In the meantime, I've been working on the songs that I want the UU congregation to sing during the June 24th Worship Service than I'm leading. I was thinking that it might be fun to sing a variation on "Light is Returning," with the re-worked verse for the Summe Solstice:
Dark is returning
Even though this is the brightest hour.
Nobody can hold back the dusk.
I know that I would laugh, but I think most folks would be unfamiliar with the more regular lyrics of the song to get the joke. And in any case, the normal lryics include the worisome phrase "Earth Mother is calling her children home." What the heck does that mean, any way: Are we as pagans supposed to take the role of children? If we're on the planet earth, how can we have left it to be called home? I've settled on part of the song, "Circles," which has the equally worrisome phrase, "We are the children of the Lord and the Lady." I've cut that part out for the service, but still there's that cognative dissonance of being an actuated adult singing about one's relationship between one's self and diety as if it were a chapter on CHILD-PARENT interactions from "I'm OK; You're OK."
I think share Phillip Pullman's attitudes about religion being something that speaks to one as a child and as an adult instead of something that requires that one regress to (or stagnate in) a child's development. Yes, mystery and humor are important elements of religion, and I think one can achieve a pagan state of mystery and humor without confounding one's gods with one's parents or breaking out the fairy deely-bopper antennae.
Now, if I could only find some pagan songs that weren't jejune. I guess I'll have to wait for a pagan Handel or Bach.
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