Musical Prelude: I will play some gentle, reflective music to centre myself, before the start of the service. Roots and Wings by Elizabeth Hornby
Opening Words
In this time of insecurity and social upheaval,
When we are unable to meet in person,
I invite you into this time of online worship.
For this short time,
Let us put our worldly cares aside,
Close our eyes and imagine ourselves
To be in our places of worship,
Surrounded by members of our beloved community,
And be together, if only virtually,
For this short time.
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)
We light our chalice today
Remembering with gratitude all the front-line staff
Of our hospitals, shops and public services,
Who are selflessly carrying on,
To meet the needs of the people they serve.
We light our chalice in the hope
That our loved ones may be safe,
That all people may be safe,
And in faith that normality will return,
And that we will return to normality
As kinder, more compassionate people.
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 among us,
And in the wider world,
Whose lives have been touched,
In whatever way,
By the coronavirus and the fall-out from it.
Amen
Reading from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
And a merchant said, Speak to us of Buying and Selling.
And he answered and said:
To you the earth yields her fruit, and you shall not want if you but know how to fill your hands.
It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied.
Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.
When in the market-place you toilers of the sea and fields and vineyards meet the weavers and the potters and the gatherers of spices, –
Invoke then the master spirit of the earth, to come into your midst and sanctify the scales and the reckoning that weighs value against value….
And if there come the singers and the dancers and the flute-players, – buy of their gifts also.
For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and food for your soul.
And before you leave the market-place, see that no-one has gone his way with empty hands.
For the master spirit of the earth shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the needs of the least of you are satisfied.
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 from Enough by John Naish
We need to develop a sense of enough. Or, if you fancy, enoughness. Or even enoughism. We have created a culture that has one over-riding message – we do not yet have all we need to be satisfied. The answer, we are told, is to have, see, be and do even more. Always more. But this is bearing strange fruit: levels of stress, depression and burnout are all rising fast, even though we live amid unprecedented abundance. Our planet doesn’t look too happy either.
We urgently need to stop over-stimulating the powerful ancient instincts that make us never satisfied. Instead we must nurture our capacities to appreciate the unprecedented wonders now at our feet. In the Western world we effectively have everything we could possibly need. There is no ‘more’. We have to learn to live ‘post-more’. This isn’t about turning the clocks back or having less. It’s about realising that we’ve arrived (hurrah times three). Enoughness is a path to contentment. It’s about personal ecology, about each of us finding our own sustainable balance as individuals. Enoughness is the tipping point, beyond which getting more of anything makes life worse rather than better.
Prayer
God, our Father and Mother,
Great Spirit of Life and Love,
All of us need love and connection,
In order to thrive as human beings.
In this time of social isolation,
Help us to show our love in other ways.
May those of us who are well,
Give generously of our time and effort,
To help those around us who are in need,
And to make them feel less alone,
By keeping in regular touch.
May those of us who are vulnerable, or ill,
Receive the help we need, and accept it with grace.
And may we all take only what we need,
And not hoard excess, so that there is enough to go round.
Although e-mails and phone calls
Are no substitute for the warmth
Of closer human contact,
May we all share whatever love we can,
And grow together in virtual community.
Amen
Reading Living Simply by Geoffrey Usher from With Heart and Mind 2
Even when we try to live simply, without extravagance and waste, most of us have much more than we shall ever need. Our wardrobes, cupboards and shelves are full of surplus stuff that we have not worn or used for a long time, but which we keep ‘just in case…’. Often it seems easier to squeeze new things into already full storage spaces than to get rid of what we do not use.
What is true in material terms is also true in the spiritual, mental and emotional aspects of our lives. In our modern world, we can suffer from ‘information over-load’, when we are bombarded with great quantities of information which other people want to give us, but which we in fact neither need nor want. We carry with us emotional baggage from the past: memories of hurtful comments, disappointments, failures, unhappy experiences, frustrations, damaged relationships. Our religious life is befuddled with childhood images, half-formed and confused concepts which do not square with our adult knowledge and experience of the world.
How much might we reduce our stress levels if we reduced the clutter in our lives? Can we resolve to dispose of the things that we no longer need – which serve no useful purpose – and be happy to make more satisfying use of what remains? Can we make more use of recycling facilities; can we give more of our unused or surplus possessions to charity shops, thereby helping them as well as ourselves? Can we apply to our daily lives the old slogan, “Live simply, that others may simply live”?
And can we dispose of the unhelpful muddle in our religious lives? We can acknowledge the wonder and the mystery of the world, but concentrate on the simple message of love and goodwill that lies at the heart of our spiritual life.
Time of Stillness and Reflection by Geoffrey Usher from With Heart and Mind 2
God of the simple life, we withdraw from the noise and confusion
Of the world around us, and seek the stillness at the heart of life.
Help us to put aside the many distractions that clamour for our attention;
the concern with getting and spending, rather than listening and reflecting;
the accumulation of material goods, rather than spiritual insight;
the assumption that wealth of possessions will satisfy all our needs.
Help us to clear away the confusion of our daily lives, and to focus on what is truly important, not only for our physical needs, but also for our spiritual welfare.
Help us to be satisfied with enough, and not always to crave more.
May we be grateful for the abundance of good gifts that are available to us,
but may we be not wasteful.
Let us ponder these things in the silence … [silence]
May we build right relationships with our families,
with our neighbours and friends,
with you, and with ourselves. Amen
Musical Interlude Clouds by Elizabeth Hornby
Address On Acquiring and Letting Go
I have noticed that people’s attitude to this time of lockdown has begun to change in the past couple of weeks. In the early days, it was all about getting through it somehow, and then going back to normal, preferably as soon as possible. But as the serious nature of this pandemic has made itself felt, there has been a sense of hunkering down for the long term, as there seems to be no early end-date in sight. And an increasing realisation that whatever happens in the next weeks and months, our economy and our society will have been profoundly changed by it. And this might be the time to make changes in our own lives, so that “back to normal” is actually better than before, for more people.
I wonder whether now might be a good opportunity to review our attitudes towards what we buy, what we think we need to acquire (or, more accurately, what we have been seduced into believing we need to acquire by the advertising industry and the media). Because with most of our shops being shut, and the instruction to only leave the house to shop for essentials in our minds, we may begin to realise that not only can we make do with what we have, but also that we have a lot of material possessions that we no longer need. That someone else might benefit from…
The people of Orphalese, to whom the Prophet spoke, lived far simpler lives than we do. Buying and selling for them was about more about necessities (both material and those that feed the soul) rather than listening to what John Naish calls “the powerful ancient instincts that make us never satisfied.” As the Prophet said, “It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied. Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.”
In this 21st century of ours, it is easier than ever before to acquire more and more of everything, whether we need it or not. Very many of us, perhaps a majority in this country, own smart phones, which can take photos, show films, play games and access millions of websites from around the world, all at the touch of a button on a screen, and with which we can order practically anything we want, from all over the world. I do sometimes wonder whether we have lost anything among all this bounty. And whether we might not actually be better off without some of it.
And the pace of change has accelerated too, particularly in the last thirty or so years. My life as a child in the sixties was not enormously different to that of my parents in the thirties. OK, there were more cars, and we had a television, but my childhood activities and pleasures were much the same as theirs had been: exploring the neighbourhood (I was lucky enough to be brought up in the country); reading; playing board games; doing jigsaw puzzles; building lego; swimming lessons; music lessons. My children’s lives (they were born in the 1990s) were and are radically different. They cannot imagine a world without instant internet access.
I wonder whether it has all gone too far. As we saw in my second reading, most people in the West already have absolutely everything they need. And yet, we seem to have this hunger for more and more, the newest, the brightest, the glitziest gadgets we can lay our hands on. Last year’s gadgets are discarded as “so yesterday” so we have to work yet harder and longer to “keep up with the technological Jones’s”.
But need it be this way? As John Naish so wisely writes: “We have to learn to live ‘post-more’ … Enoughness is a path to contentment.” We don’t seem to appreciate all the marvels that we have. Admittedly, it is only too easy to take all our modern marvels for granted. We live in an immensely complex world, entirely reliant on the work of others and on technological innovation to live our lives. We press a switch, and the computer turns on, the light turns on, the car starts. We turn on a tap and the water comes out, fresh and drinkable. We go shopping, and the shops are full of goods that have been delivered by a complex logistics network. It is only in the past few weeks that most of us have actually considered where the goods we buy come from, and how many people we are dependent on for our consumption. Pre-COVID, all these things were taken for granted; it is the nature of the complex society we live in. It was mundane, every-day, not a matter for wonder.
Well maybe it should be. If we lived mindfully, with awareness, paying attention to the every-day miracles that make up our lives, maybe our sense of wonder would return, and we would truly appreciate what we have. I believe that Geoff Usher’s advice, given in my last reading, should be taken to heart by us all. It may be a bit tricky for us to recycle our discards or take them to charity shops at the moment, but we could at least start the process of de-cluttering.
Marie Kondo, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, suggests that we make our decisions as follows, “the best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hands and ask: ‘Does this spark joy?’ If it does, keep it. If not, throw it out.” Apparently, it is necessary to actually take each item in your hand, not just look at it, in order to get the authentic reaction, the ‘spark of joy’ (or lack of it) which will tell you whether to keep or discard.
It occurs to me that this might be a very effective way of approaching life generally, of deciding our priorities, not just for discarding or keeping our possessions. The marvellous question, “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it in our lives. If it doesn’t, throw it away or stop doing it. It could be a yardstick for almost anything…not only in our individual lives, but also in the lives of our congregations… It could even change how we “do church”, when all this is over…
I’d like to finish by repeating part of the prayer which started our time of stillness and reflection:
God of the simple life, we withdraw from the noise and confusion
Of the world around us, and seek the stillness at the heart of life.
Help us to put aside the many distractions that clamour for our attention;
the concern with getting and spending, rather than listening and reflecting;
the accumulation of material goods, rather than spiritual insight;
the assumption that wealth of possessions will satisfy all our needs.
Help us to clear away the confusion of our daily lives, and to focus on what is truly important, not only for our physical needs, but also for our spiritual welfare.
Help us to be satisfied with enough, and not always to crave more.
Closing Words
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we return to our everyday world refreshed,
May we share the love we feel,
And do the work that is ours to do,
Which may be choosing a simpler life.
May we look out for each other,
And may we keep up our hearts,
Now and in the days to come,
Amen
Musical Postlude Lady of Lewesdon Hill by Elizabeth Hornby