Rock of Ages -- Unitarian Church of Calgary March 16 2014

Rock of Ages, Rock of Faith

 Before service: Video: For the beauty of the earth



Rock of Ages, Rock of Faith

Service leader: Penney Kome – Guest speaker: Carolyn Pogue

Welcome: Board member -- Brandis Purcell

Greet your neighbour

Chalice lighting and opening words from Annie Besant:

O Hidden Life vibrant in every atom;
O Hidden Light! Shining in every creature;
O Hidden Love! Embracing all in Oneness;
May each who feels himself as one with Thee,
Know he is also one with every other.

Introduction: Penney Kome

Good morning and thanks for coming to hear about the importance of rocks in our lives, especially the oldest rock in the world. I want to take a moment to highlight why this topic is important to us as Unitarians. 

First of all, our seventh principle (adopted in 1993) is to affirm and promote the interdependent web of all existence – all existence, in addition to all life.  Recent extreme weather events have shown the wisdom of this approach. Even if we speak of the planet as Earth and not Gaia, clearly the natural forces wreaking havoc this winter have been anything but inert.  

With this congregation in particular, we’ve been fortunate to have so many geologists as valuable members, thus proving once again that UU s are well grounded in science as well as in faith. We UU s also like to learn from other beliefs, and rocks figure prominently in many faiths, as our guest speaker will show us. 

Just as humans feel kinship with animals and plants, so do we also relate to the minerals  that share our world,  Long before pet rocks became a fad, people around the world carried rocks as companions, in the form of touchstones and worry beads. We humans warm to rocks, even knowing that they are lifeless. We learn about our world from rocks, and we incorporate them into our belief systems. 

Today I have the great pleasure of introducing a distinguished author and peace activist, Carolyn Pogue. Carolyn’s many books include two historical fiction books, a peace colouring book, and the book we’re celebrating today, Rock of Ages. As an activist, she founded the Calgary chapter of Women in Black, and that led to annual Peace Camps for children which have been held in this church, at least once. You may be familiar with Carolyn's campaign against child poverty, with The United Church Women's Child Wellbeing Initiative. [Oh, and her spouse is famous too. We are also honoured to have the Very Reverend Bill Phipps with us again today.] 

I could go on and on, but the real treat today is to hear Carolyn speak for herself. And we’ll start by inviting her to tell us a Story for All, and inviting the young and young at heart up to the front.  Please do come up, children. Carolyn would love to meet you.

Carolyn Pogue: Everybody Needs A Rock, by Byrd Baylor

Author Byrd Baylor offers ten tips for choosing your very own rock. 


Penney Kome:  Now it’s time to light the children’s chalice and head downstairs to your classrooms.

Sing children out: Go now in peace, go now in peace, may the spirit of love surround you, everywhere, everywhere, you may go.

PK: Now please join us in a new song. Carolyn has brought a hymn with her, Called by Earth and Sky, by Pat Mayberry. Please stand in body or in spirit and sing with us. This hymn is not in our hymnbook. Look up at the screen for words and music. 

Offering: After the basket has passed,  you may light a silent candle or this week you may drop a polished rock into a bowl of water, to symbolize your joy or concern.
 
Caring Committee report

I am here on behalf of the caring team -- that is all of us -- as we care for each other in this congregation.  

We take this time in the service to tend the sacred ties that bind our lives to one another.  These are the relationships that are the foundation of this beloved community that we get to create together. We recognize ourselves as part of an interdependent web of existence, affirming that what touches the life of one of us, affects us all. In these moments, we seek to widen the caring ministry by sharing the joys, sorrows, concerns and milestones in our own lives and in the life of the congregation. 

[SWEET team member reads joys and concerns from green cards and talks about greeting cards to sign.]

We light this candle of concern for all those spoken concerns as well as those in our hearts. 

There are joys and milestones in our midst as well. We light this candle for for those. 

One of our greatest joys is to welcome newcomers to our midst. If you are here for the first time, and if you are comfortable doing so, please stand or wave and be recognized.

We light this candle of joy for all that has been spoken, for the guests among us, and for all the unspoken joys held in the silence of our hearts.

Welcome and please join us for coffee and take a blue cup. The blue cup serves as an invitation to conversation. Please also take a moment and stop by our Welcome Table located in the Barker Room and sign our Guest Book. 

Finally, we light our candle of global concern. 


Homily: “Faith like a rock,” Carolyn Pogue talks about rocks as metaphor.

Penney has mentioned some of the work I’ve been involved with over the years. I realized, soon after I began thinking about writing Rock of Ages, that this book really brings together a lot of this work. It is about how I feel about this precious planet. 

The Acasta River gneiss — or the rock from the Denadziidee River— is the most ancient on Earth. Currently, the rock is located southeast of Sahtu/Great Bear Lake, but it hasn’t always been located there.  After it arose from the primal waters more than four billion years ago, it continued to move. Because of techtonic plate activity, scientists say that this rock has slipped beneath mountains and emerged into the air again. It has travelled to the equator and to the other side of the planet. It is the Rock More Travelled you could say.

Two years ago I sat at my computer and stared at this rock. I knew that it had a story inside and I wondered if I could find it. In fact, I found many stories. This morning I share some from a chapter in Rock of Ages in which I looked at some of our spiritual connections to rocks.

Humans around the world have long understood "rock" as a metaphor for the sacred. Stories, scriptures and hymns abound with this imagery. As well, followers of a variety of spiritual traditions venerate particular rocks and stones. 

England

The British Isles are rich with rock and stone stories, rituals and holy places. Stonehenge in England is by far the most well known of the megalithic sites. It can be seen for about three kilometres all around. There are about 80 major stones, some brought great distances from the area now called Wales.  Although it is a very busy tourist and pilgrimage site, modern Druids are still able to practice ceremonies during Solstice. It was apparently constructed so that humans could align themselves with the great powers of the universe.  Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old.  

Saudi Arabia

Tradition says that the Black Stone fell from the sky. It is said to have been venerated in pre-Islamic times, and according to Muslim tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve, the beginning. It is the eastern cornerstone in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, set there by the Prophet Muhammad in 605 CE. A piece of it is framed and set into the side of the mosque and this is where millions of pilgrims annually come to pray, and to kiss, touch or point to it in a show of reverence. Pilgrims walk around it in prayer seven times. If devout Muslims can possibly do it, they are required to make at least one pilgrimage during their lifetimes. Many millions do just that because there is but one Black Stone. 

Tibet

For Buddhists, though, there are many Mani stones. These are stone plates, rocks or pebbles inscribed with Om mani padme hum, “hail to the jewel in the lotus,” which is a prayer for compassion. Mani stones are placed along roadsides or rivers and sometimes walls as a prayer offering, and as a reminder that Earth is sacred. People walk clockwise around them or pass on the left. This is the way the Earth revolves.

Ireland

Few visitors to Ireland wouldn’t know about the Blarney Stone. This stone, in Blarney Castle near Cork, has many legends attached to it. One says that the Blarney was once part of the Stone of Scone in Scotland. Another says that the builder of the castle appealed to a goddess for help in settling a lawsuit. She told him that if he kissed a stone enroute to court he would receive an eloquent tongue. He did, and the judge ruled in his favour. In gratitude, he incorporated the stone into the castle. Today, the Blarney Stone is said to impart the gift of the blarney to the one who will lean over backward to kiss it. The literature proclaims that if you kiss the Blarney Stone, “you’ll never be at a loss for words again.”

Manitou Stone in Alberta

A few years ago I was told by a Cree friend about a holy stone in this province. It is The Manitou Stone. Learning about it made me cringe. The story is wrapped inside the larger painful story of European Christians believing that they needed to “save” people, and the cruel establishment by the Canadian government, of Indian Residential Schools and racist policies and laws.

In the early days, the story tells us, the Great Spirit, Manitou, sent an iron stone to Earth. Some call it a meteorite; others call it Old Man Buffalo, perhaps because of its power to protect the buffalo, the life blood of the people of the Prairies.

The Blackfoot and Cree, believed that the Manitou Stone protected them against war, disease and famine. The Elders taught this. People left offerings near the stone and made prayers and songs in its honour. 

When Christian missionaries arrived in the area, they saw how the people regularly travelled to the stone and revered it. The newcomers believed that the Manitou Stone was a stumbling block to the conversion of people to Christianity. In the 1860s, Reverend George McDougall, a Methodist, spirited the Stone away and left the hill and the people, bereft. 

The prophecy of the holy ones came true. Very soon, there was indeed war between the Blackfoot and the Cree. Within a few years, the buffalo population was decimated. 

And, finally, a small pox epidemic decimated the people, killing George McDougall’s three daughters, too. War, disease and famine had arrived with a vengeance.

The Manitou Stone had been sent to Toronto, Ontario where it was lodged at Victoria University for more than 100 years. Eventually, a new generation of church people felt shame for the theft and returned the stone to the west. But the councils of Elders and chiefs could not decide who should take responsibility for its care or where it should be placed. And so, the Manitou Stone today is on display at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton.

Just before the Solstice in December 2012, a Ceremony of Forgiveness was held at McDougall United Church in Edmonton. Initiated by Anna Faulds, the ritual involved representatives of Blackfoot, Cree and Dene nations, the Royal Alberta Museum and the local and national United Church. The intent of the ceremony was to remove the negative energy surrounding the Manitou Stone. Such is the power of sacred rocks to this day.
 

Cosmologist Brian Swimme says that science has finally recognized what First Peoples have always said, “We are one.” Swimme says, “We are the universe in human form — related, in terms of energy and of matter — and part of an amazing story.” 

I believe that this rock is important today because it is a physical connection to that amazing story. We can touch the beginning of time.This is why, for example, universities and museums around the world want a piece for display and study — and the Smithsonian Institute went north to get a piece for a cornerstone for a new museum. 

Geologist Janet King located this rock in 1989. In all of Earth’s history, it took until now for the world to catch a glimpse of it. It made me wonder if this grandfather rock had kept his story quiet until now for a reason.

Part of the outcrop is embedded deep in the Earth, part of it stands bold against the wild sky and part of it swoops down into the river. It connects, therefore, Earth, air, water. It remains to be seen what we will make of it.

[end]

Now, please join us in singing Hymn #308, in our gray hymnal -- The Blessings of the Earth and Sky 

Centering -- Poetry excerpt plus lithophone (musical rocks) video 

Anne Marie Sewell has made her poem "if you must touch river rock" available in Carolyn's book, among other places.  We excerpt it here so we also have time to share an exciting brand new video that my colleague Greg Locke just made available for the first time on Thursday night., in which musicians call forth the voices of rocks.

This video from a 2012 Sound Symposium shows how to wrap bungee cords around flat rocks to build sounding chambers, which echo when someone strikes the top rock. Musical rocks are called lithophones. In this video, they sound like rainsticks. 

We will read the poem excerpt and then play the video, and we invite you to relax into contemplating what we have to learn from rocks. Please put your feet flat on the floor and your hands in your lap, and think about taking a few deep breaths. You might want to close your eyes for a minute once the musicians get going. 

"if you must touch river rock", excerpt, by Edmonton Poet Laureate Anne Marie Sewell
...let some stones be porous
some rough, some smooth
so your fingers are soothed
and learn to touch like water
and if one is grey
call it writer's stone
all colours or none
heavy or light
the fog that conceals
or clouds the birthplace of rain
the mind of the poet,
story of it hidden
let this one remind you
the beating of a heart
much older than our own
enfolds us   our blood
part of that dancing over stones
that give the river its song

Video by award-winning photographer Greg Locke, from the 2012 Sound Symposium held in Doctor's Cove, Newfoundland   https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151948818822681&set=vb.592097680&type=2&theater

Responsive Reading:      #550   Please join us in a responsive reading. Carolyn will lead this side with words in regular font. Penney will lead this side with words in italics. 

We Belong to the Earth, attributed to Chief Noah Sealth

This we know. The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth. 

        This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. 

        All things are connected.


       Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughter of the earth. 

       We did not weave the web of life. We are merely a strand in it. 


       Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. 

Closing words: 
Let us bless and keep one another.
Let kindness rule in our hearts
and compassion in our lives,
until we meet again. Amen.
by John C Morgan 

Please join hands or assume the Namaste position for our final Hymn, #123, Spirit of Life. The words are on the wall.

Hymn#123: Spirit of Life -- Words are on the walls

Rooting for the Olympics underdogs

Photo by Penney Kome, Calgary Pride March September 2013

 

Although some LGBT leaders urged a boycott on the Sochi Olympics due to Russia's draconian law against "homosexual propaganda", generally world response has been to treat the event as a teachable moment about celebrating all the different forms of human love.

Russia’s new law banning gay friendly “propaganda” accessible to minors has sparked serious and humourous protests globally. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision not to attend the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi puts him in good company. Neither President Obama nor Vice-President Biden will attend, nor French President Francois Hollande German President Joachim Gauck or European Union Commissioner Viviane Reding.

On February 5, rallies in 20 cities worldwide protested outside the offices of ten major Olympics sponsors. In addition, CTV news reported that, “A coalition of 40 international groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, sent an open letter to the 10 biggest Olympic sponsors last week urging them to run ads promoting equality for LGBT people.”

All the sponsors promptly re-affirmed their commitment to human rights. Some specifically declared their support for LGBT rights.

"Russia's law is harmful to LGBT individuals and families, and it's harmful to a diverse society," said a post on the AT&T Consumer Blog, under the headline A Time for Pride and Equality.

The next day, Chobani (Yogurt) CEO Hamdi Ulukaya issued a statement "It's disappointing that in 2014 this is still an issue," he said. "We are against all laws and practices that discriminate in any way, whether it be where you come from or who you love. For that reason, we oppose Russia's anti-LGBT law." 

As ABC News reported, De Vry University spokesperson Ernie Gibble said, "We are against Russia's anti-LGBT law and support efforts to improve LGBT equality."  Coca Cola announced its strong support for LGBT rights. McDonald’s stated it supports human and civil rights. Visa said that it was “engaged” with the IOC on “this important topic.” 

Google changed the logo on its search page, showing rainbow patches, each holding an athlete in a winter Olympic sport, above a quote from the Olympic Charter about human rights.

Late night talk show host Chelsea Handler inspired rainbows over city halls across Canada when she ran the wrong photo – Vancouver mayor Greg Robertson – while reporting the Sochi mayor’s homophobic remarks. Learning of the mix-up through Twitter, Robertson seized the opportunity to reiterate his well-known support for gay rights.

“I’ve always stood strong and proud for Vancouver’s LGBTQ community, and gay rights are really important to Vancouverites,” he said.  Vancouver Council voted to send a delegation to Sochi to lobby the IOC for gay rights, headed up by City Councillor Tim Stevenson, who is gay. 

After Vancouver stepped up to the challenge, city after city across Canada voted to fly the rainbow flag for the duration of the games, starting with St John’s, Nfld. Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, and Whistler, among others, are flying rainbow flags out front, as their mayors hold news conferences to assert their cities’ support for LGBT rights.  Toronto’s Rob Ford is the biggest hold-out.

Then came the advertisements: Chevy’s Olympics ads include same-sex couples raising children   Norway promoted sports with an ad that ends, “Whatever team you play for...” ; the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion issued a 33 second commercial with two lugers rocking back and forth with a caption saying, “The Olympics have always been a little bit gay;" and Britain’s Channel 4 re-branded to a rainbow-coloured logo and launched a “Gay Mountain” ad campaign.

The world seems to have seized upon the Sochi Olympics as a teachable moment. Twenty years ago, such a public outpouring of support would have been unimaginable. I am as stunned but delighted as I was the night the United States elected its first Black president. As a Unitarian, whose denomination has offered same sex marriage in Canada since 1974, I honestly did not expect to see this sea change in within my lifetime.

As well, there’s been a fierce debate on whether to boycott the games. In August, actor Stephen Fry wrote, “An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential.”  George Takei in the States urged the same. Some progressives shun the games completely – not easy to do in this Olympics-soaked news cycle. Meanwhile, reporters have mentioned most spectator seats remain unsold, for a number of reasons. 

Conversely, other high-profile LGBT folks have urged gays to make their presence at Sochi highly visible and as successful as possible. As Susan Cole wrote in NOW, “gay rights activists have the chance to get unprecedented visibility.”

On the other hand, one young gay man close to my heart is worried that the news media attempts to support gay athletes could actually jeopardize them.  Everybody’s looking for a Jesse Owens -- the Black athlete who won four gold medals at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics -- to prove Putin wrong. This fellow pointed to the coverage of Ireen Wust, who won two gold medals for speedskating. News reports mentioned that she prefers to be identified as a Dutch skater, even though she is out as a lesbian at home – in Holland, where people don’t pay much attention to such differences.

Yes, every victory by an LGBT athlete throws the hateful law’s lie back in the teeth of official Russia. But, he said, “Right now the media are on a witch hunt for every gay athlete who wins a medal. In effect, they’re identifying potential targets.” He pointed out that Ireen Wust is still competing, still in Russia, where speaking out for gay rights is against the law.  Wust should be the person to decide how she identifies (she has won speedskating gold three Olympics in a row) and how much risk she wants to take.

Although Canada lines up with the gay-friendly nations on the Olympics, he said, LGBT communities at home usually see a different orientation. Somewhere over the rainbow, the athletes will come home again. And now that all of these companies, politicians, and celebrities have made this big show of how much they support gay rights, he said, “it’s time for them to live up to it.”

**** **** **** ****

Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 summer Olympics, a record that stands to this day. According to the Olympics website, “...Owens won four gold medals, in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and the long jump. He managed to break or equal nine Olympic records and also set three world records. One of those world records was in the 4x100m relay. The quartet set a time that wouldn’t be bettered for 20 years.”

Even more remarkably Owens , a Black man, achieved all this in an extremely hostile environment. The Ineternational Olympics Committee chose Berlin in 1931, two years before Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933. 

According to Wikipedia, “Hitler saw the [1936] Games as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy, and the official Nazi party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, wrote in the strongest terms that Jews and Black people should not be allowed to participate in the Games.”

World outcry forced the Third Reich to retract their outrageous request, and a few brave Jewish and Black athletes did compete. If Jesse Owens’ extraordinary triumphs embarrassed the Adolf Hitler’s government and its claims of Aryan racial superiority, other nations did not seem particularly sympathetic.

Indeed, some nations urged the world to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and forty-nine countries actually registered athletes with alternative games in Barcelona.  Unfortunately, the Spanish Civil War erupted the day before the games were due to start.

Russia was among the first to announce it would boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympic games -- even though the Third Reich retracted its original demand that no countries send Jewish or Black athletes -- largely because Russia boycotted all the Olympics at that time and instead participated in the international workers’ games, Spartakiad. 

So there’s a certain irony in the way so many nations have turned against Russia during the 2014 Olympics, on human rights grounds.

In Rumi's footsteps: Sufism in the modern world

Unitarian Church of Calgary, Order of Service January 5 2013

In Rumi’s Footsteps: Sufism in the Modern World    
Service Leader: Penney Kome 
Guest speakers: Malik Muradov , Emine Gurbuzer 
Sound operator: Hendrik Schaink

Welcome (Board member) and Greet your neighbours

Chalice lighting: The lamps are different, but the Light is the same: it comes from Beyond.
If thou keep looking at the lamp, thou art lost: for thence arises the appearance of number and plurality. 
Fix thy gaze upon the Light, and thou are delivered from the dualism inherent in the finite body.
O thou who art the kernel of Existence, the disagreement between Moslem, Zoroastrian and Jew depends on the standpoint.
(by Jalala al-Din Rumi)

Introduction: Why Unitarians should care about modern Sufis and the Hizmet movement 
Hello everyone. My name is Penney Kome. I’m a member of the Church Services Committee, and I will be your Service Leader this week. This year, our Sunday services are highlighting inspiration from other religions. This service is part of that series. We’ll project the text of the service on the screen here, as a guide, but not necessarily as word-for-word text for what we are going to say.

Today, we are very fortunate to have two guest speakers from the Intercultural Dialogue Institute,  an organization with branches across Canada. With me at the front are Mr Malik Muradov, Executive Director of the Calgary branch, and Ms Emine Gurbuzer, head of the local women’s section.

Being able to introduce these two long time Calgarians to this congregation brings me special pleasure because I think our two faiths hold many principles in common. The IDI vigorously promotes interfaith dialogue and religious freedom, which are causes dear to many Unitarian hearts.

The Calgary IDI often hosts events, celebrating occasions like International Women’s Day, or Black History Month, which draw people from communities all over Calgary, often including local politicians.  The group is also closely connected to the global Islamic Hizmet peace movement, which promotes education and religious tolerance in 140 countries around the world. The word Hizmet means, “service for the common good,” and I suggest it corresponds to our Unitarian commitment to live our faith.

“Hizmet” is another name for the Gülen movement, which began with writer and former Imam Fethullah Gülen’s modest effort to connect struggling post-secondary students with volunteer university students – in other words, to give a few local kids some free tutoring. Decades later, Gülen leads an international network of non-profit private and public schools, many funded mostly or completely by donations. These educational initiatives have earned him a fair amount of influence in his native Turkey, especially among Turkey’s media, judiciary, and civil servants who obtained their training this way.

Last April, TIME Magazine named Gülen one of the 100 most influential people in the world – noting that as “the most potent advocate of moderation in the Muslim world, Gülen is waging an urgently important campaign.” The Economist reported in 2008 that, “With his stated belief in science, inter-faith dialogue and multi-party democracy, Mr Gülen has also won praise from many non-Muslim quarters.”

Lately, Fethullah Gülen has clashed openly with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, even though (according to the Christian Science Monitor) a decade ago, the two of them worked together on legal challenges that broke the military government’s hold on power. Now Erdogan's government is reeling from allegations of graft and corruption, including plans to move against some of Hizmet's schools. As a journalist, I think Fethullah Gülen is a story! As a Unitarian, I think any struggle between a spiritual leader and a government deserves careful examination.

Finally, of course, most Unitarians know at least a little about the immortal Sufi poet, Rumi. He was born in 1207 in what is now Afghanistan, forced to flee the Mongols as a toddler (with his family) and therefore raised in Turkey. Writing in Persian, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi crafted verses that have influenced all of Persian, Arab and Muslim literature and other arts across the centuries.  His is called “the ecstatic faith,” the faith of falling in love with the divine over and over again, in both its divine and human form.

Rumi’s poems dare us to test ourselves and our senses, to think outside convention. Most of us have heard the famous line from one of his poems that offers, “...Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there” -- a deliberately shocking invitation to liberate ourselves to follow our joy. Similarly, the whirling dervishes remind us that everything in the world is whirling with the force of love.

Those are my main reasons for inviting Malik and Emine here to speak with me before this beloved community.  Please make yourselves comfortable and join us in looking at Rumi's Light.  

Story for all  – Nasreddin Hoca story
Emine Gurbuzer 

Sing children out: Go now in peace, go now in peace. May the spirit of love surround you, everywhere, everywhere, you may go.

Hymn #188: Come, come, whoever you are   (Round)   

Reading:  Fethullah Guüen on faith and community


Emine Gurbuzer
 
“...Faith makes a believer a person who inspires trust to one’s environment, even to the entire creation. It makes one’s narrow world into a universal one. True Muslims see the universe as a cradle of amity, and thus see everybody as brothers and sisters to a certain extent. As Ali ibn Abi Talib stated, they see others as brothers and sisters, Muslims being in faith and others being in humanity. Surely, their perspective of believers is very different, owing to the belief that they will be together in the intermediary realm, on the Day of Judgment, and the final reckoning.

“...People with such faith will not reduce their relationship with their environment to opportunistic expectations from others; on the contrary, they will try to establish a bond and relationship that will continue in the next world as well. If such a bond and relationship have a different value in God’s sight, then this will let believers become closer to God and make them succeed in both worlds, which is another promise made by faith.

“It is possible to see the Prophet’s blessed statement, “God’s hand (of support) is with the community,” from this perspective as well. That is, as God Almighty protects people who act with a collective spirit in this world from evils and grants them success, He will grant exceptional blessings to them altogether. In other words, acting in the collective yields not only worldly fruits, but otherworldly ones as well....” 
(excerpted from Fethullah Gülen)

Multimedia: Listen to Rumi poem while watching this four minute video   


Malik Muradov on why dervishes whirl, seeking to dissolve into the infinite  

Offering:  This congregation meets 100% of its expenses from free will donations. Let there be an offering to sustain and strengthen this place which is sacred to so many of us, a community of memory and of hope, for we are now the keepers of the dream.

(Brandoch L. Lovely)

If you have a Life Milestone to share with the congregation, please write it on a green card and put it in the offering basket, for someone from the Caring Committee to read from the front. After the basket passes you, you may come forward and light a silent candle of joy or concern, here at the sides.  Meanwhile, please enjoy this video about Turkish marbling art

Caring committee report on congregational joys and concerns 

Meditation: 
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open. 
Don't go back to sleep.                                   Rumi

Response to meditation: video about Muslim calligraphy.  

Conversation: PK, MM, EG with questions and answers about the IDI, Fethullah Gulen, Rumi, and Noah's Pudding


Question: After 9/11 and ever since, I have seen and read stories that describe Muslims as scary people, people that Westerners will inevitably have to fight in what Samuel Huntington described as a “Clash of Civilizations”.  My question to you is, do the Muslims you know think that Westerners are scary people too?

Question: I think some Christian organizations might be worried that dialogue could lead to some of their members converting to Islam. Does IDI try to convert people? What’s the purpose of stimulating dialogue?

Question: What kinds of reactions do you get from inviting dialogue? 

Question: If you want to do good work, why don’t you feed the hungry instead of sitting around and talking? 

Question: Why does Fethullah Gülen call his blog The Broken Jug? 

Question: What is Noah's Pudding?

Hymn # 180 Alhamdulillah Arabic Allelulia  (Round)

Extinguish chalice with 
Closing words – #474: Unto the church universal

Unto the church universal, which is the depository of all ancient wisdom and the school of all modern thought;

Which recognizes in all prophets a harmony, in all scriptures a unity, and through all dispensations a continuity;

Which abjures all that separates and divides, and always magnifies all that unifies and brings peace;

Which seeks truth in freedom, justice in love, and individual discipline in social duty;

And which shall make of all sects, classes, nations, and races, one global community;

Unto this church and unto all its members, known and unknown throughout the world, 

We [those of us present who agree with the goals above] pledge the allegiance of our hands and hearts.   
(Keshab Chandra Sen/Arr. John Haynes Holmes)  

Hymn # 123  Spirit of Life 

Artists are workers too!

Good morning! Thanks for coming out this morning. My name is Penney Kome and I will be your Service Leader. I've chosen this method of presenting my talk today to help make it as accessible as possible, and also to show that, even though my career as a professional writer started back when a portable typewriter was a novelty, I'm not a Luddite.

Creativity and the arts enrich all our lives. In whatever form we engage with a transformative rendering of a world we thought we knew, and to whatever degree of participation, creativity has the power to bring us to our higher selves, to plug us into the joyous "flow" energy of being fully present. Creativity nourishes our hearts, our souls, our spirits.

The question I bring to the table today, though, is whether creativity can nourish the body.    


Chalice lighting: I light the chalice with these words by Rev Andy Pakula:

We light this chalice flame as a sign of our faith
May we ever trust
The good light within each heart
The sacredness of life
The transformative force of love
And our own power to make a difference.

Homily

Imagine that one day you share your favorite pet story with an email list, or a blog. Now imagine that a year later you tell that same story to a new friend, and she laughs in your face "You can't fool me," she says, "You got that from a book." She pulls out her Kobo reader -- and there's your anecdote in a collection of postcard stories, but without your name attached. How would you feel?

Or imagine that one day you capture a sweet video of snowboarding on the mountains, and you post it to YouTube, and you’re so excited about being able to share it with everybody, you click on the Creative Commons license. And your video goes viral. 

Now imagine that Kokanee beer’s advertising agency comes along and uses your video for a whole new series of ads. All your friends think you must be rich from the ad, but the fact is, the Creative Commons license pretty well put your video into the public domain. People are supposed to attribute the work to you -- or rather, your YouTube handle -- but that's hard to enforce. How would you feel?

Odds are that you would feel at least a little bit ripped off. And you’d be right. Information is the most valuable commodity on the Internet, and also the most likely to be, ahem, re-purposed, with or without permission. Remember Stephen Brill's Contentville?

Some people are happy to contribute their creations towards a greater whole, hoping to build a more co-operative world online. Sometimes that works. However, most of the Internet I've seen (as a newsmagazine editor) is actually a pretty competitive place, with uncountable players scrambling to figure out a way to monetize this new medium.  

If "infomation wants to be free", as some say, then the question is, how do you define "information"? Facts?  Stark facts usually need some interpretation. And there's the rub. Even sheets of statistics have to be composed in some kind of order.

What we're talking about here -- your pet story, your snowboarding video -- is not "information" but the "fixed expression" of ideas, emotions, juxtapositions and depictions. 

A "fixed expression" is covered by copyright the very moment that it's fixed. Like the little girl who was delighted to learn she'd been speaking prose all her life, we all commit acts of copyright every day. If only someone would pay us for them. Here's a writers' joke:

Q: "How do you know if you're a real artist?" A: "Someone else is making more money from your work than you are."

But of course, most workers could say the same thing.

 

The evolution of copyright

The law that protects original work has been evolving almost continuously since its inception. Copyright emerged in the English speaking world with the 1709 Statute of Queen Anne, "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning,” to give printers incentive to publish original works. 

Johannes Gutenberg gave the world moveable type.  Exclusivity – even temporary exclusivity – gave printers time to recover the investment involved in actually printing books, which included paying the author.

Other countries besides England adopted their own copyright laws, each according to the cultural policy of the state. English copyright law started with the printers, some of whom went on to become publishers. So English common law tends to favour the producer rather than the creator. French copyright law (and most European copyright law) emphasizes droite d'auteur, author's rights, giving the creator primary and sometimes total control over the work. The 2002 German Copyright Act, for example, said that copyright was transferable only by inheritance. 

Author Charles Dickens was one of many early Unitarians who earned their livelihoods with their creativity. Others included Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce, e.e.cummings, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, Beatrix Potter, and Charles Bulfinch.

Tension soon arose because copyright was a national law, and didn’t apply outside national borders. Dickens complained bitterly about American printers who reprinted and sold his work without permission or compensation. He even said publicly that Sir Walter Scott would not have died poor had the Americans paid him for using his work.

French author Victor Hugo founded  L’association littéraire et artistique internationale to campaign for what eventually became the 1886 Berne Convention, an international agreement to give all authors “national treatment” – that is, to honour their copyright across borders.

The United States never did sign the Berne Convention, though. The US stood accused of harbouring pirates for almost three-quarters of a century, until they and the rest of the world signed the 1952 Universal Copyright Convention. But then according to Wikipedia, "on March 1, 1989, the U.S. "Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988" came into force and the United States became a party to the Berne Convention, making the Universal Copyright Convention obsolete."

Please join me in singing, "Gather the Spirit", Hymn #347  and then the ushers will take the offering to support the work of this church and congregation.

Today, copyright has grown into a mighty forest of oak trees that shelters an entire ecosystem, a $46 billion cultural industry. Besides literature, the term "copyright" covers a wide range of intellectual property from software to music, and each sector has its own approach.

An early rebellion against Microsoft, for example, led to the Gnu, or free software movement. I admire people who can speak with computers. If people want to share their software, that's okay with me, as long as they practice safe techniques. ;) I do think that comparing software to literature is a false analogy, though. Booksellers are not going to take over the world, even the electronic world.

With music, iTunes has managed to recoup some of the market damage (an estimated $10 billion a year) from Napster and other peer-to-peer sharing sites. iTunes addresses the concerns that prompted file sharing, by making purchases easy, affordable and the right thing to do. But how many major breakout music stars have you seen since P2P sharing began? 

Well, perhaps democratization of media is a good thing. Youtube can be as entertaining as any situation comedy, right? Now that everybody has the electronic tools at our fingertips to record our every waking moment, now that anyone can be a reality TV star, everybody's a producer. Everybody is a journalist. Everyone can broadcast their most private moments. Right? 

Hmm. Let's turn the analogy around. Suppose you gave an axe and a power saw to the next person you saw, would that make that person a lumberjack? No, of course not. (And even if it did, a weekend lumberjack is rarely as expert as someone who does the job every day.) A lumberjack needs skills, and needs to understand the dangers of the work. So does anyone who wants to live by producing intellectual property. 

The kind of intellectual property I know best is print, which as everybody knows, is in the midst of a tremendous transition. My nomination for Word of the Digital Century: disintermediation.

Dis - inter - media - tion

The term means the disappearance of intermediaries, usually as a result of new technology. Telegraph operators were obsolete once the telephone arrived. Online airline booking has all but eliminated travel agents. Email and couriers now handle most of our correspondence, as shown during the recent postal strike. Occupation after (skilled, well-paid) occupation has succumbed to digital competition.  

Writing and publishing are in unprecedented upheaval, even for a normally volatile industry. Technological changes offer exciting new opportunities and techniques, accompanied by the risk of massive job loss. In the print world, four or five occupations are jostling each other to be the occupation that does not go extinct.

So far, the ISPs seem to be winning. Have you ever noticed? Internet Service Providers sell the online resources as a free all-you-can-eat buffet  -- once you pay their steep monthly cover charge, on which their profits run an estimated 50 to 95 percent. But they rarely pay anything towards producing that buffet, beyond their own company websites.

What they are actually selling is connectivity. But marketing promises about all the goodies available on the Web only reinforce the public impression that all Publicly Available Materials (PAM) -- that is, anything not behind a paywall -- may be reproduced freely.


In early days, the Internet was sometimes called, "The library on your desk". Cannibalizing that library is one way to populate websites with continuously fresh material. Publishers are trying to minimize costs and maximize profits by re-using every scrap of text they have, aggregating, disaggregating, and re-purposing material.

Apart from the ideologues in the business (such as Rupert Murdoch or Conrad Black) publishers are sticking to commercial packages and concentrating on how many ways they can package those.

But whenever a product is used for something other than its own worth -- as in the publisher/bookseller battle over E-book prices, where the real goal is for the bookseller to sell E-book readers -- then the product itself loses value. This is often the case in marketing.

Payment for periodical writing (newspapers and magazines) in Canada has plummeted, from as much as $1500 for a thousand well-chosen words, to, well, free. The largest online purchaser of writing, Demand, pays $15 for an information piece that length. Fifteen dollars! And most publishers are demanding all rights for print and online media, as well as archiving.

Conversely, writers are seeking ways to survive without publishers. Writers have had to do for themselves (or pay for) many of the services publishers used to provide, such as editing, indexing, and most of all, promotion. No wonder self-publishing sounds more and more attractive to many, if only for self-defence.

In addition, the average shelf life of a book these days is three to six months -- hardly long enough to find its audience. The Writers' Union now has a Print On Demand (POD) service called Phoenix Books, so that writers can reprint their own books to sell at readings and events.

Disintermediation also puts at risk other occupations (and businesses) that might not spring to mind right away, such as booksellers and librarians. When all the books are e-books, no one will need to browse in a book boutique, or visit a hushed hall among the stacks.

Let's face it: the future is digital. Although they have some surprisingly sophisticated features, books are low tech. Profligate use of paper is environmentally unfriendly. The publishing industry has come to the brink of ruin more than once because of its precarious business model of paying for shipping, warehousing, and returns.

Apart from books as art objects, paper's time has passed. Paperbacks will be for poor people and collectors, while those who can afford to carry smaller devices will use e-book readers.

Let us now try a new hymn, #86  Blessed spirit of my life

Some artists like to believe their work will be their legacy. Emily Dickinson's dresser full of secret poems brought her post-mortem fame. Folklorist Edith Fowke pays part of The Writers' Union's bills every year, although she died in 1996. Her will left TWUC the royalties for her volumes of collected Canadian folklore. 

However, while they are alive, creative people do need to pay for bread and shelter. Some hold day jobs. Some marry supportive spouses. I'm fortunate. While fees for writers have dropped, demand for editors has increased. Funny correlation, eh? 

Some 600,000 knowledge workers find employment in Canada's very significant cultural industry, currently valued at $46 billion a year. Cultural workers tend to earn less than workers in other industries, but report more job satisfaction.

The foundation of the publishing industry rests on writers, who earn an average $22,000 a year from their writing (although apparently some textbook writers can earn $60-80,000 a year). Everyone above them in the pyramid earns more.  Most of the other people in the business have regular paycheques, and benefits such as pension plans, and -- until recently -- some job security. 

Writers have had to fend for ourselves in the great jostling match. Author Heather Robertson spearheaded two decade-long lawsuits over electronic rights, and won sizeable settlements -- one of which was paid out last year, and one of which is in the logistics phase.  Writers are also banding together in co-ops, collectives, and even the Canadian Freelance Union (CFU, for short) to protect their income.

I am very familiar with some of these organizations, especially one collective.

Way back in the early 1980s, when I wrote a national column on women's issues, I ran into a professor in women's studies who just gushed over me. "I love your work so much," she said, "I've created an entire course pack full of your columns." That is, she had the university bookstore copy my columns wholesale. Seeing the look on my face, she added quickly, "It's all right. I got permission from the magazine."

"Actually," I said, "the rights still belong to me. Next time, could you please contact me directly?" I gave her my business card. She stared at it, puzzled. "Why is your name spelled wrong on your card?" she asked. Sure enough, that professor (who was a delightful woman and eventually became a good friend)  not only reproduced my work without permission, she'd spelled my name wrong on every article. 

I felt ripped off. I felt worse than ripped off -- I felt violated, and not for the first or last time. And I wondered why a university professor didn't understand the basic concepts of copyright.

© = cash

Economic rights give the copyright holder exclusive right to reproduce and distribute, and to authorize reproduction and distribution (even for free);

© = credit

Moral rights include the right to a credit every time the work is used, and the right to refuse to allow your work to be used in way that undermines the integrity of the work.

 

© =control

The copyright holder has the exclusive right to reproduce and authorize reproduction, public performance, publication, adaptation, translation and to communicate to the public by telecommunication (eg, the Internet). 

So widespread was the use of magazine articles that writers' organizations lobbied to change the Copyright Act, to allow for collectives to collect royalties on photocopies. The print collective, Cancopy, began in 1988, and changed its name to Access Copyright ten or twelve years ago.

On average, a creator who affiliated with Access Copyright at the beginning, and collected only the repertoire payment, would have received more than $10,000 over the past 20 years, mostly for allowing educators to reproduce their work for classroom use. Coincidentally, Access now has more than 10,000 creator affiliates in English Canada. (Quebec writers usually affiliate with Copibec.) 

I was elected to the Access Copyright Board in 2004, so at this point, I've served on the Board for six years. In 2008, the peak year, Access collected $35 million in license fees and distributed most of that money to the rightsholders as royalties. Revenues have dropped since then, as I'll discuss in moment.

But there are obvious hazards to a business based on photocopying, in the Age of Digitization. With an eye to creating a permanent structure, I was point person in setting up the Access Copyright Foundation, with an endowment we expect to reach $5 million, and a mandate to distribute grants annually to small publishers and individual creators.  Last year, the foundation distributed about $300,000 to about 120 Canadian creators and small publishers.    

The conundrum of intellectual "property"

Now, people usually have one of two reactions to the word "copyright". Either their eyes glaze over, or they have very strong opinions on the subject.

Some people object to corporate domination of music and software, which often seem much too expensive for what they offer ($25 for a 25-cent CD? Really?) They say things like, "The artist doesn't see a cent of the money anyway." Others say that every piece of writing is based on the writing that went before, which IMO is a) untrue and b) irrelevant.

Some say they are more interested in authenticity than authority, and are not willing to pay for somebody's "big name" appeal. Others really like homemade culture; in fact, we are so inundated with electronic culture that getting together to make music with friends can be a subversive consumer act.

Then there are the ideological arguments. "Property is theft" was a popular slogan in the 1960s.  I haven't heard it much lately.  Oddly enough, the most vocal advocates of the idea that intellectual property is theft, are lawyers such as Michael Geist and Howard Knopf. Knopf has a blog, and Geist has weekly columns in major media, a blog, and a major platform on Facebook.

Remember that each nation has its own copyright code. Canada is under tremendous pressure right now to bring its copyright law into compliance with US law.

"Fair use" in the US permits a much wider range of copying than Canada currently permits, including incidental copying for educational purposes. The Canadian equivalent is "fair dealing", which was only a defence to charges of copyright infringement.

Then, a 2004 Supreme Court decision converted the enumerated (six) defences to infringement into what the Court dubbed "users' rights" -- a legal concept found nowhere else in the world.

Encouraged by the CCH decision, in 2004 the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada (CMEC) announced they would no longer pay to license works photocopied in primary education (K-12).

Access Copyright took them to the Copyright Board -- a quasi-judicial body created to arbitrate between creators' collectives and consumers -- which examined the evidence both sides presented and then ruled that, altogether, schools across Canada generate about 250 million unauthorized photocopies per year -- a quarter of a billion -- and had decreased their textbook purchases by about a million copies over four years, as a result.

Let's say that again: the vast number of photocopies correlated directly with a serious drop in textbook sales. 

CMEC  appealed the Copyright Board's decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal. Access won. CMEC appealed again. We go before the Supreme Court of Canada on December 7.

Meanwhile, the AUCC (Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada) kept shrugging off Access' requests to meet in order to re-negotiate the rate for photocopying at post-secondary institutions. In March, Access finally filed an action against them too, at the Copyright Board, much to the universities' outrage. In examining why negotiations broke down, the Copyright Board found that "it takes two to tango, and the AUCC would not even come to the dance floor."

The universities were influenced by academics like Michael Geist (U of Ottawa) and library professor Sam Trosow (U of Western Ontario). Geist in particular has published years of columns full of the sort of statements that a lawyer might advance in arguing a lawsuit against accepting any costs or legalities using other people's work.

However, as author John Degen points out in his blog, the Copyright Board for one has rejected those arguments.

"I only hope it is increasingly clear to Canada's post-secondary education and library sectors," he wrote, "that they've been led down a highly theoretical garden path of free culture at the cost of a lot of goodwill and good faith agreement with their traditional partners -- Canada's creators and publishers -- not to mention the cost of a lot of time, effort and resources better spent, well, educating."

Geist has said in his blog that the doctrine of "fair dealing" includes reproducing up to 10 percent of a work, without permission or compensation.

Nothing in legislation or case law supports this claim, except perhaps squatter's rights. Yet, the Canadian Association of University Teacher's guide to copying urges individual professors to push the boundaries as far as they can. I guess they'll know they've gone too far when they get sued.

Of course, the biggest factor in this scenario is that last year, the Harper government introduced a new Copyright Act that suddenly and arbitrarily added "education" as an exception to copyright (at the personal direction of the Prime Minister, we're told). The Bill died on the Order Paper when the country went to election, but we expect the Harperites to re-introduce it in the fall.

Evidently the Americans are demanding that Canada bring its copyright act into complicance with theirs -- which some of us find ironic, considering the history.

Ah but, you may say, can a business built on photocopying adapt to the digital world of the future?  Sharing documents online or through Intranets is becoming standard practice in education.

Well, Access Copyright offers a license for scanning and uploading to an intranet too.  As a company whose business is based on databases, Access had a headstart with cyberspace, with projects such as:

-- pioneering universal Onix software so that RROs (Reprographic Rights Organizations) around the world can exchange information instantly, despite language and system differences.

-- through the RRO federation, supporting the International Standards Organization (ISO) in developing an International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI). This tiny bit of metadata is a virtual signature that a creator can attach to a work, and that will stay attached across online platforms.

-- hosting a Canadian publishers' directory and a creators' directory (two, in fact), and offering unlimited online memory to writers, publishers, and visual artists who are affiliates or members of Access Copyright's member groups.    

Oh my, I've presented a lot of complicated information in a short space of time. Let's have five minutes of open-eyed meditation, to allow time for digestion. Here's "Blue Boat Home", a hymn from our teal hymnal, sung by its composer, Peter Mayer.



Unitarians covenant to practice equity, justice and compassion in human relations. For me, as an editor, justice includes being scrupulous about getting permissions and giving credit, and helping Straight Goods' writers any way I can.

You may see me handing out postcards to mail this fall. The upcoming season promises to be a lively time for people who care about copyright. The Harper government seems determined to re-introduce the proposed Copyright Act, despite objections about Technical Protection Measures provisions.

The real tension will come when the government tries to adjust its new Copyright Bill to the Berne Convention (incorporated into the TRIPS agreement).

The problem with allowing "education" as an exception, which is what Harperites propose, is that would surely trigger a legal challenge under Berne's three-step test, which states that reproduction without permission may be allowable in:

1) certain special cases 

2) which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work, and 

3. do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder.

Very few copyright experts (besides Geist and Knopf) believe that excepting "education" from copyright law would constitute "certain special cases".

For those who agree that respecting copyright is an ethical choice, I have some suggestions:

DON'T post entire works online without permission, either in email or on the Web or Facebook.

DO post two or three paragraphs of a work, with a link back to the original. (That's my definition of "fair dealing", by the way -- drawing attention to a work with a sample.)

DO credit the source and the creator (if possible), along with the link -- for images as well as for text.

DON'T reprint newspaper, magazine or online articles in newsletters, without getting the authors' permission.

DO start from the premise that whoever's name is on the work, owns the work. Their permission counts more than anyone else's.

You might have noticed that I have juxtaposed nature and culture in this presentation. That's because I seem them as parallel ecosystems, both living expressions of our collective world view. We've recognized that plundering the earth is short-sighted. Can we recognize that culture needs to be sustained too?

Oh, I know, there are gray areas in knowing when copyright applies. Maybe we can agree that making a mix tape for a friend is okay, but that retailing that tape is not. Does that work? Without copyright, there will be no livelihood in working in culture.

At the very least, we should acknowledge, as Victorian essayist, reformer and art critic John Ruskin said, "A book worth reading is worth buying." (Thanks, Sheila;) )

I close this service by extinguishing the chalice with these words by
Barbara Cheatham

And now we take our leave.

Before we gather here again--
     may each of us bring happiness into another's life;
     may we each be surprised by the gifts that surround us;
     may each of us be enlivened by constant curiosity --
And may we remain together in spirit
     til the hour we meet again.

Please join me in singing Spirit of Life, Hymn #123.