Bingo! Sanctuary lamps

In my last post, I asked if anyone had information or feedback on candle usage in various religions or spiritual practices.

Perhaps in my earlier searches, my Google-foo failed due to trying to be too specific, or maybe too general, about what I was looking for. But I finally found something: sanctuary lamps, a Wikipedia article that discusses the use of an “eternal flame” in both Jewish and Christian sanctuaries.

Win! Now I can finally finish up the intro to my wedding ceremony…

Comparative religion: candle usage

Just over seven weeks until I get married, and I’m terribly excited!

I’m putting the ceremony together myself, with some up-front assistance from H. Now I’m at the point where I need to give things one more polishing, fill in some holes that I left earlier. And a big hole, right at the beginning, has to do with how candles are used in different faith traditions: Catholicism, Judaism, and Unitarian Universalism.

Here is the research I’ve done so far. Can anyone, in looking at these links/quotes, tell me if they think any of these are on the mark or way off in left field somewhere?

• Candles (Catholic)
  
  

  Light is pure; it penetrates darkness; it moves with incredible velocity; it nourishes life; it illumines all that comes under its influence. Therefore it is a fitting symbol of God, the All Pure, the Omnipresent, the Vivifier of all things, the Source of all grace and enlightenment.

  Even the use of wax has its symbolic meaning. The earlier Fathers of the Church endeavored always to seek out the mystical significance of Christian practices, and one of them thus explains the reason for the Church’s law requiring candles to be of wax:

  “The wax, being spotless, represents Christ’s most spotless Body; the wick enclosed in it is an image of His Soul, while the glowing flame typifies the Divine Nature united with the human in one Divine Person.”

• Paschal Candle (Catholic)
  
  

  The Paschal Candle is a large, white candle used liturgically in the Western Rite of Christianity (Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, etc.). A new Paschal Candle is blessed and lit every year at Easter, and is used throughout the Paschal season and then throughout the year on special occasions, such as baptisms and funerals.

• Judaism 101: Shabbat (Judaism)
  
  

  Shabbat candles are lit and a blessing is recited no later than eighteen minutes before sunset. This ritual, performed by the woman of the house, officially marks the beginning of Shabbat. Two candles are lit, representing the two commandments: zakhor (remember) and shamor (observe).

• The Mystery of Jewish Candle Lighting Rituals (Judaism)
  
  

  The flame is a primary Jewish metaphor for the soul. Judaism enjoins us to be careful lest we put out the flame of someone’s soul through careless or deliberate words or acts.

  (This is the one I like best, and yet I’m most hesitant about it’s source, so if anyone can confirm/dispute this information in particular, I’d be most appreciative!)

• Jewish Candles – The Power of Discernment (Judaism)
  
  

  The candles should be lit on the table where the Shabbat meal is eaten, and should be large enough to burn during the meal and well into nightfall, because ultimately the reason for the lighting of Sabbath candles is to create an atmosphere, a cohesive family unit.

• Unitarian Universalism (UU)
  
  

  The most common symbol of Unitarian Universalism is the flaming chalice, often framed by two overlapping rings that many interpret as representing Unitarianism and Universalism (the symbol has no official interpretation). The chalice itself has long been a symbol of liberal religion, and indeed liberal Christianity (the Disciples of Christ also use a chalice as their denomination symbol). The flaming chalice was initially the logo of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee during the Second World War. It was created by Austrian artist Hans Deutsch, inspired by “the kind of chalice which the Greeks and Romans put on their altars. The holy oil burning in it is a symbol of helpfulness and sacrifice.”

• The Healing Cup: The Story of the Flaming Chalice (UU)
  
  Specifically, reference to WWII and the beginnings of the USC, and the need for a symbol to identify documents, etc.

• The Flaming Chalice (UU)
  
  

  At the opening of Unitarian Universalist worship services, many congregations light a flame inside a chalice. This flaming chalice has become a well-known symbol of our denomination. It unites our members in worship and symbolizes the spirit of our work.

A little bit of redux

So, where did this blog with four years’ worth of entries suddenly come from? What am I doing, and why am I doing it?

To really answer these questions, I’d have to go back at least five years.

I grew up Catholic, in a city that is, if not majority Catholic, at least has a significant Catholic population. The bishop seemed to make the evening news on a fairly regular basis, according to memory. And for the most part, I not only accepted Catholicism, I believed it. Truly believed in a good deal of it. Was proud, when I was Confirmed, that I was doing it willingly, knowingly, and not just because I was the right age for the classes or because it was expected of me.

Which is not to say I felt Catholicism was perfect, even then. But it was so much of my identity that, even having a handful of things I disagreed with the church about, I had a kind of peace and connection that I valued. Rather highly.

But there were things that didn’t add up for me. Untimely deaths. Family health issues. Questions that I didn’t know how to ask, or to trust I would get an honest answer. Betrayals by friends. Too many of the above coinciding with what should have been joyous celebrations in the church calendar. And finally, sitting in Mass one Sunday morning, I found myself questioning the very nature of God as presented by one of the priests officiating — only to realize that, according to all the prayers I’d learned and recited for twenty-five years, the priest was right, and I was wrong. And yet, in my heart, I knew I could not accept it. I strongly felt that what he was saying was a kind of putting God into a box, which defied the very nature of what I beleived God to be — beyond human limitations of understanding.

I believe the exact words that crossed my mind were: “Oh crap. I don’t think I belong here anymore. What do I do now?”

What followed, I described at the time as a kind of spiritual free-fall. I desperately wanted answers, and yet everything I found only led to more questioning, more uncertainty.

In the middle of this, I met and started dating H. Grew up Reformed Jew, dabbled in Wicca during college. Currently identifies as a cultural Jew but isn’t terribly comfortable with formal religious institutions of any sort.

A few months after we started dating, after much thinking, searching, my need for a spiritual community led me to Unitarian Universalism. If nothing else, at the time, it seemed like a safe enough place to try to get some of my spiritual needs met until I had a better idea of what was going on with me and where I was going. When I told H, he practically broke out in hives at the word “church,” even though I explained (multiple times over) that “church” in this case did not mean “Christian,” and no, I wasn’t out to convert him to Christianity. I’d be happy if he joined me, since as near as I could tell he would certainly be welcome, but this was something I needed to do for me.

Well, here we are: nearly five years since that fateful day in Mass, four and a half years since my first UU service, and 59 days from marrying H. It’s been quite a trip.

This journal/blog was originally started four years ago this month on Livejournal, as a way to try to document some of the various spiritual corners I explored as I tried to sort things out. When I decided to relocate the blog, I wanted to be sure that the data was preserved, so I migrated all the old posts over here, too. I suspect that I’ll probably be more active in posting here than I was at Livejournal — I’d like to be, at any rate.

And there it is: my story in a nutshell.

Easter Vigil

It really was a last-minute sort of decision.

I spent most of Holy Saturday with my parents and my matron of honor, running around the city trying to get various wedding-related stuff taken care of. Which we did, for the most part. But my relationship with my parents has not always exactly been smooth, and travel drains the energy right out of me, so by 4:30 that afternoon, I was exhausted. I’d made tentative dinner plans with my MOH and her husband, who had invited me to go to their church’s Easter Vigil Mass afterwards. I seriously considered calling to cancel the dinner plans and taking a nap, but I know from experience that napping that late in the day usually does more harm than good. Also, as tired as I was, I wanted to spend at least a little more time with my friends.

So I went. And to my surprise, not only was it not so bad, I actually got something out of it.

Question month: Do you believe in a deity or deities?

Copied and pasted from my comment to a friend’s LJ, where the post was: “Do you believe in a deity or deities? Why or why not? Give a brief, conceptual description of these beliefs, and of your relationship with deities and/or religion.” I was pleased enough with my response that I wanted to preserve it here.

I believe there is a higher power out there. I call it “God” in certain company, but I’m very careful about how and when I use that word, because I don’t mean it the same way that most of the Catholics (or possibly other Abrahamics) use it.

“God,” to me, is a kind of shorthand for “the divine higher force that set things into motion”. God is abstract, without body; “spirit,” if you like. God, Godself, is not gendered, male or female, but can take many forms, including recognizably gendered beings. I believe this is why there are so many different deities who have been called by so many different names around the world and throughout history. I believe there have been many holy people who have had especially close relationships with God. I believe signs and miracles are still possible in the present age, and not relegated to the periods recorded in various holy books. I believe that very few, if anyone, can truly know all of God. I believe that shouldn’t stop anyone from trying, in the pursuit of being a fuller, better, more compassionate human being. I believe gender and sexuality pose no barrier to being a holy person, or pursuing knowledge of God.

I was raised Catholic, but left about five years ago when I realized that my views on God, specifically regarding God’s gender or lack thereof, were not compatible with Catholicism. I’d had other points of disagreement before, but felt that if I couldn’t agree with the Catholic concept of God any longer, I probably didn’t belong there anymore. That break, and finding my way into Unitarian Universalism, has been both terrifying and freeing. I don’t know where I’m going, but UU is where I belong now, and for now, that’s good enough.

The Immaculate Conception

OK people, one last time.

The Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus. It has nothing to do with sex, period. It refers to Mary’s conception without Original Sin in her soul, as proof that God always intended her to be Jesus’ mother.

I’ve heard this from many an ignorant-of-this-point individual. I’ve politely corrected it on a case-by-case basis in the past, both Catholics and non-Catholics, and I expect to do so many times in the future.

However, I don’t expect to read in a book how a phallic-looking rock coming out of the head of the Virgin Mary is supposed to be secretly mocking the group that commissioned the piece, who named themselves after the Immaculate Conception, because the artist didn’t particularly care for the standard Church take on the Holy Family. In the first chapter. You’ve just guaranteed that I’m going to be skeptical about everything else you’re about to present, no matter how sympathetic I might be to the idea in the first place from other sources. Especially when you tell me you presented this idea to a conference, and instead of them laughing you out of the room, you all sat and laughed at the dirty joke together.

Past Selves

A few weeks ago, in preparation to move, I started weeding through some of the crap that has sat in a closet since I moved last year. In doing so, I finally came across the first couple entries to another online journal that I’d started nearly five years ago — I knew I’d printed some of them up, but had almost given up finding them, thinking maybe I’d thrown them out because the site had still been up, however sporadically, when I was packing. The site is gone now, along with most of the entries that cover the better part of a year. The printouts of those first few entries are heartbreaking and painful. I’d forgotten some of the smaller details; seeing some of them typed out like that, within a month or so of them happening when things were still so fresh, was hard. But they’re important, they’re part of who I am. I might very well post them elsewhere at some point, if only so they hopefully won’t be lost again.

The last few entries that I have, when I’d quite suddenly fallen pretty hard for one of my co-workers a few months later, evoked a different sort of pain — from seeing how certain I was of some things four years ago. Various sixth-sense, pagany/new-agey type stuff. And yet I still very much considered myself Catholic; I’d held the conviction that since such things littered the Bible, that there was no reason to think they were confined to antiquity.

And then, further back in this box, I found an old spiral notebook. That was just further painful illustration of my convictions at that time. I’m not sure what the notebook’s original purpose had been, but re-reading it, I clearly remembered being up at 1, 2, 3am, writing journal entries every few months in this notebook. Or one particular afternoon during that first summer after I moved out. I was so certain — of God, of fate or destiny being at work. I was positive that I was meant to have left as I did, that it was a Sign from God that I was special, that I knew better than most of the people around me, that I was right in defying my family to move out and move on. I can see the language I used to describe what I was feeling was influenced by what I was reading at the time — L. M. Montgomery’s journals and Julian of Norwich — but the thoughts and ideas behind the language were my own. I was that certain of a lot of things, and my everyday life seemed to do nothing more than re-enforce that certainty.

How far I’ve come since then. How much it hurt to read some of this, in comparison to my current uncertainty about whether any of that was real — especially having just previously read how it all ended. And then remembering how in the years after that, other things I was certain of seemed to be taken away one by one. In the end, it’s probably no great surprise that my decision to walk away from Catholicism came after that breakup, after several painful Easters, and after my sister had brain surgery two weeks before Christmas.

I spent a few bad days after reading all this, wondering if there was even a God at all, wondering if even that one old certainty that I’d been left with after all this was also wrong. A post made a few days later by a friend helped me pull myself out of my slump, and I’m grateful for that. But this seeker path I’m on — it’s not an easy place to be. It would be easier if I didn’t believe in God at all, if I could dismiss it all as stuff-and-nonsense and let it all go. Instead, I’m sitting in the middle of a pile of multi-colored beliefs from all over, not convinced that all the ones of the same color add up to The One Truth, but believing that they all have elements of truth. It’s taking time to sort through them all, to figure out which ones ring true in my heart, which seem intellectually possible, which ones seem just plain wrong. It’s a long, difficult process, though one day I hope I can at least figure out enough to put a name to it. That’s one of the most difficult parts of all this, not having a name for what I’m coming up with. But I’m still looking, and for now, I suppose that’s the important part.

Well, now I know where *that* came from…

A quote from The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, published in hardcover in 1991, which I picked up cheap at a book sale not long ago:

Hopelessly liberal monotheist, that’s me :P~

So after someone posted their results on chalice_circle,

Music and sermons

There is one, increasingly big thing that I miss about Catholicism. It’s not anything relating to the theology. It’s the music. I miss worshiping with my voice, something that I usually found very, very powerful — in every sense of the word.

At least Rochester Unitarian had a fairly diverse, developed music program. As in, the music selected for the services was very specifically tied to some element of the sermon, or overall theme. And they had a full choir — four parts, soloists, choir loft, pipe organ, the whole nine yards. Plus they’d have smaller chamber groups, or local visiting individuals, or the like, come in and do the opening and closing bits.

Then there’s Paint Branch (or PBUUC), where I’ve been going for the last few months.

In some respects, it reminds me a lot of Newman, which I was very attached to during college. It’s small, both in terms of congregation size and building size. They seem like geniunely nice people, which is good.

The music? This past weekend, it hit me just how lacking it was.

For example, not this past weekend, but the two weeks previous, they had someone playing music from Final Fantasy X. Which was neat and all, but in retrospect had very little to do with the service.

Mostly, though, I’m tired of everyone singing in unison. And there was one song in particular this weekend that just dragged. Mind you, the notation said it should be around 69 (60 being one beat per second). I think it was actually closer to 50, if I’m remembering that higher number means faster tempo.

I’m reminded of some of the discussions we had at Newman — myself, my ex, one of the priests, probably a few others at times, too. And the things that came up, they don’t just apply to Catholics — they apply to any group of generally non-musical people being led by one or a few people in song.

Don’t sing a new song slowly so people “get it.” If you have to, quickly rehearse it before the service starts. Then take it at tempo during the service, or even slightly faster, because the congregation will invariably slow it down anyway.

Even if a song (ex., “Amazing Grace”) is supposed to be slow and stately, for $deity’s sake don’t turn it into a funeral dirge! “Amazing Grace,” to run with an example, if you look at the text, this person is happy! Don’t sing it like you’re in mourning! (Ahem. Not that I have strong feelings on the subject or anything.) It’s hardly the only example, but it’s one a lot of people will at least be familiar with.

Making sure there’s a link between spoken text/themes and music is a good thing. Really. Singing something just because you’ve always used it, even (especially…) if it is “liturgically incorrect,” is bad.

PBUUC sings “Spirit of Life” at the end of every service. Two Sundays ago was a “question box sermon,” and someone asked how this tradition got started. The chuch will be fifty years old this fall; no one knew the answer. No one (present) had any idea why they sing this song every week. Just a week earlier, one of the ministers had given a very passionate explanation as to how this song’s lyrics embody UU principles and that’s why we and other congregations sing it every week.

*sigh* I miss Rochester Unitarian. They were more…theologically challenging, I guess. This congregation, much as I like some aspects of it, when it comes to services there’s not a lot of meat. I walked away thinking, wanting to

This Sunday is the first non-summer service. (UUs tend to take the summer “off,” or at least go a little more free-form during the summer.) I think I’ll give them a few more weeks into the regular church year, but if I’m not getting anything out of it, I’m going to have to look elsewhere.