 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Dec 30, 2005 - Jan 1, 2006
Black and White, Gay and Straight, Old and Young, Red and Blue, Adults and Kids, Brown and Yellow, Singles and Families –
We were looking for someone who understood cosmic gatherings, and we found the Rev. Irene Monroe, creator of the Sacred Sexualities workshop. She’s a rising star, so we asked her to lead a big celebration. She thought the idea was terrific and suggested we be joined by Ruth Cunningham and Ana Hernandez, great musicians and liturgists, a fancy word for people who create rituals.
On December 31, 1862, slaves gathered in churches to await the midnight hour when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect and they would be free. “Now, at church during Watch Night Service, my minister always reminds us of the trials and tribulations of the year we are leaving behind and tells us the New Year is the first day of new beginnings, just like our enslaved ancestors saw it. When the clock strikes midnight, the people applaud, cry, dance, and sing.” We know that we have to create our freedom and it won’t come freely. On the sixth day of Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve, the principle celebrated is kuumba — creativity. We will create the ritual we’ll share together, since creativity is essential for life. We need to work to rediscover what freedom means and how to achieve it. It involves our recommitment to the struggle for justice, but freedom isn’t all drudgery and work — it’s about dancing and singing and laughing together, too.
What do we want? What do we need? Hope and community. These are deeply disturbing times and we’re not going to heal them by sitting in front of our computer screens or in our home entertainment centers, but by getting together with others and feeling, again, how good it is to be together. We can create a vibrant community.
Ana and Ruth will create an intuitively improvised sound journey, tailored to the energy of this gathering, using piano, harp, drums, wooden flutes, whistles, rattles, singing bowls, and their voices, a gift for our ears and our hearts. After we hear and feel the ways sound touches spirit, experience the depth, breadth, and ultimate coolness of their genius, we may be sparked to write about what we’re leaving behind and what we see coming. The voice you’ve been given is a part of your gift to the world and is unique in the universe. We’ll listen to ourselves and to each other.
We have not got this all worked out, because we’ve never done it before. We hope this turns into an annual event, so join us to be part of the creation. We will eat wonderful meals together, work in groups to create parts of the celebration, and then put it all together.
This event is open to absolutely everybody, and we hope you will come. We intend to integrate all children and young people who come into all the festivities.
The Reverend Irene Monroe is a columnist, a motivational speaker, and a “public theologian.” An expert on women’s healing, women’s bodies, and spirituality, she has written extensively on African American sexuality, gay and lesbian history, and anti-Semitism in both the Christian and Muslim black communities. She was named by Boston Magazine one of that city’s 100 most intriguing women and was profiled in O, Oprah’s Magazine. A creative and critical thinker, she is not afraid to tackle complex and controversial topics, and she knows how to celebrate. Ruth Cunningham is a classically trained musician and a cross-cultural music healing practitioner who uses her skills to improvise music that connects people to healing and spiritual power. For ten years, she was a member of the legendary vocal quartet Anonymous 4, singing on ten of their recordings and performing all over the world. Ana Hernandez is a composer and arranger of sacred music, a singer, and a multi-instrumentalist who leads workshops on the uses of sacred sound and rhythm. Her greatest joy lies in helping people to experience the ways sound touches our hearts, and its uses in manifesting peace, compassion, and laughter. She’s recorded her arrangements with the National Cathedral Girls Choir, The Miserable Offenders, and Inside Chants with Ruth. Her book about chant as a spiritual discipline is The Sacred Art of Chant: Preparing to Practice. The Rev. Douglas Wilson, founder of Rowe Conference Center, Executive Director of UURC&CC, and a UU minister, learned to party with real passion and to honor real rituals when he was a hippie. Many believe he still is. Prue Berry, Executive Director Emerita of UURC&CC, is a landscape designer, singer, and lover of human beings, animals, and plants. She just can’t help herself. There’s more bio on Doug and Prue on her other seminars.