General Assembly - Ft. Lauderdale

The UUA General Assembly in Ft. Lauderdale is off and running. So far, it seems well put together, and plenary meetings and workshops are tight and well run. The opening ceremony, with the Sources Cantata by Jason Shelton and Kendall Gibbons, was beautiful, though I had to perceive that beauty through the distorted amplification. We still don't have a handle on how to support choral singing in a giant convention center hall. Kendall told me the recording was suprisingly good, so maybe I'll get a chance to hear that.

GA attendance is down about a third, I understand, from previous years. Not surprising. We're all cooking down here in the steamy Florida heat. I remember this heat, the same Houston heat and humidity, and while one adapts to it, one never truly gets used to it.

Beside the heat, my one other whiny complaint has been internet access. My hotel is great in every other way (free breakfast!), but even when I broke down and was ready to pay the usurious $10 a day fee for internet, it wouldn't work with my machine. The internet at the convention center cafe was broken, too. I was reduced to poaching free wireless outside the door of the low-priced hotel a friend stayed at. Finally, I found a coffeeshop with French pastries and free wireless., so I'm catching up on email, journaling, and these posts. Life is good.

A Weekend of Music

This weekend has brought the confluence of two major musical events in at Unity Church, offering an overwhelming amount of energy and activity.

The Arthur Foote Music Festival has been in planning for some time, and it came to wonderful fruition on Sunday, with both choirs, percussion, and strings, leading to powerful performances of Eric Whitacre's "Cloudburst" and Ben Allaway's "From This House To The World".

Through the efforts of Unity Church member Rick Heydinger, the Shades of Praise gospel choir was flown to St. Paul for a weekend of performances at various local churches.
The choir was fabulous and energized, and had even us arrhythmic and reserved types up moving and clapping. We hope these event will lead us into partnership with both historically black and white churches to work on common social concerns, to 'build the Beloved Community', to use M. L. King Jr's. language.

While one could play or listen to music in isolation as part of a personal spiritual practice, making and enjoying music together as part of a religious community has a tremendous power that goes far beyond the personal. We need to remember the importance of music in our various religious communities.

Ceili Gets Nervous

Our dog Ceili has just watched Liz pack a bag for a weekend trip. This always upsets her. She sometimes is relieved to see her own bed and bowl as part of the luggage, but even then, she's never sure she is included until she is invited into the car.

Liz is visiting her friend Ruth, who is working on a program called Singing Meditation. This is a small group spiritual practice consisting of cycles of singing interspersed with times of silent meditation. Liz will help Ruth with a retreat this weekend, at St. Bede Monastery, but Liz's primary activity is working with Ruth on a book about this practice. Liz's website is here.

Prairie Home Companion Weekend

This weekend was a double-dose of Prairie Home Companion. On Friday, we went to the performance at the Fitzgerald Theatre here in St. Paul. I had been introduced to the show some 27 years ago when I was at Purdue, in Indiana, so some of the Midwestern references made sense to me. Now, as a person who lives in St. Paul, many of the other inside references made sense: cheese curds, I-94, and Hennepin County Library are some I picked out. Certainly a great part of the appeal of this show is the great number of references to details of life that we are familiar with, from the feeling of the first day of fall to deer at dusk on the highway to bagging your carry-on gels and toothpaste at the airport.
I also enjoyed the sense of production of the show: what was read from scripts, what was extemporaneous (most of Garrison Keillor's speaking was without notes), the musicians riffing and playing off each other and off the spoken parts. Keillor's monologue on Lake Wobegon was nearly sermon length, and seemed quite extemporaneous. Fabulous music by the Derailers (though I was bothered by several people taking flash pictures with camera phones - what's with that?), and the house musicians are top-notch.
On Saturday night, we joined a friend of Liz's at the last minute for the annual PHC Meatloaf Supper and Streetdance in front of the theater. Now, I'm no fan of meatloaf, but the $5 plate of meatloaf and white sides was pretty good! We enjoyed a warm night with maybe two thousand other folks, listening to Keillor mc the contests for loon-calling, loudest kid, and best Bob Dylan imitation, among other things. This sort of energy and creativity and variety is why we love living in the city. Size brings anonymity, and anonymity -- for all its benefits -- often invites the worst to come out in people. The fact that a big crowd of strangers like this one can behave well together is a beautiful and hopeful thing.