Music for the Holidays
It’s that time of year when the holidays bunch up like homework assignments when your teacher realizes they have more content to get through than there are weeks left in the semester. If you missed it (or if you want to watch it again), here is our annual appearance in the NMIIC Thanksgiving Interfaith Music Celebration from November 21. I produced the event again this year, and it was such a pleasure to work with musicians from so many different…
Truth Telling
Throughout November, we all shared in the theme of Holding History. In our Religious Education program, that involved a lot of “truthful telling” and honesty about some painful parts of our nation’s past. These truths can be very difficult for adults to share with children and youth, and doing so in a developmentally appropriate way can be a challenge. Nevertheless, my goal for our program is to push forward boldly, past our own hang ups as adults, and be honest…
Holiday Joy
December can be a busy month for ministers. Not only do we have additional services like Christmas Eve and the Winter Solstice Singing Ritual, but there is all the normal planning around Christmas that goes on. I admit, I tend to get a little humbug and hunker down, resenting the need to shop, to hit the malls and post office. Until two years ago. Before the pandemic hit, Rev. Judy, when she was our Director of Religious Education, asked me…
December Sanctuary Update
The sanctuary committee met with the architect, domusstudio, on November 10 on Zoom to discuss project status and information requested by the City of Costa Mesa for approval of the Development Review Plan. Committee members who worked on the original new sanctuary plan back in 2013 were able to access important documents from that project including the shared parking agreement with Piecemakers and Torelli Real Estate. Additionally we contacted Dig Alert to verify that the location of the existing underground…
Musical Cultural Appropriation
What do Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, Mozart’s Turkish March, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Song of India all have in common? They are all good examples of a composer “borrowing” a different culture’s musical themes (or one’s concept of another culture’s musical themes). I played these pieces for the Prelude of our service about Cultural Appropriation. In the case of Mozart’s Turkish March, he evokes the sound of the Turkish Janissary (military) bands, which was a very popular custom at the time. Even though…
A Year From Now?
At our last Board Meeting October 23rd, the Board considered all the changes that are happening in our church and our community. The two biggies are the pandemic and our new Sanctuary-to-be. Of course that’s just the start! We talked about the different kinds of change: short or long term, technical (a solid “fix” is possible, i.e. we all need to learn to use Zoom) or adaptive (more systemic and not as possible to “fix” i.e. some people prefer Zoom…
Jingle Dancing
The PreK-7th graders read the picture book Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Letitch Smith during their time together on October 10th as part of exploring how listening helps build relationships. This book was also selected in honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day on October 11th. It’s a story about a group of Indigenous Women who are using the tradition of Jingle Dancing to help the world heal the fear caused by the pandemic. The dresses, also known as Prayer Dresses, mimic the sound of falling rain and…
Making History
We are in the middle of making history right now. OK, so we are always in the middle of making history, but it just feels so “present” to me right now (no pun intended). It feels that way because I have no idea what the future holds, which is a very unsettling feeling. Everything seems up in the air: what does the future hold for our children when it comes to the environment? After the pandemic, what is the future…
October Sanctuary Update
As we get closer to the targeted date of early February 2022 when the demolition of the existing Suite 4 building is to take place, there are a number of tasks that are in need of completion. The construction committee continues to move forward on these requirements in collaboration with our architect, domusstudio. Most importantly we are awaiting feedback on the Development Review Plan submitted last month to the City of Costa Mesa Department of Development Services. Once feedback is…
The Hard-Working Volunteers
I want to highlight the many hard-working volunteers who have stepped up to make our hybrid services happen. I’m sure most people realize that it takes lots of extra energy – and volunteer hours – to create basically two services simultaneously – one on Zoom and one in Daniels Hall. Huge kudos go to Steve Morihiro, who did all the research to figure out how to make hybrid services work effectively, gathered all the extra equipment we needed (including miles of…