Musical Prelude Clouds by Elizabeth Hornby
Opening Words from the Sanskrit
Look to this day –
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
And realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action, the splendour of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point. I will be lighting my chalice for worship at 11.00 am on Sunday morning) Words by Joy Croft
As is our custom here, we light the chalice – and see!
The flame of truth burns bright,
fed by the vision of each of us,
rising from the heart of us all.
Let its light shine out as our lives shine out,
brightening the dark places of the world,
bringing wholeness and peace.
Opening Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love,
Be with us as we gather for worship,
Each in their 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 difficult time,
Keeping in touch however we can,
And helping each other,
However we may.
We hold in our hearts all those
Whose lives have been touched,
In whatever way,
By painful events, in their lives,
And in the wider world,
Of which we are all a part.
Amen
Reading from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
And an astronomer said, Master, what of Time?
And he answered:
You would measure time, the measureless and immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.
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 Maybe you have other plans by Bob Wightman from With Heart and Mind 2
I woke up early today, excited over all I get to do before the clock strikes midnight. I have responsibilities to fulfil today. I am important. My job is to choose what kind of day I am going to have.
Today I can complain because the weather is rainy, or I can be thankful that the grass is getting watered for free. Today I can feel sad that I don’t have more money, or I can be glad that my finances encourage me to plan my purchases wisely and guide me away from waste. Today I can grumble about my health, or I can rejoice that I am alive.
Today I can lament over all that my parents didn’t give me when I was growing up, or I can feel grateful that they allowed me to be born. Today I can cry because roses have thorns, or today I can celebrate that thorns have roses. Today I can mourn my lack of friends, or I can excitedly embark upon a quest to discover new relationships.
Today I can whine because I have to go to work, or I can shout for joy because I have a job to go to. Today I can complain because I have to go to school, or eagerly open my mind and fill it with new knowledge and understanding. Today I can murmur dejectedly because I have to do housework, or I can feel honoured because God has provided shelter for my mind, body and soul.
Today stretches ahead of me, waiting to be shaped. And here I am, the sculptor who gets to do the shaping. What today will be like is up to me. I get to choose what kind of day I will have!
Have a great day, my friend; or maybe you have other plans.
Prayer by Bob Wightman, from With Heart and Mind 2 (adapted)
Spirit of Life and Love,
Let us remember:
Those in our congregations and communities
who are lonely, and feel uncared for,
or who feel that they have been forgotten.
Those in our congregations and communities
who are ill, in hospital or at home.
Those who face great difficulties at work
or uncertainties as to their prospects.
As we face the future, let us pray for renewal
and an outpouring of our love and tolerance
in our congregations and wider communities.
We pray also for our trustees and management
of our congregations, as they seek to move
Unitarianism forward with a new vision and dedication.
Lastly, we pray that our denomination will flourish
for many years to come,
through the commitment of those who devote their lives
to the work of Unitarianism.
Amen
Reading Time and Eternity by David Monk from With Heart and Mind (adapted)
‘What time is it? At this point in my existence it is 8.25 pm on Sunday the 25th of June 2006. ‘What is time?’ – no answer. Time is something we formulate in our minds and measure with clocks, diaries and calendars.
Time is relative to the speed of light, it is not a universal constant, as Albert Einstein said. Looking at the sun, we see where it was about 8 minutes ago. There are visible stars in the night sky which no longer exist. Looking at Europe through a powerful telescope 65 light years out in space, I would be watching the Second World War – now! If I travelled out into space at thousands of miles a second for a few months and then returned to earth, everyone on earth would be several years older, and if I travelled at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) time would stand still. So, what is time?
It is something with meaning only in relation to our finite / temporal existence, whereas Ultimate Reality, or Being Itself (what we refer to as God) is beyond time, and when we are in union with God, so are we. ‘Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. (2 Peter 3, verse 8). In other words, there is no time with God – there is only the eternal NOW. Eternal does not mean ‘everlasting’ – an endless stretch of time – it is beyond time. God is not thousands of millions of years old. God is NOW…
To be in union with God is to be in the NOW. When we surrender our attachment to whom we ‘think’ we are, to whom we have been in the past and who we want to be, or who we fear we will be in the future, with all the anxiety-producing ‘if onlys’ and ‘what ifs’, we enter the NOW, a state of true spiritual freedom which opens the door to unconditional Love for ourselves and all beings.
Time of Stillness and Reflection Let us be still and listen by Sydney H. Knight, from Songs for Living
Let us be still and listen… listen for all the sounds around us…
The noise of passing traffic, the steps of passers-by, a distant train or a barking dog, an aeroplane overhead or someone working…
The wind in the leaves, the rattle of branches, the singing of birds, the patter of rain, the rustle of autumn leaves or the quiet of winter snow…
The creak of a chair, the tick of a clock, the sound of our own breathing, the beating of our own hearts…
Let us listen to the sounds within us, sounds known only to ourselves…
The unspoken noisiness of our own tumbling thoughts, the silent shouting of our own feelings…
The cascading pictures in our minds’ eyes – all disturbing our quiet. Let us be still within…
Let us listen to a stillness deeper within us. Let us listen to the voice of inner silence…
[silence]
Let us be still and know that God is here. Amen
Musical Interlude A Welsh Wedding by Elizabeth Hornby
Address On Time
“Time” is an extraordinary concept, when you really start to think about it. The Prophet sums it up beautifully. “You would measure time, the measureless and immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons… Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness and knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream. And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.”
We cannot touch time, feel it, sense its passing, except by using human-made devices such as clocks, diaries and calendars. And yet time is central to our lives. Most of us get up at a regular time each morning, do our “morning tasks”, stop for lunch, do different tasks after lunch, then eat our evening meal and wind down before it is time (that word again!) to sleep.
When we interact with other people, it is very often at pre-appointed times – our congregations (in pre-COVID times) gather to worship at a particular time each Sunday and get together in between for other-than-Sunday groups or committee meetings. Even during lockdown, Zoom meetings, for worship and other purposes, are scheduled for particular times. I would be lost without my watch, and my faithful Filofax, in which I keep track of where I need to be, when, and what I need to get done on any particular day.
Which is why holidays, time away from the tyranny of the diary, are so important. Usually the time flies by – Maz and I love visiting new cities, walking the streets, admiring the architecture, and visiting churches and museums. We walk all day, but take breaks by sitting in outdoor cafés, enjoying the chance to people watch. But the time seems to go so fast. When we arrive, we have a “whole week” ahead of us, but in no time at all, it is the final evening, and we are packing our suitcases in preparation for travelling back home. I usually feel in need of an extra week off to recover!
But sometimes, just sometimes, we have a more relaxing break. One of the best holidays I ever had was last June (2019) when Maz and I, together with my daughter and her fiancé, spent a week in our favourite part of Wales. Becky and Arran were both suffering from overwork, so we decided to get up when we awoke, go where we felt like, according to the weather, and just blob if we didn’t feel like going anywhere. Meals were eaten when we felt hungry. It was fabulous. Both of the young people regressed to being “children” with no responsibilities and felt so much better for their rest by the end of the week. As did I.
When I want to get away from being ruled by the passing of time, I have a special watch, whose face is divided into the normal twelve hours. But it has only one hand, and that hand takes an hour to move from one hour marking to the next. So when I look at it, I can only judge roughly what the time is “somewhere between nine and ten in the morning.” It is very liberating.
Without time, we would have no sense of ourselves as moving through the universe, growing older, at a rate of 24 hours every day. And even that measure varies from person to person. I can remember being five and wanting desperately to be five and a half, because that was so much older than just five. And when we are children, I think that time tends to pass much more slowly (except for the hour just before bedtime, which always rushes by). A school year seems to last “forever” and the months leading up to Christmas or our birthdays simply crawl by. I wonder whether that is why we have such clear memories of our childhoods – because we lived at a much slower pace?
Once we become adults, and start to do all the things that being an adult means – working for a living, moving into our own property, shopping and cooking for ourselves, travelling, doing housework – time starts to race by. Most adults greet Friday evening with joy, because they have a whole weekend without working ahead of them. But then it goes by in a flash and it is Monday morning again. Looking at the longer picture, our twenties go fast, but then each succeeding decade seems to speed up. I cannot believe I am 60 – how did that happen? And yet, when I think back to who I was, what I was doing, at 50, I can see how much my life has changed.
Without our memories of the past, and our imagination, to see the future, we would be poorer, I think. Yet it can be wonderful to live in the eternal NOW which David Monk talks about in our third reading. As he describes so beautifully, “To be in union with God is to be in the NOW. When we surrender our attachment to whom we ‘think’ we are, to whom we have been in the past and who we want to be, or who we fear we will be in the future, with all the anxiety-producing ‘if onlys’ and ‘what ifs’, we enter the NOW, a state of true spiritual freedom which opens the door to unconditional Love for ourselves and all beings.”
I was blessed to experience this eternal NOW this morning, during my daily constitutional in Salcey Forest. It was a beautiful blue-sky day. I walk the same path each day, but this morning, I saw it with new eyes. It was as though the lenses of my eyes had been wiped clean. I walked among trees of a thousand greens, each leaf and branch sharply delineated by the early morning sun. Wildflowers of every shade of cream, white, pink, yellow, blue and purple lined my path, with butterflies flittering from flower to flower. The song of the birds was loud and melodious in my ears, and I could feel the warm sun on my skin. I felt at one with God’s creation, and stopped several times, just to breathe and give thanks.
I think we spend too little time living in the Now. Too much of our time is spent either regretting or feeling nostalgic for an imperfectly-remembered past, or planning or feeling anxious about what the future may hold for us. We find it hard to get away from the “what ifs” and “if onlys” that David Monk talks about. But as Bob Wightman wrote in our second reading, how we spend our days is, to a great extent, our choice. I really enjoyed his either / or choices. As he said, each “Today stretches ahead of me, waiting to be shaped. And here I am, the sculptor who gets to do the shaping. What today will be like is up to me. I get to choose what kind of day I will have!”
Obviously, this is not entirely true. To a large extent, our circumstances will dictate the shape of our days. BUT it is our choice how we react to what happens to us. Unless, of course, we are suffering from depression or some other debilitating mental illness. For those of us in those situations, on a bad day, even getting out of bed and getting dressed can be a major achievement.
I would like to finish by repeating the beautiful opening words I shared at the beginning of our service:
Look to this day –
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
And realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action, the splendour of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
May it be so, for all of you. Amen
Closing Words by St Teresa of Avila
Today may there be peace within.
May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others.
May you use the gifts that you have received and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content with yourself just the way you are.
Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us Amen
Musical Postlude Still We Rise by Elizabeth Hornby