Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words by Jan Smith (adapted)
Welcome,
Welcome to this sacred space,
Whatever path has brought you here,
Whatever load you carry,
Let us rest a while together.
May our hearts be open to accept what comes to us as a stranger,
May our minds be open to wonder at what we do not understand,
And may our spirits be nourished by our time here together,
Before we again take up our loads and set off upon our many paths,
Welcome!
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). Words by Kyle McDonald
Today I light our chalice for those who are embroiled in conflict, for they may not be able to burn with the serenity of compassion.
Today I light our chalice for the downtrodden and the hopeless, for they may not be able to light their own flames of joy.
Today I light our chalice for those who stand in defiance of tyranny, for they may not be able to light their own beacons of harmony.
Today I light our chalice for the innocent and the hungry, for they may not be able to light their own fires of warmth.
Today I light our chalice in Peace.
Opening Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love,
be with us as we gather for worship,
each in our own place.
Help us to feel a sense of community,
even though we are physically apart.
Help us to care for each other,
in this world in which Covid has not yet gone away,
and the clouds of war and climate change overshadow us.
May we keep in touch however we can,
and help each other, however we may.
May we be grateful for the freedoms we have
and respect the wishes of others.
May we hold in our hearts all those
who are grieving, lost, alone,
suffering in any way,
Amen
Reading Serenity, Part One, from Inner Beauty: A Book of Virtues by the Brahma Kumaris (adapted)
Serenity is depth. It is when the energy of thought, so often dissipated by expression through the senses, is directed deep within the mind. It is when seeing with the eyes stops and seeing with the mind’s eye begins; it is when hearing with the ears stops and hearing with the inner ear begins; it is when speaking with the mouth stops and communication through thought begins; it is when touching with the hands stops and touching with feelings begins. No serenity is existing with a struggle on the surface and never touching the depths.
Why is serenity important? Because the experience of life through the senses is one of tremendous instability. The messages brought to us from life above the water are changing constantly and at great speed. Sometimes we are exposed to pleasure, but as often to pain. And sometimes the messages are conflicting. There is no system in the world, no fixed dose of good or bad experience. We’ll just never quite know what the day holds.
Alternative Lord’s Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love, here and everywhere,
May we be aware of your presence in our lives.
May our world be blessed.
May our daily needs be met,
And may our shortcomings be forgiven,
As we forgive those of others.
Give us the strength to resist wrong-doing,
The inspiration and guidance to do right,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
We are your hands in the world; help us to grow.
May we have compassion for all living beings,
And receive whatever life brings,
With courage and trust.
Amen
Reading Serenity, Part Two, from Inner Beauty: A Book of Virtues by the Brahma Kumaris (adapted)
The experience of life ‘under water’ is quite different. It is an experience which has its own form completely and can be utterly distinct from what life appears to be offering. And yet the deep pleasure gained from living it can nourish our response to everything that does happen on the surface. Not in any obvious way. If we’ve discovered a sudden understanding of love, we’re not going to splash it on our life, but it will bring a natural quietness and depth to our day.
As with all virtues, there is a superficial form of serenity and a real form. Faces can have a kind of bland serenity and expression of stillness and a certain beauty, and we say, “What a serene face she has!”. But this can just denote an absence of deep thought. The real sign of serenity is not to be seen so much on the face as in the eyes. The smoothness of faces is constantly under threat, but eyes say everything.
In fact, one of the better proofs of serenity is when the face is emotionally weather-beaten, but the eyes retain depth and stillness. No-one can avoid being tossed about by life, but to be ‘tossed’ and yet still be able to ‘dive’ and touch your own strength, this shows only in the eyes. When a stone is thrown into such a person’s life – a criticism, a problem, a challenge – only the surface is rippled. Nothing more. Even throw a knife and the impact is quite quickly absorbed, the water calm again.
Prayer The Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr
God grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the Wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time.
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as he did, this sinful world as it is,
Not as I would like it.
Trusting that he will make all things right,
If I surrender to his will.
That I may be reasonably happy in this world
And supremely happy in the next.
Amen
Reading Contemplative Prayer by Peter J. Roberts, from With Heart and Mind
Very often our experience of prayer may be that of sitting quietly with others while a worship leader speaks or reads out his or her form of prayer. That form may include some element of petitionary prayer, if not on behalf of our needs, then for the needs of others, asking some outside power to act as we think to be right. Or it may agnostically avoid the presumption of any real deity and instead consist of a series of aspirations concerning ourselves and our world.
Sitting, listening, perhaps agreeing with the words spoken, or just as likely having reservations about their form or content, our ‘prayer’ becomes limited to that of an exercise in critical comprehension between ourselves and the worship leader. It becomes a closed circuit of human thought and intention.
In contemplative prayer, although forms of words may be used as an aid to quietening the mind, it is essentially an opportunity to close down our mechanical faculties, even our awareness of others being present. Instead, we relax ourselves both physically and mentally; we let things go that would otherwise preoccupy us. In such a way we can empty ourselves to make some room for the spirit to move within us and inform us of what we really need to know.
Other than very consciously waiting, listening and sensing, we do not make any call, invoke any presence, or otherwise seek to get in the way. In Soto Zen Buddhism, there is the requirement of “just sitting”. In contemplative prayer, we need to “just listen”.
Time of Stillness and Reflection words by Peter J. Roberts
We have come together in a time of reflection.
So we relax our bodies and our breathing.
Breathe easily, slowly, deeply, and ride the sensation of simply breathing.
We are here and now, letting go of the thoughts
that we let preoccupy us so much,
thinking not of what happened earlier,
or of what might happen later,
be here, now, in body, mind and spirit – nowhere else.
with relaxed breathing, consciously let all else fall away,
and open ourselves to this time
of peace and quiet in the silence.
Let the silence enter in,
and the spirit of holy peace and wisdom will move throughout
to heal, to enlighten, to strengthen us.
With every fresh intake of breath, let some more
of our present tiredness and negativity be dispersed.
[silence]
Blessed be that divine presence which gives us life
in a beautiful world and a wondrous universe.
May our brief lives be such as to add
to that beauty and wonder,
thereby glorifying the Divine Unity
that creates, sustains and transforms all beings eternally.
So may it be, Amen
Musical Interlude: I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Serenity
Serenity. Perhaps one of the most elusive of all virtues, in this time, in this age of humankind. It is so easy to allow ourselves, our emotions, to be swayed by outside events, by our own emotions or the emotions of others, and never find the quiet centre of serenity which alone leads to inner peace.
I believe it is a natural (but perhaps regrettable) human tendency to spend far too much time in a state of anxiety, worrying about future events, or waiting for them to happen. And goodness me! Doesn’t there seem to be a LOT to worry about, whether on our own behalf or on that of others? Perhaps someone we love is ill, or we are concerned about our own health, or we are assaulted by all the bad news in the world and feel overwhelmed with concerns about the future of society, the future of our planet. Or our anxiety may be because we are waiting for something to happen: exam results, on which our entire future, or the future of our child / grandchild, seems to hang; or we have an operation coming up, which we know is necessary, yet we are dreading it just the same; or we have had a job interview, and are praying that it has gone well. It may even be about a long-anticipated happy event, such as the birth of a longed-for child. All these things can make us anxious, worried, not at all serene.
And it may be that we cannot entirely help it. In recent times, scientific research has revealed that many of us have a genetic disposition towards worry and anxiety. The medical website Healthline.com suggests that the so-called “worry gene” is not a myth, but a reality. They report, “While it seems that a number of factors can put you at risk for developing anxiety disorders, research suggests that anxiety is hereditary, at least in part.”
Of course, like I said, everyone feels anxious sometimes. But for those who suffer from full-blown anxiety, it can be debilitating, as they worry about various dark, amorphous futures. Healthline suggests that, “most anxiety disorders are chronic, meaning they never truly disappear. However, there are lots of effective treatment options out there for anxiety disorders. Through therapy, lifestyle change, and perhaps medication, you can learn to cope better so that you can manage your disorder.”
They also suggest that sharing our anxiety with someone, whether that is a therapist or a friend or a family member, can be beneficial. I known from my own limited experience with anxiety that it really does help to talk about it. So perhaps the best thing we can do for our anxious friends is to be willing to sit alongside them, being ready to listen with the ears of our hearts, as the Brahma Kumaris suggest, without judgement, and without trying to fix whatever the problem is. In other words, by showing compassion.
Which is not always easy. As Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön once wrote, “In cultivating compassion, we draw from the wholeness of our experience – our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognise our shared humanity.”
In our own case, serenity has to be cultivated. In his book, Into the Silent Land, Martin Laird explains the difference between anxiety and serenity: our thoughts and feelings are like the weather, but there is something deeper within, which is not affected by changes in that weather, that is deep, and luminous, and aware. Laird refers to it as a mountain, Mount Zion. Which is that of God within each of us.
I was reminded of this a few weeks ago, when I was driving back home after visiting my parents. Ahead of me was a dramatic sky, with one break in the dark, rain-filled clouds, through which the sky above showed pure and blue, unchanged by the weather below. Seeing that bright blue sky behind those menacing clouds helped me to understand that although our thoughts, moods, and feelings may change from day to day, or even from moment to moment, there is a deep, peaceful, sky-blue awareness behind and above them, into which we can sink, if we just have the patience to sit in silence for a while, as Peter Roberts advises in our third reading, and allow our passing emotions to do just that – pass by.
Which is not easy by any means – the chattering monkeys are loud and clear, the inner video is always there, ready to seduce our attention away from the present moment, the present blessing. Yet fleeting moments of inner peace are possible, and the knowledge that this deeper, calmer centre is there may help us in our everyday lives.
The 19th century Austrian writer, Adalbert Stifter, once wrote, “Only the calm within ourselves lets us drift carefree to new shores.” And I believe he’s right, because he included the little word “carefree”. We are able to reach new shores under stress (although we may rather be paddling frantically rather than drifting) but I do agree that in order to be carefree, and to fully open ourselves to the possibility of “new shores”, calm within, inner serenity, does help. A lot.
Yet it is not nearly as easy to cultivate as it is to write about – because it involves living in the present and choosing to let go of perfectionism, and joyless striving, and allow ourselves to… yes, drift. Which is not something that comes naturally to many of us (me included!). And if we try to “work at” achieving calm within, guess what? We’re doing it wrong. Inner calm, inner serenity, can only come when we let go of conscious effort and allow ourselves to be at rest. To sit in the silence, to rest our hearts and souls. Being content to let go, to not achieve, to trust.
All these concepts are so foreign to most of us – it seems far more natural to throw our whole selves into the effort to achieving something. Many of us find it difficult to abdicate control, to allow things to turn out as they will, without our volition. Which is perhaps why the first few lines of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer are so well known, so well loved: “God grant me the Serenity / To accept the things I cannot change, /Courage to change the things I can, / And the Wisdom to know the difference.” So easy to pray, so hard to do.
But I find it fascinating that, when we do manage to do this, matters turn out well, as often as not. Which reminds me of Benjamin Hoff’s wonderful book, The Tao of Pooh. In which he explains the principles of Taoism through the characters and actions (or non-actions) of Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Rabbit and the other inhabitants of A.A. Milne’s The World of Pooh. When I began my spiritual journey, I was far more of a Tigger – bouncing around enthusiastically, rushing into things with little reflection; or like Rabbit, who was too clever for his own good. It has taken years and long practice to begin to learn to trust, to let go, like Pooh. But when I manage it, when I manage to access some inner serenity, an inner calm does descend, and I am enabled to “drift carefree to new shores.”
I truly believe that the quality of inner calm, inner serenity, is a gift from the Divine. Brené Brown calls it a “super-power”. She defines calm as, “creating perspective and mindfulness while managing emotional reactivity.”
“Creating perspective and mindfulness while managing emotional reactivity”. This may not be so much of a spiritual definition, but it is surely a helpful one. Because remaining calm in an anxious situation can help to defuse the anxiety, whereas a panicked response will escalate it. It can be about something as simple as counting to ten before responding. It’s about not believing every Facebook or Instagram or TikTok post we see and instantly reacting to it, but rather about going to the source and discovering the true story. Which precious few people seem to do, these days.
My favourite advice of Brené’s about calm is the two questions she has learned to ask herself before responding to any situation:
1 Do I have enough information to freak out?
2 Even if the answer to question 1 is ‘yes’, Will freaking out help?
She says, “The answer is always, always ‘no’”.
So let us try to cultivate inner calm, inner serenity, through meditation, contemplative prayer, journalling, taking walks in nature – whatever works for us. Our souls will thank us for it and our friends will too, as they will be able to turn to us in times of trouble.
May it be so, Amen
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we learn to cultivate inner serenity,
so that we are not buffeted by the changeable weather
that makes up our lives,
and are able to live from this precious source,
so that we are able to help others.
May we share the love we feel,
may we look out for each other,
sharing our joys and our sorrows,
and may we keep up our hearts,
being grateful for the many blessings in our lives,
now and in the days to come, Amen
Postlude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi