Prelude Chanson de Matin by Edward Elgar
Opening Words by David Usher
Because we are finite, we lift up our eyes to the infinite sky, and feel wonder and awe.
Because we have stumbled, we take the tender hand which beckons us to rise, and feel strength and reassurance.
Because we are lonely, we reach out to those around us, and feel warmth and acceptance.
Because we are human, we do all of these things, and in our worship, feel the presence of the divine.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). Words by Laura Dobson
We light our chalice in gratitude
For the grace of mystery
For all the times we have stood
In awe and wonder
At the depths of our inner lives and
The beauty of our outer lives
Made One
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 from the Hebrew Bible: Exodus 3:1-6
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
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 Awe and Surrender by Richard Rohr, Part One.
To begin to see with new eyes, we must observe—and usually be humiliated by—the habitual way we encounter each and every moment. It is humiliating because we will see that we are well-practiced in just a few predictable responses. Not many of our responses are original, fresh, or naturally respectful of what is right in front of us. The most common human responses to a new moment are mistrust, cynicism, fear, defensiveness, dismissal, and judgmentalism. These are the common ways the ego tries to be in control of the data instead of allowing the moment to get some control over us—and teach us something new!
To let the moment teach us, we must allow ourselves to be at least slightly stunned by it until it draws us inward and upward, toward a subtle experience of wonder. We normally need a single moment of gratuitous awe to get us started. Look, for example, at the Judeo-Christian Exodus narrative: It all begins with a murderer (Moses) on the run from the law, encountering a paradoxical bush that “burns without being consumed.” Awestruck, he takes off his shoes and the very earth beneath his feet becomes “holy ground” (see Exodus 3:2-6) because he has met “Being Itself” (see Exodus 3:14). This narrative reveals the classic pattern, repeated in different forms in the varied lives and vocabulary of all the world’s mystics.
Prayer by Tony McNeile (adapted)
Spirit of Life and Love,
Let us give thanks for the blessings in our lives.
Let us feel the warmth of family love embracing us.
Let us feel the richness of friendships, let us give thanks for the care and support family and friends give to us.
They are a blessing to us whether we gather them to us when we are filled with celebration. We bless them, for the times when they come to comfort us.
Let us give thanks that we are blessed with senses that can take in the beauty of the earth around us, for the glorious colours of a vibrant summer.
Let us fill our hearts with awe at the miracle of life.
Let us bless the goodness of people who help us in our day to day living, who treat us with courtesy and respect.
Let us give thanks for prayer.
Prayer that takes our thoughts and our wishes and our hopes into the spiritual world and the ear of heaven.
Blessed be prayer.
In prayer we confess, in prayer we praise.
In prayer the soul is open.
In prayer the soul receives the love that flows through the universe.
Love that can lift the crestfallen spirit, love that can console, love that repairs and restarts the emotional self that has been damaged by the experiences of life.
Blessed be prayer and this worshipping community.
Amen
Reading Awe and Surrender by Richard Rohr, Part Two
The spiritual journey is a constant interplay between moments of awe followed by a process of surrender to that moment. We must first allow ourselves to be captured by the goodness, truth, or beauty of something beyond and outside ourselves. Then we universalize from that moment to the goodness, truth, and beauty of the rest of reality, until our realization eventually ricochets back to include ourselves! This is the great inner dialogue we call prayer. We humans resist both the awe and, even more, the surrender. Both are vital, and so we must practice.
The way to any universal idea is to proceed through a concrete encounter. The one is the way to the many; the specific is the way to the spacious; the now is the way to the always; the here is the way to everywhere; the material is the way to the spiritual; the visible is the way to the invisible. When we see contemplatively, we know that we live in a fully sacramental universe, where everything is an epiphany.
Time of Stillness and Reflection Boundaries by Lynn Ungar
The universe does not
revolve around you.
The stars and planets spinning
through the ballroom of space
dance with one another
quite outside of your small life.
You cannot hold gravity
or seasons; even air and water
inevitably evade your grasp.
Why not, then, let go?
You could move through time
like a shark through water,
neither restless nor ceasing,
absorbed in and absorbing
the native element.
Why pretend you can do otherwise?
The world comes in at every pore,
mixes in your blood before
breath releases you into
the world again. Did you think
the fragile boundary of your skin
could build a wall?
[silence]
Listen. Every molecule is humming
its particular pitch.
Of course you are a symphony.
Whose tune do you think
the planets are singing
as they dance?
Musical Interlude: Pavane by Gabriel Fauré
Address Awe and Surrender
It is very easy to get bogged down in the rough and tumble of everyday life, and to miss the opportunities for moments of awe and surrender which are on offer. Which is why I was so struck by the e-mail from Richard Rohr, which I received some time ago. It was a real reminder for me when I read, “To begin to see with new eyes, we must observe – and usually be humiliated by – the habitual way we encounter each and every moment. … We are well practiced in just a few predictable responses … the most common [ones being] mistrust, cynicism, fear, defensiveness, dismissal and judgmentalism.”
Sadly, we have seen all too much of this in our cities in the past few days…
I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds awful. It really made me think – do I actually respond to new moments, to new experiences, in those negative ways? I try not to, but I’m afraid that the last one – judgmentalism – is a bad habit of mine. When I walk into a new situation, my brain very quickly sums up what is going on, and then decides how I should react. And I’m sure that is true of most of us, at least some of the time.
To give you an example, last week I spent a torrid 33 minutes on the phone to the tax office, and could feel my blood pressure rising by the minute, when I got stuck in a loop of having to answer security questions to an automated voice. But the person I spoke to (when I eventually managed to get through to someone, which was the cause of the rise in blood pressure) could not have been more helpful. But it took a real effort to be civil to her, even though the way HMRC’s security system is set up was not her fault. I am grateful that I managed it. And that my problem (hopefully) has now been resolved.
My point being, we are thinking, intelligent people, and can choose not to respond in these negative ways. If we are mindful of what is happening, right in front of us, in that very moment, it should be possible to see things in a new light – to be awed by each experience…. Even the fact that it is possible to sort out tax problems by phone! Richard Rohr suggests that we can “allow ourselves to be captured by the goodness, truth or beauty of something beyond and outside ourselves.”
So how can we rediscover our sense of wonder? As people of faith, we have a head start on everyone else; we are at least accustomed to thinking about spiritual matters, to looking at the world from another angle than the mundane.
My way of accessing moments of awe and surrender is through sacred living. Sacred living is about weaving moments of attention into your everyday life, and recognising the sacred there. It is about living with a new level of awareness. It is about going through our day paying attention to what is happening in each passing moment. It is about noticing the presence of the divine, the numinous, everywhere, in the natural world, in other people, in ourselves, and in things that happen to us. Sacred living is about rediscovering our sense of wonder, and living our lives in response to that. Sacred living is about truly appreciating what we have.
As you can see, this is a very different approach to life. It involves being open and trusting, taking life as it comes, with thankfulness. Most importantly, it involves being aware, all the time, of the marvels around you, whether they are people or places or things. I’m not saying that we can do all this all at once; it is the work of a lifetime. But just being aware of this different approach to life may make a difference; it may help us to realise that the world is a pretty amazing place, and to count our blessings and recognise the wonders with which we are surrounded. And to have the insight to realise that actually, we don’t need the latest gadget / thingummy that is being plugged as a “must-have” in the media. We don’t need to follow the hate…
Richard Rohr puts it another way. He says,: “Simply put, God reveals God’’s self to us through what unfolds as our life, along with every visible thing around us. These ordinary revelations must be respected and deeply listened to – before we start reading Bibles, joining churches, and quoting dogmas. Life itself is the primary divine revelation.”
“Life itself is the primary divine revelation.” That’s something to think about, isn’t it? That God, the divine, Creator of all, however you think of Him/Her/It, is present in every aspect of our lives, if we could only just wake up and become aware of it. When I was a little girl, God was very definitely “out there” or “up there” – a remote, supreme being, who would judge us if we did anything wrong. As I’ve got older, I’ve become more comfortable with the idea of an immanent God – one who is everywhere, all the time, even in me. And that God is Love, at the centre of all things.
This was largely due to discovering the little red book of the Quakers – their Advices and Queries. Two of them are particularly relevant to the idea of an immanent God. Number 2 reads, “Are you open to the healing power of God’s love? Cherish that of God within you, so that this love may grow in you and guide you. Let your worship and your daily life enrich each other. Treasure your experience of God, however it comes to you.” And number 7 says, “Be aware of the spirit of God at work in the ordinary activities and experience of your daily life. Spiritual learning continues throughout life, and often in unexpected ways. There is inspiration to be found all around us, in the natural world, in the sciences and arts, in our work and friendships, in our sorrows as well as in our joys. Are you open to new light, from whatever source it may come? Do you approach new ideas with discernment?”
I think that the Quakers and Richard Rohr could all be described as ‘working mystics’. They have this gift of seeing life whole, and of discerning that of God in everyday life. I have had a daily practice for the past decade or so, based on the Write for Your Life prompts of Rabbi Merle Feld. She asks questions about where you have discerned God at work in your life in any particular day. I find that it is a good reminder for me, when I’m tempted to react with the negative emotions I described earlier. If I can just ask myself: “Where is God in all this? Where is the Spirit?”, I can usually back off a little, become a bit more mindful, and respond more appropriately to whatever it is. Not always, but sometimes.
Because surrendering to the moment, being fully present, is not easy. It means that we have to pause before we react, take a breath or two, remind ourselves that the Spirit is everywhere, in all things, and only then respond. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has three definitions of the verb “to surrender”, which are very relevant to us as spiritual beings. They are ‘To give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favour of another’; ‘To give oneself up into the power of another’ and ‘To give oneself over to something (such as an influence)’.
It seems that surrender is about letting go of our control over a situation, or a person, or an experience, and going with the flow, surrendering to the moment, and letting what will be, be. Mindfully. What if the power the dictionary definition talks about was God? What if we were able to respond to any situation with the words that Jesus is supposed to have said in the Garden of Gethsemane, according to Luke: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet, not my will but yours be done.”
I have always been struck by the humility Jesus showed in this passage. And for us, the willingness to let go of our own agendas will probably not involve a painful death, except that of our individual will and ego. And that is so hard.
I’m a beginner at this, but am finding that when I do remember to think about the spiritual aspects of everyday life, I’m enjoying it more, appreciating things more. Hopefully in time, if I practice it faithfully, it will transform my life, and how I connect with other people and with the world.
I would like to leave you with a short prayer, quoted by Rachel Naomi Remen, in her wonderful book My Grandfather’s Blessings:
“Days pass, and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles.
Lord, fill our eyes with seeing, and our minds with knowing.
Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk.
Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed.
And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness, and exclaim in wonder: ‘How filled with awe is this place, and we did not know it.’”
Amen
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we learn to be open to moments
of awe and surrender,
through the practice of sacred living.
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 Romance No. 1 by John Brunning