Songlines, Guidelines, Lifelines

 

Sermon by Rev. Victor Carpenter, January 6, 2008

First Religious Society, Carlisle, Massachusetts

 

 

I don’t pay much attention to genealogy.  With a name like Carpenter I don’t need to be told that I’m just another WASP in a line of WASPs.  There’s a large book that purports to trace our “wasp-ness”, but my interest doesn’t extend very far beyond the happy discovery that I am related to the minister of Belmont’s First Baptist Church who hails from the same branch of the family and allows us to address each other as “cuz”.

 

However, if I were a member of the Church of the Later Day Saints, I would not be so indifferent to ancestry.  The Mormons take genealogy very seriously.  They claim to trace their roots back to Genesis and the Garden of Eden, as do Jews, Christians and Muslims.  But with a difference!   The LDS folk believe that if you can trace your ancestors back far enough you can then baptize them into the Mormon faith and thus liberate them from eternal residence in Limbo - and you don’t have to worry about getting their consent!

 

Perhaps I am making too light of ancestral lines and their importance.  I suppose they have their place identifying the members of our various tribes, but I would like to think that we have become less tribal and more inclusively global in our thinking.

 

Established ancestral bloodlines add value to highly prized animals like Kentucky Derby winners and Siamese cats but when applied to human beings they tend to divide us rather than connect us to each other and to the larger concerns of humanity.    And I think there are better ways of affirming our human inter-dependence.   In place of bloodlines consider “songlines”.

 

Several years ago I read Bruce Chatwin’s book  “Songlines” which deals with the aboriginal people of Australia.   It seems that each aboriginal is born into not one but two families; a blood family and a dream family.  From his or her blood family the individual receives the family bloodline;

 

from the dream family he or she receives a songline, which serves to connect the individual family members to the larger world.

 

As a member of an aboriginal family, when you reach adolescence you leave your blood family and go on what is called “ a walkabout” – a ritual journey away from home and into that part of Australia known as “the outback”.  There are no roads, no beaten paths; you follow your “songline”.

 

This “walkabout” can last for weeks; each hill and each valley you pass; each ford and rivulet you along your songline are part of your story – a story that is passed down for a thousand years within each dream family.

 

While one’s own family’s “songline” is closely guarded and protected, it can be traded with other families in order to insure safe passage through other parts of the country, not included in one’s own family’s “line”.   The fact is that the entire continent of Australia is criss-crossed with the dream-paths, these “song-lines” which, to the untutored eye appear barren and desolate and unforgiving wilderness.

 

Traveling the “lines” on his “walkabout” the young aboriginal not only takes a journey, but also participates in a relationship to the natural world that is, itself, magical and holy - the substance of creation itself.    Which is why so much of Australia is considered sacred to its people.

 

So you are sitting there thinking that while this “songline” business is mildly interesting, we are not Australian aboriginals and we don’t depend upon mystic tunes to get us around Carlisle or even to Boston.

 

While that is certainly true I would STILL suggest to you that we 21st century moderns are neither LACKING in songlines, NOR in our social and emotional need of them.   Songs remind us of where we’ve come from and where we are going.

 

Our land is   criss-crossed by songlines.  They tie us together “from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam”…

 

Our songs sing us into our history, from Yankee Doodle to John Brown’s Body to Joe Hill; from Woody Guthrie’s dust bowl anthem “ This land is your land” to the civil rights rallying cry, “We shall overcome”…songlines reminding us of who we are and were we’re going…and where we want to go.

 

And then there are the songlines of our own religious tradition; a tradition of free religious exploration and worship revealed in our hymnal; our hymns – some old and familiar, some new and challenging, are the songlines of a free religious movement linking us with our Puritan and Reformed past and with our world wide community - with contemporary Unitarians in Australia and New Zealand, In England, In Poland, in South Africa - and especially to the Unitarian community in Transylvania with whom we are bound  in the long journey of our faith  as  sung by our prophets over the past four centuries…

 

I have done my own kind of “walkabout” on the rough landscape of Transylvania.   I have visited the quaint villages, preached in the pulpits of the colorful Unitarian churches and listened to the gospel of free religion proclaims in language of which I understood not one word- but felt the power of the spirit (the “songline” if you will).     A “songline” echoing over more than four centuries ago when the Unitarian King of Transylvania issues an edict of toleration permitting different forms of religious expression to live side by side…

 

Today Unitarian Universalist congregations across not only this country, but across the world honor the songlines of our tradition – not only by singing the songs and talking the talk but by walking the walk of this liberal religious tradition.  

 

One small example of that  “talking and walking” appears at our Unitarian Unviersalist Headquarters, 25 Beacon Street in Boston.   Prior to the first anniversary of the passage of marriage equality in Massachusetts UU churches and fellowships   were invited to send  “love messages” of celebration to Headquarters – and the messages did indeed pour in.

 

Attending a meeting at Headquarters that week I saw that the entire main staircase leading from the front door to the 2nd floor chapel was festooned with valentine messages of love and celebration while all four walls of the chapel were covered with similar joyous statements. 

 

It’s been a grand acknowledgement of our denominational support for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s courageous action on behalf of the excluded and the demeaned in our society.    We Unitarian Universalists have been “out front” in our support of gay/lesbian and transgendered civil rights for two decades.   You could say our support constitutes one more verse in our denominational song-line

 

Here it needs to be said that like any and all traditions, “song-lines” are not just “there” indefinitely.     The songs have to be sung – with new verses added; the lines have to be walked – with new footprints keeping the trail clear and visible.     The song-lines   need to be maintained and kept in good repair if they are to retain their usefulness.  

 

When they are neglected they become like a worn out road; full of holes and ruts - difficult to traverse; or they fall into diss-use altogether and become unheeded and derelict.  They even inspire fear and anxiety in those not familiar with their history of useful passage….

 

This Sunday, January 3, 2008 marks the official beginning of the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Unitarian Universalist’s 250 Anniversary years!  For that reason I urged the speedy removal of the Christmas decorations and, in the place of the giant wreath occupying the place behind the pulpit, I chose to hang the embroidered “flaming chalice” - symbol of contemporary Unitarian Universalism.

 

To continue the metaphor of “songlines” I suggest that the “flaming chalice” represents the “key” in which our own UU songs and hymns are sung.    While our songs are drawn from a wide variety of religious traditions, the flaming chalice is the “key” that defines our singing of those tunes

 

Lately another symbol has made its way into our UU religious consciousness: the rainbow.   Flown on flags outside of UU churches, it sends a message of welcome and support to persons of different sexual persuasions who seek a spiritual home.

 

During my interview with the Interim Minister Search Committee, to determine if I would be chosen to be your “Interim”, the topic of the Welcoming Congregation came up almost immediately.

 

The level of anxiety in the room seemed to rise.  I made a mental note as the conversation moved to other topics.

 

At the conclusion of the meeting, one of the committee asked me if there was anything that, as Interim Minister, I would NOT do.

 

And, Not fully realizing the implications of the issue Welcoming Congregation issue, I said that I would NOT push the congregation to fly the rainbow flag.

 

I have, since, come to regret that flippant remark, but I’m stuck with it and a promise is a promise. So, I decided that I would honor your decision to become a Welcoming Congregation by donning the rainbow flag – myself

 

My hope is that the sight of the rainbow will become so familiar and its acceptance simply a matter of course that, by the time we part company the topic of Welcoming Congregation   will be no more contentious than the fact that we light a chalice at the beginning of our services and accompany our hymns on an organ.

 

On this first Sunday of the new year; the Sunday that marks this congregation’s Two hundred and fifty years of song in this strange land, we sing and recite the songs that have marked out path, the ways we have come and the direction in which we move into the future.

 

So let it be.  Amen