"Those Words"Every Sunday, I say certain words to end the Pastoral Prayer and the sermon, and there's something of a story associated with each one. More than one person in the church has asked me about "those words" -- so I guess as our first year together draws to a close, it's a good time for me to take this opportunity to look into what I'm saying when I say those words and why I'm saying them.
When I first started preaching, around 20 years ago, I used "So might this be. Amen" as the closing words to my sermons. I did this until, early in my first ministry, a parishioner came to me and expressed strong discomfort with hearing "amen" every Sunday. This parishioner associated "amen" with Christianity and was unhappy with its addition to worship. Apparently, my predecessor had never used the word in this historically humanist congregation. I was using it in its traditional sense of affirmation; its origin in Greek means "truth."
While I sympathized with my parishioner's spiritual discomfort, I was not willing to censor my preaching, so I worked out a compromise -- I would add "Ashe" to my closing (pronounced "ashay"). As I explained to my congregant at that time, ashe is a word from the African Yoruba culture, familiar to many in New Orleans Creole/voodoo culture. In one sense, it refers to the true essence or nature of a person or thing; capitalized, it points to the nature of the Universe/God, which is health and wholeness. But as used popularly, it serves much the same purpose as "amen" -- it can mean "it is so" or "it's the truth" or even, colloquially, "yeah, you right." My parishioner was pleased with its pagan, Afrocentric origin, and I was pleased to be able to subtly give a shout-out to my beloved New Orleans. I then began ending my sermons with "So might this be. Amen and Ashe."
Within a few years of serving that congregation, it became clear to me how important the Jewish strand of our living tradition was to the members. The founding family was Jewish in heritage, and for nearly 50 years, the church had a Passover seder supper that was much loved. I decided it would be a good idea to honor that part of the spiritual life of the congregation, and added "shalom" to my closing words. I should add here that "amen" is part of the Jewish liturgical tradition as well, pronounced slightly differently (more as "ah-main"), but I chose "shalom" as being more recognizably and overtly Jewish. "Shalom" is often translated as simply "peace" but in reality its meaning is closer to "ashe" -- it is understood to mean health and wholeness and holiness as well as peace. So at that time, my sermons started ending, "Amen -- Ashe -- Shalom."
In 1998, I took a sabbatical from that congregation and spent time in India with a group sponsored by the UU Holdeen India Program. On my return, I wanted to honor what I had learned about the best of the Hindu tradition by adding "Namaste" to my closing. In Hindi, "namaste" means simply "bowing to you" but is traditionally understood as "the divine in me bows to the divine in you." From then on, I closed my sermons with "Amen -- Ashe -- Shalom -- Namaste."
It didn't take long until some Celtic-inspired pagans in my congregation asked me to include their preferred blessing words, "Blessed be." Well, I had no problem with that; while my own paganism has always been more voodoo-flavored than Celtic, I was glad to add these words to the end of my closing and thus make these parishioners feel more included.
More years passed, and September 11, 2001 arrived. I was appalled at the blatant and ugly anti-Muslim prejudice that swept our country in response to the attacks; in response, I inserted "Salaam" right after "Shalom" (to which it is linguistically related) to honor the true spirit of Islam. And so my list of sacred closing words was now complete and in its present form: Amen -- Ashe -- Shalom -- Salaam -- Namaste -- Blessed be!
And so here I am, 15 years after being ordained by this congregation and sent out to do ministry in the UU world, still saying all "those words." I say them to recognize and honor the varying spiritualities in our congregation, in our denomination, and in our world. I say them as a nod to my own evolution and experience as a UU minister. And I say them now because they are familiar and comfortable to me, and feel "right."
And now you know. I hope knowing what and the why and the how of them adds to your experience of worship.
Amen -- Ashe -- Shalom -- Salaam -- Namaste -- Blessed be!
