Continuously Creating Spirit: A Clarke Wells Reader

By Clarke Dewey Wells

This collection of Dr. Wells' writings includes selections from previously published works, as well as some new ones. His work ranges widely: religion, politics, poetry and the arts, the earth, social concerns, holiday reflections, the human condition and more.
Previously published works include "Sunshine and Rain at Once", a Skinner House Book, 1981 (Unitarian Universalist Association); material from "Banquet Prayers, Other Essays, Poems", copyright 1972 by Clarke Wells; "Both, Both My Girl," copyright 1975 by Clarke Dewey Wells, "The Strangeness of This Business, 1975 (Unitarian Universalist Association); "Ouch and Alleluia, a new book of essays, poems and a sermon on Sappho, copyright 1993 by Clarke Dewey Wells, "Past the Size of Dreaming, 30 selected poems and 6 essays, copyright 2005 by Clarke Dewey Wells. Selections included in "100 Meditations, Selections from Unitarian Universalist Meditation Manuals, ed. Kathleen Montgomery, Skinner House Books, 2000 and in "Singing the Living Tradition" (Beacon Press, Boston, The Unitarian Universalist Association, 1993)
The editor, Barbara Carlson is Dr. Wells' legally appointed representative following his death on November 8, 2006.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468558531

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Contents

Preface

I.   The Beloved Community

The Beloved Community

This Is The Liberal Church

Welcome Back To Your Church

New Member Welcome

Holy Vibes

Liturgy For A Lifetime

Be My Valentine

Empowering The Future

God/Spirit

Holy Breath*

The Otherness

Holy, Holy, Holy

Spirituality

What Is A Sacrament?

James Martineau’s Prayer

Declining The Recline

Atheism

The Laundry At Esalen

Social Justice

Censorship Of The

Pentagon Papers

Fair Play

(Capital Punishment)

The Gross

Yes, The Gross

National Product

Angela Davis,

Not Guilty

Ministry

The Best Ministers I Know

Truth Serum Bites Clergy

Ministers Are Not

Finished People

Twenty Years In The Ministry

Theodore Parker Ferris

Prayers

Pastoral Prayers

Prayers For Special Occasions

Opening Prayer For Ordination

II.   Beauty

Beauty

Flowers

Dance

Pro Prism

Love Poem In Old Age

Earth/Nature

Earth Day

And God Gave Man Dominion

Lime Tree

Saving Eden*

Pledges Of Allegiance

Holy Water

Edge

Echium Fastuosum

Noah’s Gift

Snow

Herring Run In Weymouth

God Of Autumn

Seasons

Coping With February

March Wind

Shakespeare’s April

File Under Autumn

October

Quatrain At Thanksgiving*

The Farmers Market

III.   Holidays

Christmas

The Season Of Christmas

Messiahs I Have Known

I Send These Gifts

Christmas And Liberals

You Be Glad At That Star

Easter

Ashes And Easter

Prayer At Easter

Sweet Jesus No

Rejoice/Laetare

Sine Nomine

Easter At Shiloh

New Year

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Happy, Healing New Year

Prayer At New Year

I Blow A Scottish Shofar

IV.   The Human Conditon

The Human Condition

Obedience

Betrayal

Discontent

Remove My Name

Ships That Pass In The Night

Alma Mater

Dictionary

Turn Round Right

Diving Deep

Conditions For Renewal

On The Firing Of Sports Analyst Jimmy The Greek

First Rule Of Diplomacy

A Price Tag For Being Human

Birthday

Ouch And Alleluia

What I’ve Got

Humor

Competents Anonymous

Homage To A Sperm

Mae West At All Saints And

All Souls

Flickaholia

The New England Mentality

The Reason To Write

God Save The Queen

With Apologies To Rupert Brooke

Quiz To Tell

If Your’re Dead

Palindrome

Grief And Healing

The Lastingness Of Grief

Harvest Is Adagio

Death And Dying

Death And Dying

Anne Sexton’s Suicide

Dignity Can Wait:

Hold My Hand

The Pity Of Burial In

Foreign Lands

Heroes

Festival In The Church

For Jla*

Joan Of Arc

The Battle Of Britain

Tennessee Williams’ Memoirs

Paradox And Ambiguity

The Magician

Alienation And Engagement

Sunday Morning

My Best Theology Teacher

Where We Lived

Getting Pumped Up

The Other Bethlehem

Ivory Tower Reality

Ambushed

The Theology Of Tv Commercials

On The Celebration Of Life

Parents

Letter To My Sons

Rite Of Passage

Down With Mother’s Day

Nantucket Island

Peace And War

When The War Drums Sound

Rolling The Dice Of War

On The First Gulf War

Generation Gap

Footnotes

CONTINUOUSLY CREATING SPIRIT

A CLARKE WELLS READER

Our world most often rewards tensionless conformity, timidity, entropic prudentiality, avoiding conflict and complexity and contradiction. But the divine creativity seeks the more abundant life, inviting us to take in the adventure of dear variety—not excluding it—to absorb differences, integrate diversities, entertain complexity, contain multitudes, to enlarge our capacity for ever wider ranges and depths of appreciation and understanding.

From a Eulogy delivered by Clarke Dewey Wells for his beloved friend, the Reverend Peter Raible, Seattle, Washington, June 6, 2004

PREFACE

The words of poet, essayist and preacher, Clarke Dewey Wells (1930-2006), have been read in Unitarian Universalist pulpits across this land and beyond. This new collection includes selections from previously published works, as well as some new ones.

Dr. Wells was a graduate of the University of Chicago and Meadville Lombard Theological School, where he served a semester as Minister in Residence (1992) and taught Poetry as Epiphany. He was a Shakespearean scholar who achieved his goal of seeing the complete Shakespeare canon on stage prior to his death in 2006. His work ranges widely: religion, politics, poetry and the arts, the earth, social concerns, the human condition, and more.

Witty, insightful, provocative, often profound, his work is a legacy to free religious thinkers from a man who loved life, loved the church, was devoted to the common good, and had great compassion for the human condition, along with his encompassing love of language and getting it down right.

Great appreciation to readers who made valuable editorial suggestions: Gabriele Langdon, Constance Huston, and Beth Holllingsworth. My thanks also to colleagues, including the Reverend Doctor Laurel Hallman, and the Reverends Mary Ann Macklin, Ralph Mero and Susanne Nazian, who encouraged that Clarke Wells’ work be made available to a wider readership.

Barbara Carlson, Editor

Previously published works include Sunshine and Rain at Once, a Skinner House Book, 1981 (Unitarian Universalist Association) including material from Banquet Prayers, Other Essays, Poems, copyright 1972 by Clarke Wells; Both, Both My Girl, copyright 1975 by Clarke Dewey Wells, The Strangeness of This Business, 1975 (Unitarian Universalist Association); Ouch and Alleluia, A new book of essays, poems and a sermon on Sappho, copyright 1993 by Clarke Dewey Wells, Past the Size of Dreaming, 30 selected poems and 6 essays, copyright 2005 by Clarke Dewey Wells. Selections included in 100 Meditations, Selections from Unitarian Universalist Meditation Manuals, ed. Kathleen Montgomery, Skinner House Books, 2000 and in Singing the Living Tradition (Beacon Press, Boston, The Unitarian Universalist Association, 1993).

I.   THE BELOVED COMMUNITY

Welcome to this house of continuity,

   sacred memories, aspirations, hope.

A place of anchorage, criterion, perspective;

   open to larger resources of mind and spirit,

Acknowledging mystery,

   reflecting a glory beyond our own devising.

A place of peace and deep quiet

   to invite the centering of our souls.

THE BELOVED COMMUNITY

This Is The Liberal Church

This is the liberal church: a place to go where you know you belong. Here the mind can move beyond the coercions that inevitably beset orthodoxies. Here the heart is free to extend to a larger love, unencumbered by dogma, race, country or class. Here hands can work for the cause of peace. Here the soul can open, stretch, discover, deepen, change and grow, always and continuously. Here the rights of conscience are guarded, out of belief in the fitness of diversity, the liberty to be different, out of eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the human mind. Here the glory on our planet earth is enjoyed and celebrated, not denied in the name of sin or spurious escapes to another world. Here humankind is nurtured, supported and blessed, not cursed, degraded, or despaired of. Here the faiths we live by are important enough to be examined against the tests of our experience, the canons of logic, the methods of science.

Here the church speaks out on the great moral issues of the day, fulfilling its prophetic role as an agent for transforming society into new realms of justice. Here you can enter fully into the religious mood without insult to reason or irrelevance to daily life. Here you can utilize, without reservation or cant, the resources of many traditions. Here you’re invited to be yourself—in joy, in sorrow, in the struggle of the deeper self to be born, in witnessing to ideals, in seeking and finding and serving.

This is a place to learn, to grow, to sing, to stand. This is a place to be a more authentic self. This is the place to encounter, reckon, judge, accept, and be accepted. This is the place to be challenged by new insight and be reminded of what you already know. This is the place to respond to a vision of holiness, all arts, and other depths. This is a place to be with others in co-creating with God. This is a place to provide conditions for the coursing of that Creativity that vivifies, heals, and makes all things new; a place to go where you know you belong—

This is the liberal church!

Welcome Back To Your Church

Welcome back to your church. I hope you use it—for worship, education, service, and fellowship. Here may you tap into the best resources of our religious heritage and a freeing liberal tradition. Here may you take part in mind-quickening thought, heart-opening concerns, soul-stretching liturgy. Here may you tie in with your history and with humanity’s struggling and dearest hopes. Here may you enjoy the companionship of a larger family in a larger house than any can separately have. Here may you give your voice resonance by joining it to others in singing, prayer, and purpose beyond the single self.

The church is to the single self what the belly of a guitar is to the single string. The single string unconnected, isolated, alone, is twangy, weak, and somewhat pitiful. When tied to a good frame, resonating with others, that single string becomes not a fourth sound but a star in Robert Browning’s words.

I must not urge you to attend church, although I’m tempted. I know the strength in numbers and the reinforcement people can give each other. Shared expectations have an intensity and duration—reverberations, overtones—not given to solitude.

Seriously, we come alive in groups. We shrivel without their dialectic demands. But God help us if these groups have no higher accounting than bowling scores or basket weaving. Our lives are trivialized unless kept under what Milton called the Great Taskmaster’s Eye, opening to the Infinite, engaged to serious reckoning, bound to ancient sources and to the Great Becoming.

Welcome back to your church!

New Member Welcome

New members and their integration into the life of the institution constitute the life blood of the liberal Church. So welcoming new members is a satisfying event. We experience continuity and strength for future years, the satisfactions of survival.

At the same time, any minister knows that not all new members will stick it out for the long haul. My hunch is about half who join our congregations drop out, the church having served a need no longer felt. It’s been said that Unitarian Universalism is for many a way station en route from Methodism to the golf course.

I think those most likely to pull out after a few months or a few years are new members who are especially excited about one or two aspects of their newly discovered Church: its social action program, its religious education approach, the style of a particular minister, those exhilarated by the theological freedom from narrow moralisms and creedal straitjackets, the ones who have found the pleasure that goes with being in a community that mirrors one’s own values.

But the ones who stick, the ones who become pillars, without whom the Church would not last for a generation, they are a different breed. They are not better people. They are not worse people. They are just different. They tend to be quieter. They are not as emotional or enamored or energetic, or if they are, the emotion is below the surface. They are not flaming liberals. Their eyes do not gleam.

These are not as idealistic as they could be. They do not expect the Church to solve their problems or change the world much. They carry long memories, do not demand, are tolerant of ambiguity, accepting differences, knowledgeable about limitations. They also zero in where they are needed. They usher a lot, worry about Church property, trim hedges, start endowments, water lawns. They work on the Church financial problems, not for one year or two, but decades. They are there in good times, giving out rather than consuming. They are there in bad times, mediating crises rather than causing them. They may take off on Easter; you’ll see them in church the low Sunday after.

As I look back on welcoming new members, my hopes have now little to do with numbers. I’ve served churches where we took in fewer than two a year and ones where over a hundred was par. What I look for on new member Sundays, what I hope for, regardless of how many join, is that we luck into a few churchmen and churchwomen, institutionalists who know what it takes to keep a church going, who join with their whole lives, who join for keeps.

Holy Vibes

Anybody who’s been in the theater knows about vibes and the power of an audience to influence positively or negatively, individual actors and the quality of a performance. Each of us knows how another person’s attitude can affect our own.

When I’ve talked to people about a sermon being a two-way street, a joint venture, a mutual communication, I usually get a