Arthur Foote II, minister for 25 years of Unity Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, carried forth in our time the family heritage of ministry through music. His uncle, Arthur Foote, a noted musician, was a composer, a teacher, and a founder of the American Guild of Organists. His father, Henry Wilder Foote, was both a minister and a hymnologist. He wrote the classic study, Three Centuries of American Hymnody, as well as the definitive studies of both Unitarian and Universalist Hymn Writers and Hymns. With good reason, he eminently served as co-editor of a precious work entitled Hymns of the Spirit, first published in 1937. His son, Arthur II, served as Chairman of the Unitarian Universalist Hymnbook Commission, which produced the sequel volume, Hymns for the Celebration of Life, in 1964.

In addition to acknowledging the Foote family’s exceptional contribution to church music, let us likewise note their wider contribution to worship as an art by focusing on some examples of the literature of meditation composed by Arthur Foote II, who in his retirement became a potter.

We would open our ears to all the varied music of the world: the melodies of human voices, the swelling harmonies of many instruments, and all the music not made by us: the songs of wind and bird, the thunder’s tympani the rhythms of running water.

O You who are the heartbeat of life, I would recognize and cherish the wonder of each new day. Let me learn to be fully alive and alert, to be wholly and solely myself when I absently turn away from love, from beauty, from human need, and grow preoccupied with trivial concerns and superficial wants, let something always awaken me to recognition of the depth and wonder of this reality that surrounds me, that beckons to me. When I am agitated or anxious, annoyed or distracted, let me remember the way back to inner quiet and serenity.

Every day of my life I live beholden to others.

I am beholden to those who have been guardians of the human heritage of knowledge and wisdom, stewards of the truths, beauties, and goodnesses which are our human legacy: my life is wondrously enhanced by those who have gone before.

I am beholden to creative spirits—wordsmiths, smearers of pigment, chiselers of marble, midwives of music—all who have opened my eyes and ears to beauty; and to those thinkers of deep thoughts, who have looked beyond the known into the unknown: their creations and wisdom guide my way.

Let this be my prayer: that the people of Earth shall be one at last; that I may be part of the cure, not part of the world’s sickness; one who seeks true community, true meeting; that I may love excellence, and hate shoddiness, duties shirked, and jobs half-done; that I may remember that they are many who hunger for warm rice, for milk and cheese, even a crust of stale bread.