Posts
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Yes, it looks better
Since yesterday, I’ve cleaned up the site, simplifying the navigation and removing some of the gremlins from the texts. In case you’re interested, this is a Jekyll site, using the garden-variety Minima theme – changed to a serif typeface; whatever’s default on your machine – hosted locally. I’ve done something similar for my universalistchristian.org and universalistchristian.net sites. Jekyll can do much more, but I can’t – yet.
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Yes, it looks awful
Well, after dragging my feet for a year and a half, I’ve put up this ugly replacement site. The same content. No comments, alas. Also the attacks (who would want to attack me?) should end, and that was the bigger risk: to be highjacked into a bot farm.
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Transitioning this site to Jekyll
So, this site was hacked a couple of weeks ago, and security software installed since shows that outside forces try to log-in to the administration a few times a day.
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The bit of Jewish liturgy hidden in plain sight in the red hymnal
For reasons too long to go into now, I was tracking down threads in the Classic Reform tradition of Reform Jewish liturgics a couple of weeks ago. Suffice it to say that it was in parallel with some of the liturgical developments in Unitarian churches in the late nineteenth century. There were some friendships crossing the divide, or at least cooperative parterships. It’s hard to tell how far or wide without a deep dive.
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Universalist commendation for Hymns of the Spirit
I ran across the resolution of the 1937 Universalist General Convention, in Chicago, commending work and use of the Hymns of the Spirit.
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Sources of prayers: Theistic Prayer Book
A single prayer in the services before Hymns of the Spirit beginning “Almighty God grant that the words” comes from a book identified in the index as the Theistic Prayer Book. What is this and where did it come from?
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Sources of prayers: an English book from 1903
The services before the Hymns of the Spirit include prayers and litanies from various sources, including the 1903 Devotional Services for Public Worship, by John Hunter. He was the minister of King’s Weigh House Church, then a Congregational church, in Mayfair, London.
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Shorter communion service added
After about two years, I have added a new liturgical element: the shorter communion service, meant to be used “immediately after the Order of Morning Worship” and with the unusual option for “no distribution of the elements.”
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So, where do I get my own paper copy?
Hymns of the Spirit was, for the longest time, available from the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship for the princely sum of $5. But they’re all gone.
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Why this site?
So why did I set up the Hymns of the Spirit site?
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There is no new hymnal
Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly 2013 has just ended — I watched parts of it from home — and reflected that my first General Assembly was 20 years ago, in Charlotte. One of the big accomplishments then was releasing the brand new gray hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition.