5066 Closing Celebration
Planning Committee
Real Video of This Event is Available: Part I & Part II
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Read the script of this event!
As the sun set over Québec City, 2000 UUs gathered for a fond Canadian farewell. There was poignancy to the occasion because in 2003, when the UUA gathers for GA in Boston, the UUA and the CUC will be separate.
The Painchaud Family Trio, Québec folk musicians, opened the celebration with a rollicking, foot-stomping blaze of French Canadian fiddle music.
Next, we were welcomed by Dan Boyce and Sally Murphy, co-
directors of the 180-person GA choir. Boyce and Murphy assured us that the UU Musicians' Network (UUMN) would continue to work together, a fact symbolized by their joint role in this closing celebration. Together, they guided the choir through a moving rendition of "Ev'ry Time I feel the Spirit," a traditional spiritual arranged by William L. Dawson. All the choral pieces were accompanied by Sandra Hunt, Music Director of the Unitarian Church of Montreal. Hunt had also acted as rehearsal pianist for the performance.
Sue Boyce told a story of transformation. At a musicians' gathering in England, water brought from many sources, mixed in a glass bowl, and then stirred every day. Although the water appeared clear at first, after a few days duckweed started to grow. As the people regarded the duckweed with awe, they were
led to the realization that one can never be sure what one's contribution will bring about. The transformation of people is unpredictable, though working with others makes more likely and meaningful the transformations that will happen. Each may carry a spark that mingles with experiences of others to burst forth into green. When we mingle and share our beliefs publicly, we never know when the duckweed will be seen there on the surface, to be regarded with awe and gratitude.
Rev. Fred Small
The Rev. Fred Small led us in foot-stamping and hand-clapping enthusiasm as we all sang an American Spiritual, "I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom."
The GA choir rose to sing a French-Canadian folksong arranged by Donald Patriquin, "Ah, si mon moine voulait danser." A young lady dreams of what inducements she might offer her sober monk (her confessor) to get him to dance. The French text contains a double meaning as "moine" can mean either a monk or a spinning top.
The Painchaud brothers returned with more clogging-and-stomping fiddle music. "Don't
worry about the words," the lead fiddler encouraged us, "It goes so fast many French speakers don't know what it says either." To the delight of the audience, after a few bars the fiddler switched hands. There followed a bewildering variety of unorthodox styles involving all four limbs in increasingly bizarre ways, all delivered with a wide grin and infectious vitality.
"That is indeed a hard act to follow," announced Sally Murphy as she directed the choir and soloist Kathy Rochon in a thoughtful song about the transforming power of love and connection, honoring the "Wood River" in Saskatchewan, and written by Canadian prairie musicians, Connie Kaldor and Willi Zwozdesky. "The little Wood River knows that it goes to nowhere, but that doesn't stop it going, or those willows growing, or all of the lovers showing their hearts to each other there. 'Cause the heart is bigger than trouble, and the heart is bigger than doubt, but the heart sometimes needs a little help to figure that out."
The Rev. Barbara Fast took up the themes of transformations and the dreams that are deep in the heart. She began from the lectern with a description of a visit to Israel, a land full of diversity where no one really wants to
be transformed. When she quietly moved from the lectern to a spotlight at the front of the stage and donned a simple white shawl, the audience sat riveted as she wove a story of a woman like herself listening to a man named Jesus talking to a crowd on a hilltop. The story might almost have been of a miracle of loaves and fishes that fed thousands, but it was really about a greater miracle that transformed first her heart and then the crowd. She described how "He knew I was hiding the bread and he loved me anyway, and he gave me this piece of bread and asked nothing of me. And I believe it was a breath of God, not the breeze, as we each reached into our hiding places and shared with each other that which we keep in the hidden places. And the story will say there were seven baskets left over, but there was much more. It wasn't the miracle I expected but it was a miracle inside me anyway." Finally, Fast turned to us and asked "Have you been fed and have you fed others? As you gather your baggage and go home the question will go with you: what are you called to do in the days ahead for yourself and for each other, for the world and those who will follow?"
The choir, inspired by this moving story, responded with a song entitled "We Rise Again," by Leon Dubinsky and Lydia Adams: "We rise again in the faces of our children."
Matty Hartgering presented a youth perspective. We live by our connections, he told us.
We learn to love intensely for a weekend and then say goodbye, to live life unafraid, to be willing to go into the world seeking love, receiving love, and sharing love.
The choir sang quietly "You Are the New day" by John David and Peter Knight. "I will love you more than me and more than yesterday, if you can but prove to me you are the new day. When I lay me down at night knowing we must pay, thoughts occur that this night - might stay yesterday."
Small sang one of his own songs: "Everything Possible," with the congregation joining in on the chorus.
UUA President
William SinkfordIn the grand and dramatic style of the Academy Awards, Linda Lu Schulz announced the three finalists in the contest to choose a logo for the 2003 GA in Boston: Judy Wilburn, Douglas Morgan Strong, and Brent Mitchell. "Now, the envelope please! (It was safely stored overnight in the mini bar of my hotel room.) And the winner is: Brent Mitchell of First UU Society of Newburyport, MA, who cannot be here because he is busy chaperoning his children's dance."
UUA President the Rev. William Sinkford offered reflections and a benediction. "Dream with me and let our dreams point the way. Dream with me. Dream of a UU in the center of the conversations in the public square. Dream with me. Dream with me of a faith where RE is a lifelong endeavor offered to thousands who are yearning for what we have found here; of a UU that knows it must combine spiritual development for individuals with a life of service for justice. Dream with me. Dream with me of becoming an antiracist multicultural community. Dream with me. Dream of the young children who will be able to say: I am proud this is my church."
The choral dismissal was by Rene Clausen. "Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it."
Small led us in a song of change, transformation, and challenge, by Ruth Pelham: "We will sing this song for the turning of the world, that we may turn as one. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of the turning."
Finally, the Painchaud Family Trio led us out of the hall to the Closing Dance and our last evening in Québec. Au revoir.
Credits:
Reporter: Mike McNaughton; formatted for the web by Elena Davidson.
- Dan Boyce, minister of music emeritus of Birmingham MI Unitarian Church, Bloomfield Hills, and co-director
- Sue Boyce, member of Birmingham MI Unitarian church, UUMN liaison for the heartland district
- The Rev. Barbara Fast, association minister Unitarian church in Westport, CT
- Matty Hartgering, from Unitarian Church of Evanston, IL
- Sandra Hunt, accompanist for the GA choir and director of music of the Unitarian Church of Montréal where she is an active performer and teacher
- Sally Braswell Murphy, music educator in Victoria BC, music director of the First Unitarian church of Victoria for nine years;
- Painchaud Family Trio, renowned Québeçois folk musicians
- Linda Lu Schulz is district coordinator for GA in Boston
- The Rev. William G. Sinkford, president of the UUA
- The Rev. Fred Small, singer songwriter and minister First Church Unitarian, Littleton MA
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