society.  There were people there, people who might never get checked out by anyone who cared, people who might never again be cradled in someone’s arms, however awkwardly, however fleetingly.  What power we have to stamp little marks of our presence on another’s life.  And how breath-takingly important are other’s marks upon us.  There is salvation in the human touch, salvation in the human connection.

            Years later, I got a job in another library, one quite different from that of the University of California.  I was hired to begin the process of reactivating an old library in a Benedictine seminary in Oakland, California.  My sole duties were to keep the doors open and to be present for a few hours each day to serve the patrons in whatever ways they needed.  Yet the patrons rarely came, as the library had been closed for twelve years and no one was in the habit of using it. 

            Alone, my attention soon became directed towards the books, covered with spider webs, thick dust and abandonment.  I began the cleaning, the revival, shelf by shelf, feeling again a sense of salvation around me.  Then, unexpectedly, a small card escaped like a soul from one of the buried books as I handled it.  The bookmark of some aspiring priest, it was a religious card, marking a special mass.  [Show slide.]  To me it was a treasure, a mark of salvation.  A short time later, a second card descended upon me from a book I was moving on a top shelf, and then another, and then suddenly I was being blessed with a shower of cards, obviously sent down from the heavens above in celebration of this period of salvation and jubilation.  [Next two slides.]

            These cards mark another kind of salvation, the discovery of those amazing little treasures which lay hidden within our leathern covers.  People are full of unseen treasures; we are full of them ourselves.  Sometimes they are simple treasures; sometimes they are more profound.  They surface within transitions: from being closed to becoming open, being untouched to being cradled; they surface when relationships are formed, new decisions are made, or change is taking place. Within these transitions we often discover unrealized talents and resources within ourselves, see with a different vision, or feel emotions that had been dormant, and as such, we release the little treasures we have kept within the pages of our experience and thus feel this form of salvation.

            What is salvation?  Here I am talking about checking-out old books, stopping to talk with strangers in a city, and dusting off old libraries of personal potential?  Not the kind of salvation generally discussed today.  The word, “salvation,” comes from the same Latin root as the word, “salvage,”  and my stories of salvation this morning are more about salvaging than they are about transcending.  I believe that the resources for salvation are all around us and within us — in things overlooked or not yet fully seen, in crannies yet to be explored, treasures yet to be unearthed, hands yet to be touched, and in feelings yet to be resolved.  The root of both salvage and salvation is salus, which in Latin means “safe,” “whole” and “healthy.”  Salvage is the reviving of health, the restoring to wholeness, the retaining of the best.  Salvage is about being saved.

            When I was a child, long before I began saving books from an eternal shelf-life, I used to take periodic trips with my family to The Peck Road Wrecking Yard, a huge depository for the potentially saleable pieces of buildings demolished throughout the Los Angeles region.  Again, it was rather like a type of paleontology, with the bones of extinct buildings strewn randomly throughout the site, many even buried beneath the remains of more recent mammoths meeting the same fate as their forerunners.

            My father was big on salvaging.  For many years, he worked on “fixing-up” the old house in which we lived.  “Fixing-up” usually meant the finding of usable bits of buildings from the Peck Road Wrecking Yard and then somehow integrating them into our home.  There were some beautiful things that were thus saved via the salvage yard.  Our living room was panelled in old, solid wood doors, with the thick, sun-cracked paint simply varnished over, giving them the appropriated texture of dinosaur hide.  We found porcelain door knobs and brass plumbing fixtures, tongue-and-groove flooring and purple, sun-tinted glass.  I thus grew up surrounded by expressions of salvation without realizing it.

            Salvation is salvage.  In bringing the lustre back to a tarnished relationship, in replacing a worn gear so that a broken pattern of behaviour becomes smooth-running again, in finding the missing part which makes us whole again, in these we are saved, in these we become more whole, more healthy and more safe.

            Of course, I am playing with the word salvation a bit today, stretching its definition to explore the breadth of its meaning, sensing that there is more to this concept than what is conveyed through its common usage.  Today, the word salvation is more or less owned by the religious right, and describes either a post-mortem release from suffering, or a sudden conversion to fundamentalist Christianity which, in itself, implies the same eventual release from suffering.  To me, salvation similarly means a release from suffering, only I consider this to be a worldly ideal rather than an other worldly one.  The pathway to salvation lies in becoming more healthy and more whole emotionally, spiritually, humanly.  The resources for our salvation are right here within our human reach and right here among our human interactions, whenever we tune into the personal and interpersonal truths of living.   Salvation is a lifetime journey, but we do not have to wait until death to experience it.

            We are saved over and over again, or can be saved, by discovering in where we are, the connections of the moment that will take us further along towards where we want to go, towards our wholeness, towards our health.  It doesn’t even matter all that much where we are.  Back when I was wandering around the desolate aisles of Tier One, it was relatively easy for those who did not belong there to find salvation.  Occasionally, when someone accidentally came down to that nether region looking for the real exit, I could simply point them towards the elevator and explain that the release from their suffering was really on Tier Four. 

No one ever came back, and my assumption was that all were saved.  But for me, I sought no such release.  Tier One was the place where I belonged, and my salvation in that place involved a process of immersion rather than one of escape.

            A path to salvation is everywhere.  There are unlimited connections which can be made wherever we are. We are each showered with unsolicited bookmarks, gifts of connection to other people and places and times, blessings which can carry us another step forward along the way.  We are always surrounded by possibilities, and yet it is too easy to make no connection at all, touch no one, and go nowhere.  Our salvation depends upon our conscious and creative choices to see the treasures which lie beneath the dust, to hear the human truths even within broken lives, to find those connections which lead to healing, or in other words, to salvage the meaningful hidden beneath the strata of the everyday.

Copyright © 2021 Conrad Dippel

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For All Ages – Here Comes the Sun by George Harrison – Jon Bon Jovi

Posted by the Biden Inaugural Committee (20 January, 2021)

Sermon – Circle of Light – Rev. Rod

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Read: [Print-ready PDF document available for download]

Spring can feel like a new year – a time of renewed daylight and renewed warmth.  A time of renewed growth from the ground, and an opportunity for our personal worlds to expand, as the outdoors become more inviting (with proper precautions, of course).

And indeed, many cultures and people groups, here and around the world, mindfully mark spring as the new year.  In Iran and other parts of central Asia, Nowruz is the traditional Persian new year, and its celebration began yesterday, alongside the spring equinox, to mark new beginnings.  The celebrations actually last for several days… new beginnings can have fuzzy boundaries.

This, of course, has been a year of unexpected “new year’s-es”.  Starting in late December, we began seeing that a lot of small anniversaries – that weren’t there before – started to accumulate.  One year since a new virus was identified.  One year since we saw it in our country.  One year since the Pandemic was officially declared… last week, we recognized one year away from our church building – or conversely, one year since we found alternative ways of meeting as a church.

Even our church’s more typical calendar has a few “shifting” new year’s-es.  Our program year, of course begins the week after Labour Day (very close to when many schools ordinarily begin their year).  A bit later in September we recognize the beginning of our church’s physical home, but remain mindful that perhaps a more significant anniversary (or “new year”) is in November, when we celebrate the founding of our church as a spiritual community.

Sometimes, it’s hard to know when one year ends and a new one begins.

And the colours of the soon-to-be-emerging flowers have a lesson to teach us about blurry boundaries.

Now, if we think of colour strictly as the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, we know that the range begins with red and it spans to violet.  But painters and photographers know that, in the experience of the human eye, colour behaves more like a wheel, with the ends of red and violet melding into each other, as a never-ending cycle where the rainbow is in perpetual flux of colours chasing each other.  You don’t have to be a professional either – I suspect most, if not all of you, have had some experience from school, with watercolours or tempera paints.

Not only are the boundaries between colours blurry, but so is our perception of them.  Some of you might remember a brief internet fad a few years ago, in which the picture of a certain dress was seen by some folks as blue and black, while others were certain that it was white and gold.

How you perceive the dress, and how you experience other colours, can depend on a number of factors, including the device on which you see the picture, the lighting conditions in the room, the time of day that you see it, or possibly even whether you’re a morning or an evening person – which can affect your expectation of the kind of light you think is illuminating the dress.  For some people the dress even seems to change colour between viewings!

Now, if you’re like me, you probably have either, a favourite season, or at least some kind of ranking for the seasons you look forward to the most, versus the ones that you don’t particularly care for… or might even actively dread.

And I know that each of your individual rankings don’t all line up – if for no other reason that I’ve seen mild disputes during Joys and Sorrows, as some of you might sometimes be celebrating a fresh snowfall, while others among you bemoan that very same development.

I won’t go into my own ranking, because it actually shifts from time to time, and because there is, after all, room in our congregation for team snowfall and team clear sky – and everything else that comes in between.

And even if you have a favourite – or a ranking – of seasons, it doesn’t have to stop you from nurturing an openness toward seeking some of the gifts that each one of the seasons can bring.

At the beginning of winter, we explored some ways in which Norwegians manage to cope, and even thrive, in an extreme winter lifestyle, partly in espousing the concept of koselig, related to the Danish notion of hygge – and each roughly translating to a warm sense of coziness, and closeness, that comes with huddling at home under a blanket with a warm drink, be it alone with a book, or with good company.  And aside from it being a great excuse to stay indoors, it’s also not exclusive to finding great excuses to get outside, and enjoying the winter landscapes, or taking up sports and activities that can only happen in winter.

And, despite the popularity of spring in the popular imagination, this season is not without its downsides, with wild swings in weather, often-unpredictable driving conditions, slush and mud, months-old trash being ungracefully revealed from shrinking snowbanks… not to mention the time-switch to daylight saving hours.  But we also know that spring brings great excuses to get outside – there are sights to see… or there will be soon enough.  (And of course, this spring – and last – are a bit different than usual…)

But just as the colours of the flowers that come with spring offer a clue to how we can appreciate our current season, so can we nurture a practice when we may shift some of our perceptions, so that we can appreciate our time in different ways.

And if all else fails, my friends, the seasons last but three months.  Soon, it will be a different season.  And if your season ends too soon, the starwheel will soon bring it back.

But, I ask, my friends, why wait?  With some openness to shifting perspectives, we may just find ways to recognize the gifts – however rare and fleeting – that our current place in time and space have to offer.

So may it be,
In Solidarity and Love,
Amen

Copyright © 2021 Rodrigo Emilio Solano-Quesnel

Hymn #73 Chant for the Seasons
~)-| Words: Mark L. Belletini, 1949- , © 1992 Unitarian Universalist Association
Music: Czech folk song harmony © 1992 Unitarian Universalist Association
~)-| Arranged by Grace Lewis-McLaren, 1939-
Tuen PRAHA

Offered by Michael Tacy (25 September, 2020)

For All Ages – The Longest Time (Quarantine Edition) – Original by Billy Joel, adapted lyrics by Nicholle Andrews and Zach Timson

Here is a time capsule from nearly a year ago, witnessing to a time that even then already felt long. It is also a testament to the quick setting of culture shifts stemming from quarantine and lockdowns, as well as some of the ways this culture has already shifted in a short (and long) amount of time.

Posted by the Phoenix Chamber Choir (April 24, 2020)

Meditation with Music – Seasons of Love – South East Asian Musical Theatre Professionals

There are 525,600 minutes in a year. Among the grim milestones this week, the United States surpassed 525,600 deaths a few days ago.

That is one way of measuring this past year. The song Seasons of Love explores other ways of measuring a year, with moments and emotions that make part of the stories of our lives.

Posted by the ASEAN Musical Theatre Project (18 May, 2020)

Sermon – Circling Back – Rev. Rod

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One of the realities of this past year, is that many of us have had to spend more time online.  Be it for work, socializing, church, or perhaps because there may have simply been more available time, the internet has likely taken an even bigger space in our lives than in previous years.

With more time online, it is also easier to fall into many of the proverbial “rabbit holes” where finding something of interest leads to even more interesting material, in the vast online space.

For me, one of the rabbit holes that I’ve fallen into is the space of virtual choirs.  Of course, virtual choirs have been around since before the pandemic.  People have been apart from each other at all times in history, and as soon as the internet enhanced options for connection, people have been using it to stay connected, while apart.

For several years, virtual choirs have allowed diverse groups, sometimes at opposite sides of the globe, to sing together.  Until recently, this was a relatively niche phenomenon, as the tech requirements, skills, and editing time needed for it meant that most people simply preferred to sing live, with those who were physically nearby.

For about a year now, the virtual option has been the most viable, safest, and responsible way for people to hear new arrangements and voice combinations – for those who have been able to do it.  Their popularity has therefore taken off among audiences that can watch these online, and I’m sure I’m far from the only one to have fallen into the rabbit hole that is listening to these.

Now, I have to share that listening to some of these choirs, particularly the ones created by essential workers, has had a deeper impact on me than I’d expected.  It has been while listening and watching these that I’ve found myself… more open to expressing the emotional toll that the pandemic represents for me and those around us.  It is when listening to these voices, that I’ve found it easiest to allow the tears to flow down, and the deep sinking feelings of sorrow that come when acknowledging that – even if hasn’t been all that bad in my personal situation – it really has been that bad in the life that I share with others.

Now I’m saying that I’m sharing this with you – I am not “admitting” or “confessing” that I’ve cried when listening to these choirs.  I am sharing that I have.  Because there is no shame, or guilt, or… any wrongdoing to “admit” about this.  These artistic expressions of our shared experience are witnesses to our collective sense of the sadness, grief, perhaps anger, or even boredom, that can come with the rollercoaster that this past year has brought to so many of us, and that we have seen among our neighbours and communities.

The fact is – even those among us who have been fortunate – have experienced loss at this time, and for many of us, this time has represented very deep losses.

I tend to avoid speaking in general, universal statements, but I feel quite confident in saying that everyone in this community has been touched by the illness and death related to Covid-19.  Some of you have been directly affected by the disease… all of us know of someone who’s had it.  And all of our lives have been affected.  The spaces in which we engage in our church life today are testaments to that.

Indeed, as of tomorrow, it will have been a full year since we had the option of gathering at the pews of our church building.  By noon tomorrow, it will have been 525,600 minutes since any of you saw me speak from the wooden pulpit on the chancel at Olinda Side Road.

Some of the losses we feel are momentous, and others may seem minor… all of them matter.  As we measure this extra-ordinary time in the unit of years, we recognize that it has been a significant time.

We have spoken about how this church program year is bookended by two major anniversaries for our church.  140 years since the founding of our church, last November, and 140 years since the foundations of our building this coming September.

In between those bookends, we find this unexpected anniversary, of one year, together while apart.  And we mark it, acknowledging that in the cycles of human life, a year is significant.

One of the… “minor” celebrations on this day is Pi Day, since March 14 can be written down as 3.14 – a “close-enough” approximation of the number pi, which has given us deeper insight toward our understanding of circles and other areas of math and science.  Indeed, circles are among nature’s favourite shapes, as given witness by the shapes of many fundamental structures in our lives (including pies!).

And it’s not just the physical structures in our lives, but the mental and spiritual aspects of our lives that also have a cyclical dimension that is represented by the circle.

My friends, while a year is, in some ways, an arbitrary measure of time, it remains significant, because, on our planet, it is intrinsically linked to the cycles of our lives.  And so, we mark this time, recognizing it as a landmark that can help us navigate the uncertainty of times that remain strange, even as we’ve gotten somewhat familiar with them.

And in the cyclical nature that years have on our planet, we can circle back to the expectation toward the beginning of spring next week, as we prepare to see another round of renewed life, recognizing the ever-present possibility of brighter days on our horizon.

My friends, we mark this time, this anniversary, not just to measure the time, but to confront it, to appreciate it, to feel it – to give due to the real pain that has come with it, and to offer each other the comfort of our community through it, and beyond it.  To envision the life of our community, in love, toward the next time this anniversary rolls around.

So may it be,
In Solidarity and Love,
Amen

Copyright © 2021 Rodrigo Emilio Solano-Quesnel

Closing Hymn #360 Here We Have Gathered
~)-| Words: Alicia S. Carpenter, 1930- , © 1979 Alicia S. Carpenter
Music: Genevan psalter, 1543
old 124th

Offered by UUSUGU (Recorded 21 May, 2017 – posted on 22 January, 2020)

Click here and enjoy!

Opening Hymn – Circle of Song
~)-| Words & Music: Tony Turner

Posted on Report from Parliament Hill – With Andrew Hall (9 July, 2015)

Reading – The Book of Love by The Magnetic Fields

Video animation by Kayla W (5 August, 2010)

Sermon – Speaking in Tongues – Rev. Rod

Watch:

Read: [Print-ready PDF document available for download]

There’s a song by the band The Magnetic Fields, called The Book of Love, which talks about how “the book of love is long and boring”, going on to say that no one can lift the thing, as it’s “full of charts, and facts, and figures… and instructions for dancing”, as well as full of music – some of which can be transcendental, while some it… less so.  According to the song, the “book of love” is full of gifts, but the singers are more partial to the act of gifting itself – at least at first glance.

And putting aside the metaphorical immenseness of this book, the singers affirm that they like to express their care by reading to each other, singing to each other, or giving each other gifts… the singers even express a specific desire for wedding rings as the gift of choice.

The song has a neat mix of cynicism and idealism in it, commenting on the complex and over-calculated advice on how to find and maintain love, while also proposing that a variety of simple expressions of love may do the job just fine.  [a link to the song in the description and the online version of this service]

I’ll say that, when the song comments on the sheer magnitude of “the book of love” making it impossible to lift, I believe it.

For six years, I sold books at a large book retailer, and there was a lot written about love.  That store, of course, only held a fraction of all that has been written about it, but I’m sure that no one person could lift even a portion of the “books of love” that I sold.

The actual section labeled as “love” was relatively small – at least compared to other sections, such as history, or programming languages, or fiction.  In fact, the section for “love” wasn’t actually labelled “love”, but there were rather subsections, usually under Self-help, for relationships, dating, sex, and things we’re supposedly too young to know.  Many of these books are full of charts, facts, and figures… and instructions for dancing – we had those too.  In a secluded corner of the fiction section, there was also a modest erotica shelf.

Erotica, of course, coming from eros – one of the Greek words for understanding one way of expressing love, along with words like agape, storge, and philia.  All translatable to “love” in English, but referring to its different dimensions, like the familial love of a parent to a child, or siblings’ fondness for each other, or friends caring for each other, or physical ways of expressing close intimacy.  These exist in the English-speaking world as well… but Greek can sometimes be more precise about these things.

But the fact is, the bulk of the books in the store were, more often than not, somehow related to love, writ large.  Most fiction books had at least some romantic subplot, or an epic journey by protagonists doing grand things for the sake of the people who mattered most to them.

I came across the Sufi poet Rumi’s poetry on love in the religion section.  And a lot of that section was about love, writ large, including promises of boundless, universal love, grace and forgiveness, and unconditional caring.  The Bible alone has a whole array of the dimensions of love, including all the Greek categories of agape, storge, and philia… and even erotica – if you know where to look (hint: it’s the Song of Solomon).

Interestingly, many of the folks who came to the store were often looking, not specifically for books about love, but books to express their love – gifts for someone who they care for.  One of the easiest parts of my job was finding the shelf where a specific book was, while one of the hardest parts was finding the book that someone was looking for… when it was a book for someone else.  It required quite a bit of listening, and some strategic questions, and it also gave me insight about the extent to which the customer had been listening to the special people in their lives.

One of the “books of love” that I ran into, and which was very popular while I was employed at the bookstore, was The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman.  Chapman is a Baptist pastor, and also holds a degree in anthropology.  He developed a working theory that people tend to express their caring in five main ways.  Quickly, I’ll say that he lists these five different ways as: 1) words of affirmation, 2) quality time, 3) receiving gifts, 4) acts of service, and 5) physical touch.

Now, I’m not going spend a lot of time laying out Gary Chapman’s thesis, or promoting it.  If you’re curious, there’re plenty of resources online for that – along with the books.  And while the scholarship on it is sparse, these love languages, as described by Chapman, are recognizable expressions of caring that we may be familiar with, and we may already intuitively have a preference for one or two of these.

Now I’m wary of subscribing to the orthodoxy of numbered lists.  I can’t say with certainty if, in reality, people have five love languages, or three, or fifteen.  Or if the five can have subcategories, or be amalgamated.  But in essence, I can appreciate Chapman’s thesis as a worldview that can help make sense of some of the ways that people express themselves to each other, as well as the discrepancies between people, when they seek to relate with one another.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect from this outlook, in my opinion, is the enhanced awareness that it can bring for recognizing that: yes – people express themselves differently, and that taking some care to appreciate how others express their care might help us deepen our connections with others, as well as help us understand when there are disconnects… such as when our expressions of affection don’t land well with others, or when we’re confused by the way that others might be trying to connect with us.

It looks like the musical group The Magnetic Fields were on to something when they wrote and sang The Book of Love.  They talk about different expressions of love – love languages, if you will – spending quality time reading to each other, singing to each other, or giving gifts to each other… in their case, the song specifies wedding rings.

We know that having wedding rings isn’t a reality for everyone.  Many of you have them, and many of you don’t.  Some of you used to have wedding rings, but don’t anymore, for a whole variety of reasons… some of these may be tragic reasons, and some of these reasons might have come from an awareness that you were better off without those rings.  Some of you don’t have rings… yet, and some of you have fought for your right to wear them proudly.  Some of you will never, or don’t ever want to, have them.  Different languages speak different to your selves.  And in this church, all are welcome.

My friends, today is Language Movement Day in Bangladesh, and from this, UNESCO derived World Mother Tongue Day, as a way to recognize that the languages that we come from, and that we hold dear to our heart, are an integral part of us.  Sometimes, a mother tongue may be a different language than what is spoken where you now live – I have some experience with that.

Languages come in many flavours – with their own sounds and shapes.  Sign languages, and reading lips, are part of how some members of our community understand others… sometimes from birth, and other times, as we get older.  However it is that we need to express ourselves, or understand others’ expressions, our spiritual imperative is to seek out our companions’ language of their soul, as we look to close the gap in our connections.

My friends, almost every Sunday, I invite folks to stay for Coffee & Conversation after the service, be it at the dining room in our building, when we’ve met in-person, or on our breakout groups when we meet online.  And even though you don’t need my permission, I also make it clear that it’s OK to “tiptoe” out toward the proverbial door at that time.  Because I know that informal coffee and conversation is not always the way that everyone feels most connected in our church – it may not be your “love language”.  For some folks it’s the opposite: church hasn’t happened until a good informal conversation has been had.

However it is that you express your loving and your caring, in our church we seek to affirm that love… without exceptions.

So may it be,
In Solidarity and Love,
Amen

Copyright © 2021 Rodrigo Emilio Solano-Quesnel

#131 Love Will Guide Us

Words: Sally Rogers, © 1985 Sally Rogers, used by perm. of Thrushwood Press
~)-| Music: Traditional, arr. by Betty A Wylder, 1923-1994
© 1992 UUA
Tune OLYMPIA

UUAA Music by Sally Rogers Arranged by DeReau K. Farrar Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout, Director of Worship & Music Allison Halerz, Pianist-in-Residence Audio mix & video editing: Mike Halerz (3 May, 2020)

Time for All Ages – The Book of Faith – CommUUnion Gathering 2015

At a Young Adults gathering in Kingston ON in 2015, several voices joined in a reinterpretation of the song The Book of Love by The Magnetic Fields.

Video Reading – Homemade bagels | boiled New York / Montreal style hybrid – Adam Ragusea

Sermon – Love it or Leave it – Rev. Rod

Watch:

Read: [Print-ready PDF available for download]

When I moved for seminary studies to one of the bagel capitals of North America – Montreal – I hadn’t really appreciated the significance of people’s devotion to their preferred “sect” of bagel.

I would soon learn that these can mean much to some folks.

As my new room-mate and her dad helped with the move, I quickly staked out my new neighbourhood, making notes of its amenities and its local flavour.  It was a blue-collar Anglophone neighbourhood along one of the city’s main streets.  I was glad to see that there were two grocery stores within a block, as well as a depanneur convenience store.  My main bank was a short walk away, right next to a post office.  I also liked that there was a public park right across the street, and even a small pub.  There was also an independent local coffee shop that hosted open mics, as well as a greasy-spoon diner that offered student specials for breakfast.  Taking all this in, I thought I’d fit right in.

As I was bringing in some boxes, my room-mate walked in enthusiastically – “Hey, Rod, did you look around the neighbourhood?  What do you think?”

“Looks great!” I replied, “there’s lots of good stuff around here!”

“I know!” she exclaimed, “Did you see the bagel shop at the corner?”

I admit I was rather taken aback by this… out of all the things I noticed during my reconnaissance mission around my new neighbourhood, the bagel shop at a nearby corner hadn’t even entered my radar, and I was perplexed as to why this was the one thing she would care to mention.

A few minutes later, my room-mate’s dad walked in with a batch of things.  The first thing I remember him saying was, “Hey, Rod – did you see the bagel shop at the corner?”

I was dumbfounded, and admitted that I had not seen it… but had already been made aware of it.

It simply did not compute to me that a nearby bagel shop would be noteworthy amid the many other things our neighbourhood had to offer.

In truth, I have always been puzzled when people waxed poetic about that special spot in town that had the perfect bagel, that you just couldn’t possibly miss out on.

I’ve never felt like I’ve missed out by being unaware of the bagel geography of the places where I lived.  And the fact that some people would have deep discussions, and sometimes lively disagreements, about this subject always presented me with an unsolved mystery.  I simply didn’t get the passion behind it.

Same goes for the competing fandoms behind the schisms between the New York versus Montreal factions, each one evangelizing to me the nuances that distinguished one from the other.  And even though I have heard detailed exegesis parsing out these differences, I simply don’t have enough interest on the subject to retain the details as to why different kinds of bagel are the way they are, nor why it’s supposed to matter.

The folks that are into bagels – many of you may be among them – are often equally puzzled by my indifference… which they have sometimes interpreted as active hostility.

The fact is, I don’t hate bagels.  If someone offers one to me, I’ll eat it without argument… I’ll even enjoy it.  But to me it’s simply an adequate, edible snack.  I also appreciate that, when used as sandwich bread, they’re a highly effective protein-delivery mechanism.  I simply will never understand the fervent following that other people have for them.  I’ll just as easily have a mildly greater enthusiasm for other ring-shaped breads, such as donuts.  I’m simply not always into the same things that others are into.

And that’s OK.  The truth is that other people’s passion for bagels doesn’t really affect me.  And they don’t need my permission to enjoy what they enjoy.  I can love it… or leave it alone.  You don’t need my permission to follow your passion.  As long as no one gets hurt, you don’t need anyone’s permission to love what you love.  You can be into things that other people aren’t into, and other people can be into things that you are not into.  You can love it… or leave it alone.  That’s the value of a community that has mutual respect for each other’s dignity and which celebrates the diversity that comes with sharing our lives with others.

Some folks are into poppy seeds, some like sesame seeds of different colours.  Some prefer onion and others garlic… others are even into burnt cheese.  And some people are into “everything”.

My friends, on a day when we celebrate love, we also open ourselves to recognizing how love comes in many forms.  In our Unitarian Universalist tradition, this is not an entirely new conversation.  We know that some people express their love in different ways than some of us might.  Some people are into something that we might not be into.  As long as no one gets hurt, that’s perfectly fine – in fact it’s worth celebrating… even if we don’t understand why some folks are so passionate about something that might not speak to us.  We can love it… or leave it.

Part of this ongoing conversation has included our affirmation of LGBTQ+ communities and individuals.  We affirm and celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer… plus, communities and individuals.  Sometimes, it takes a bit of work to explore the fuller spectrum of the LGBTQ+ circle.  Lately in the past few years, we’ve paid closer attention to what it means to better appreciate and recognize the trans experience.  There are also parts of that “plus” that we still don’t talk about often: such as the identities of two-spirit, polyamorous, pansexual, and asexual folks, as well as other sexual and gender identities that make part of our congregations and our wider communities.  This past year, for instance, the Canadian Unitarian Council has been paying closer attention to the polyamorous identities of folks in our national denomination, and that might be a deeper conversation for us some other time.

My friends, how people identify, how they express their love, and how they develop relationships is also part of who their family is.  We know that in our church’s community, and in our larger community, the definition of family goes beyond what was traditionally called the nuclear family – a straight married couple, with children.  Some of you have that kind of family, and that is perfectly fine.  Many of you don’t – either you don’t want it that way, don’t need it that way, or you don’t any more, or you don’t yet… there are single parents, couples without children, single folks, intentional communities of companions and friends – and whatever that family is, it is also worthy of recognition and celebration.  Not everyone’s family is like yours.  It might be hard for us to understand, why some folks’ families are they way they are, or why they might want them that way, but that’s beside the point.  Your families of origin, and your families of choice, are the people who you love and who love you, who hold you and support you.  And that is worth celebrating.  That is worth at least a holiday, or two.

My friends, in this Valentine’s Day and this coming Family Day, may all who you love, all whom you hold dear, and who hold you dearly, be a cause for celebration.

So may it be,
In Solidarity and Love,
Amen

Copyright © 2021 Rodrigo Emilio Solano-Quesnel

Hymn #299 Make Channels for the Streams of Love
Words: From Richard Chenevix Trench, 1807-1886
Music: American folk melody, arr. by Annabel Morris Buchanan, 1889-1983, © 1938, renewed 1966 J. Fischer & Bros. Co., harmony by Charles H. Webb, 1933- , © 1989 J. Fischer & Bros. Co.
Tune LAND OF REST

Offered by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Anne Arbor
performed by Allison Halerz (9 August, 2020)

National Service – Hosted by the Canadian Unitarian Council – Led by the Revs. Shana Lynngood and Samaya Oakley – 7 February, 2021

Watch:

Read: [Print-ready PDF document available for download]

In the internet chat forum Reddit, where users often pose questions to each other, someone posted the question “What word or phrase did you totally misunderstand as a child?”

A Reddit user, going by the username “Lard_Baron” shared a childhood story from their time as a 12-year-old, admitting that when their father shared the quote “Knowledge is power, Francis Bacon”, they heard it as “Knowledge is power, France is bacon.” [Click here to read the full story]

Whenever the kid shared the quote, including what they thought was the cryptic phrase “France is bacon”, they were astounded that no one found that phrase weird.  Upon asking a teacher to explain the apparently-cryptic phrase’s deeper meaning, the teacher gave an in-depth explanation about “knowledge is power”, but didn’t elaborate upon the attribution to Francis Bacon – or, as the kid heard it – “France is bacon.”

Not having the self-confidence to articulate their confusion any further, the kid was resigned to accept the phrase as part of the things they might simply never understand… until years later, when they saw it written down and finally understood the source of the confusion.

A bit of a sidebar here… strictly speaking, the quote “Knowledge is power” doesn’t fully belong to the philosopher Francis Bacon.  In his work Sacred Meditations, the Latin phrase he uses [Nam et ipsa scientia potentia est] translates more closely to “knowledge itself is power”.  It was one of his students, the notable Thomas Hobbes, who later used the version of the phrase that we are now more familiar with.

That particular detail aside, the way the quote was cited, and then long-misunderstood by the 12-year old’s inability to articulate his curiosity, offers a deeper lesson on the limits of communication, and the work involved in reaching clearer understanding.

Many of us have had situations when we’ve misheard a phrase or a song lyric – there’s even a word for these: mondegreens.  You can probably think of a time when you’ve had a similar misunderstanding.  As meaning-making beings, our experiences and preconceptions often fill in the blanks with something that helps us make sense of what we might have misheard, though this might lead to misunderstandings down the road.

In reading the story of France is Bacon, I was impacted by the kid’s recognition that they might never fully understand the mysterious meaning of that phrase, accepting that sometimes we can leave room for uncertainty… until they eventually found a medium that helped them find greater clarity – the printed word.

This allowed for a fuller visualization of the difference between Francis Bacon, the philosopher, and “France is bacon” the cryptic phrase that the kid’s own experience led them to conjure up from what they thought they heard in spoken speech.  Sometimes, different methods and different media really make a difference in learning.

Next month, we’ll be looking at a number of deep themes.  And although February is a short month, it often features, and celebrates, several deep themes in our lives, including questions of justice, as part of Black History Month; celebrations of love, during the Valentine’s Day holiday; exploration of family connections – and the meaning of family itself – with the relatively new statutory holiday that is Family Day.  It’s also the month in which fellow Unitarian Universalist communities consider our shared faith nation-wide, with some guidance from the Canadian Unitarian Council.

All of these have deep and complex uses of language, with words like justice, love, family, faith, and community – all carrying broad meanings, that can be ambiguous, as well as emotionally charged for some of us.  These meanings are often informed by our own experiences and preconceptions.  And we might not always feel that we have the best use of language to engage in these conversations.  Language itself can be complex and nuanced, with many opportunities for expression.

A quick word of caution, my friends – when we have questions about deep and complicated matters (racial justice, religion, love, family), and we happen to lack what feels like adequate language, there is a tension between venturing into our learning edges, and remaining respectful.  Some level of stumbling is inevitable – this is part of the learning process.

It is also important to remember that, in the process of stumbling, people might get hurt, even if unintentionally.  It is because of this, that a fair level of contemplation continues to be important in exploring the depths of knowledge, to minimize the potential for unintentional harm.

My friends, as I have said before, one of the safest ways to pursue curiosity is to first listen intently, and welcome offerings of knowledge whenever they are being freely given.  Then, contemplate the meanings we gather thoughtfully, and get a better sense of what meanings and wisdom we still struggle with.  And when an appropriate opportunity arises, we may continue our queries, in a spirit of humility and respect.

Sometimes, the people we query are not in place where they can answer our questions, and this calls for respect as well.  And very often, our own work of responsible research, through varied media and reliable sources, can bring up answers we might not find otherwise.

In our hymnal there’s a hymn called Praise the Source of Faith and Learning, which we haven’t used much lately at the church of Olinda.  This is partly because the language it uses, and how it uses it, can bring up different meanings – and emotions – among each of us.  For instance, the hymn calls for a renewed “call to prayer” and not everyone in our church has a practice of prayer… or we might not always call it that.  But the broader appeal that this hymn makes, in my interpretation, is toward accepting the need toward enhanced contemplation, and constant re-evaluation of our understanding, with a caution to avoid stagnating in our own assumptions and preconceptions.

One of the hymn’s verses states: “we acknowledge that our science and our art | and the breadth of human knowledge | only partial truth impart”, which – at first glance – might appear to knock, or undervalue, science.  One way that I’ve read this hymn is quite the contrary: recognizing that the most inspired science requires a degree of intuition, and an openness to questioning, as well as cultivating a sense of comfort with our discomfort, accepting that there is always room for the unknown to linger, beckoning us toward further pursuit.

In this spirit, my friends, may we continue our responsible search for truth, with a sense of healthy curiosity, a measure of humility, and a respectful regard and awareness of the varied experiences and perspectives that we may come across, as we encounter all with whom we share the planet.

So may it be,
In Solidarity,
Amen

Copyright © 2021 Rodrigo Emilio Solano-Quesnel

Hymn #158 Praise the Source of Faith and Learning
Words: Thomas H. Troeger, 1945- , © 1987 Thomas H. Troeger
~)-| Music: William Albright, 1944-1998, © 1992 Henmar Press, Inc. (C. F. Peters Corp.)
Tune commissioned by the First Unitarian Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan, for their 125^th Anniversary
Tune PROCESSION

Offered by Jess Huetteman (9 January, 2021)