Listen:
OPENING READING: from "Freedom" (adapted)
If the waters of truth flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.
The light which we have gained was given us... to discover...things more remote from our knowledge.
-- John Milton
MEDITATION WORDS: from Taking Down the Defenses (adapted)
Let me be.... observant of the perpetual miracle of life and love on this fragment of a star flung across the infinity of space; appreciative of earth's symphony of color, harmony of shape, and ubiquity of beauty...to every intimation of divinity in the lives around me...
Let me be...tuned in to all the varied music of the world: to man-made melodies, and to the songs of wind and water, insect and bird...the "still, sad music of humanity": the falling of human tears, the anguish wrenched from human hearts...
Let me be...receptive to unfamiliar thoughts, to strange viewpoints, and brand-new ideas, making doubly certain to give fair hearing to all that challenges my complacency, my prejudgments, my unexamined assumptions.
-- Arthur Foote
SERMON: "Jazz Theology"
"Jazz Theology" - expressed in another way: jazz and God. For our purposes this morning, they link up, both being inscrutably intuitional - and thereby beyond ultimate definition. In other words, jazz and the sense of the divine are both feelings deep inside us and require expression.
Perhaps we can do so by saying that both just happen. Just are. Can't be all that defined.
Perhaps it is what that great jazz legend Miles Davis said when asked to tell what he was about to play: "I'll play it first and tell you what it is later."
Perhaps that was close to what God really said right before said persona decided to create the first human beings. Something like: "Just give me a minute, will ya? I'll come up with something and we can talk about what it is later!"
In other words, Davis and God - Jazz and theology - just did it first, just created, and after they were finished could attempt to explain what they had just done.
This is definition by demonstration - instead of verbalization.
When it comes to attempting to define that which is "divine" it is similar to what is said of that certain saint-like quality seen in rare individuals - "You know God when you see it in somebody."
Louis Armstrong, "Old Satchmo" also has a word about our wanting to have a clear once-and-for-all definition of what "jazz" might be, when he supposedly responded with: "Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know." In other words, jazz, like the divine, can be experienced but not fully defined. You just know that both are. Your intuition - or whatever you want to call it, tells you this must be so.
Which for me is as good as it gets when I or anyone else attempts to define "jazz" or "God." For, both share that quality to which Unitarian Universalist Minister Jim Curtis spoke when he said:
You sit in the state of utmost not-doing -
That is, of utmost awaiting, listening...
And "what one is doing" has no rules, no methods...
Whatever comes, comes...
For truly, I believe that jazz and God exist in the shadows, but that does not mean that the experiencing of either or both is unreal. For some, jazz and that of which Wordsworth spoke ("something far more deeply interfused") is more real than anything else.
Both are ways of existing in the world; they are journeys that travel wide and free, allowing for detours, less-than-narrow pathways, cul-de-sacs, forks in the road, flat tires, hitchhikers going the same way.
Consider the fact that what is said in attempting to define "jazz" by listing its qualities can also be said about attempting to define "God" - that is to say "jazz" is "characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre..." (The Dictionary of Global Culture edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., p. 337).
Back to some key words in that definition of jazz I just quoted (words that also can be indications of that deep intuition we might choose to call the divine quality within us).
First word: "syncopated." In music, this means to put the accent on beats, which are not normally accented. In other words, there is an element of surprise.
Welcome to Unitarian Universalism and our idea of "God." We certainly are not with the regular beat of the traditional places of "worship" when it comes to how we define the concept of the divine.
Consider the hymn, "A Firemist and a Planet" (#343). The third verse reads:
Like tides on crescent sea-beach, when moon's so new and thin, into our hearts high yearnings come welling, surging in, come from the mystic ocean whose rim no foot has trod - some call it longing, and others call it God.
Other stanzas have various attempts at defining "God," too, and end with such lines as:
Some call it evolution, and others call it God.
Imagine your entering a Unitarian Universalist Sunday morning service for the first time, and singing this hymn! You would be surprised, indeed, either pleasantly or not, depending on what you bring to the service theologically.
More than once when singing this hymn with a congregation, I have been bemused to hear laughter.
Now the great jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald who syncopated her way to the top, was famous for her "scat" singing - that is singing in which one substitutes nonsense syllables for words, trying to sound like a musical instrument. Add her syncopations to her scatting, and she was a marvel to listen to. This was true for most, except for the person in the following story. Ella had appeared in Columbia, South Carolina before an audience of children - who seemed appreciative. But at the end of the performance, a little boy was asked by a television interviewer what he thought of Ms. Fitzgerald and he, being the musical purist he was, replied: "Well, I liked her signing all right, but she didn't break no glass."
Obviously the kid was taken by surprise by Ella's sometimes-offbeat style; still, the kid really slung one back at everybody else, getting people off their beat!
The second key word in our definition of "jazz" that connects with "theology" is the word "polyphonic" meaning "many sounds" or "many voices"- not like the sounds made in the biblical story of the "Tower of Babel" - because in a polyphonic composition, each part (singer or instrumentalist) has an independent melody, but harmonizes with the rest.
Sounds like Unitarian Universalism to me! Let us try to phrase it a different way by saying that we are a people who come together to sing our individual song, but blend with others. Granted, when the ideal is not attained, some singers make noise - not music! These do not want to even make the attempt to be part of the community, believing that their voice is the only one to be heard.
Perhaps another way of defining our Unitarian Universalist theological beliefs is to say that we are at our very best when we practice "unity in diversity."
We are like those classic jazz bands- performers going off in all directions, but somehow managing to stay together, harmonizing despite the separate roles they play, the independent thoughts they have.
It seems to me that jazz is the only metaphor we UUs can claim without too much debate - not only when it comes to the eclectic nature of our belief systems, but also to our interests and practices.
We Unitarian Universalists have all kinds of keys on our piano: sharps, flats, black ones, white ones, but we are all attempting to stay with the same musical score and not fall into too many cracks!
That is generally true for jazz players, too, although the great African American jazz pianist who lived for 100 years, Eubie Blake, when asked why he played many of his compositions by using the more complicated system composed primarily of black keys, responded with: "Down South where I come from, you don't go round hittin' too many white keys."
The third key word in defining "jazz" and linking it up to "theology" is "improvisation." Now, that is a very scary word for many people, because it implies freedom to question, to explore, and to be different from others.
Still, our Unitarian Universalist movement has historically been called the "Free Faith" meaning that we are believers in change, process, fluidity, growth - rather than sameness, stricture, entrenchment, stagnation. Sometimes accused of being "God's frozen people" (although the term was originally applied to Presbyterians), we UUs can thaw out nicely, because we are fluid and can adapt as time and circumstance warrant it.
We create our own principles, purposes, bylaws, and policies when it comes to what we believe and how we are going to carry out those beliefs. We do not have to stay with a codified existence. Things are discussable, changeable. Our Association's headquarters at 25 Beacon Street in Boston is not the Holy See; there is no hierarchy deciding what we shall believe, feel, say, or do. Suggestions, sure!
At times I know it feels like we UUs are similar to those great jazz performers who were so masterful at ad libbing - who made it up as they went along. Here is where the protean and malleable nature of our beliefs has us declaring at times: "I'm hoofin' it!" Or: "I'm playin' it as it goes." Or: "I'm trying to stay just a little ahead of the audience."
This is "improvisation" - in jazz music, as in UU theology and church operation - knowing the basic structure, but feeling free to create our own personal flair. Having the basic ingredients - yes, a long history - but creating our own history, event-by-event, moment-by-moment.
For example, think of that deeply spiritual experience called the "UU memorial service." There is no sameness to those grand times when we honor the individual who has died. We do not recite passages by rote. We tell the special story of who that person was, and how his or her particular legacy will live on in our memories and actions.
It's a jazz piece - each memorial service. Each with its particular syncopations, and chord structures, time signatures, and volume, speed and phrasing. Some with more grace notes than others; some demanding Dixieland bands, others dulcimers. Each, a special improvisation; each a life lived with its own purpose and meaning, not someone else's.
The final key word I want to discuss in relationship to a definition of jazz and how that might apply to theology UU-style, is "distortions" - the definition we have quoted refers to "deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre."
Now, perhaps "distortion" meaning "to twist awry or out of shape; make crooked or deformed; to pervert; misrepresent" (Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1992) is replete with off-putting connotations. And no doubt, some people in society might very well believe this to be true of both Unitarian Universalist theological beliefs and jazz.
Certainly both jazz musicians and Unitarians and Universalists throughout history have been deemed by their detractors as reprobates, radicals, and heretics ("heretic" from the Greek meaning simply "one who is free to make choices).
Satchmo is a good example of that when he went against British protocol during a performance for George VI. Not overawed by the occasion, Louis Armstrong called out to the King: "This one's for you, Rex!"
How utterly American! It's a wonder that particular trumpeter was not marched posthaste to the Tower of London. Anyhow...
I do not think that most of us liberal theologians deliberately go about distorting the religious beliefs of others, thereby creating our own personally acceptable beliefs. It's just that we can't play the same tune - even play in the same key ("pitch") or have the same sound ("timbre").
Take that hot issue of "patriotism" - a concept for UUs that does not mean love of country at the exclusion of all others. How could it be, given the fact that we call ourselves "Universalists" - meaning 200 years ago we held that everyone on the planet was destined for a joyful eternal life?
These days we are more interested in talking about "universal salvation" for one and all on this planet - here and now - in the sense that we are one family, the family of humanity, and that we are linked with everyone and everything on Earth.
Our way of thinking seems to be a distortion for some in our country - if not in our national government. Those who believe us to be people who pervert or misrepresent American values when it comes to "patriotism" or other beliefs (freedom of or freedom from religion; the right of a woman to choose to give birth or not; the protection and nurture of all children who are born; the right of a diverse people to live with purpose and fulfillment despite one's color, ethnicity, physical challenge, sexual orientation, religious practice, gender, age, education, economic attainment; the right of those who feel that life only prolongs suffering, to end their existences in a dignified manner; the right to expect peace, not war) - those who believe us to be such distorters of "patriotism" need to read our Declaration of Independence, the U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, the laws of our land. They - and we - need to be in dialogue, not diatribe with each other, with these and other matters.
We need to do this, improvising as we go along, creating music together, listening to the many sounds each of us brings to the orchestra; hearing our different rhythms, pitches, qualities of sound - and knowing that we are life itself, life in the making, fulfilling itself, creating and re-creating over and over again. That life is jazz - never really the same from moment to moment, no matter how much structure we might want to provide. Jazz, God, Life - ever pulsating, ever bringing us to fever pitch and then cooling us down, ever fooling us, surprising us, delivering us gifts of grace and a medley of thought and emotion.
Shall we not hear that music within us, awaiting release? Shall we not heed the words of Nietzsche who warns us: "Life without music would be a mistake."
CLOSING WORDS: "To Risk" (adapted)
To place our ideas - our dreams - before the crowd is to risk loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
To live is to risk dying.
-- Anonymous