First, an apology: my elderly (20+ years) CD player has expired without warning, and it is what I use to record the music for these online services. So there is no music in this week’s service.
Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words by Jan Smith
Welcome,
Welcome to this table,
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 Adam Slate (adapted)
As we travel the paths that our lives reveal to us,
We are often not sure of the way, the distance, or the destination.
Nevertheless, we have each other.
We can look to one another for wisdom,
We can be grateful for each other’s companionship,
And we can seek support when we have lost hope.
We light our chalice today to signify that we are willing to take the journey.
Candles of Joy and Concern words by Judy Welles and Tess Baumberger (adapted)
If you woke this morning with a sorrow so heavy
That you need the help of this community to carry it,
Or if you woke with a joy so great that it simply must be shared,
Now is the time for you to speak.
You are invited to come forward, speak,
And light a candle…
[End with the lighting of one last candle]
Spirit of life and spirit of grace,
Rest with us this day, in this place.
We lift up every joy, every gladness,
We hold up every hurt, every sadness
Spoken in this good company
As well as every secret feeling
Held quiet in the hollows of our hearts.
Amen
Reading from Benedictus by John O’Donohue
No day is ever the same, and no day stands still; each one moves through a different territory, awakening new beginnings. A day moves forward in moments and once a moment has flickered into life, it vanishes and is replaced by the next. It is fascinating that this is where we live, within an emerging lacework that continuously unravels. Often a fleeting moment can hold a whole sequence of the future in distilled form: that unprepared second when you looked in a parent’s eye and saw death already beginning to loom. Or the second you noticed a softening in someone’s voice, and you knew that a friendship was beginning. Or catching your partner’s gaze upon you and knowing the love that surrounded you. Each day is seeded with recognitions.
The writer’s life is a wonderful metaphor for this. The writer goes to his desk each morning to meet the empty white page. As he settles himself, he is preparing for visitation and voyage. His memory, longing and craft set the frame for what might emerge. He has no idea what will come. Yet despite his limitations, his creative work will find its own direction to form. Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.
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 Benedictus by John O’Donohue
On certain birthdays, the shape of our unfolding life comes clearer into view. Because we are netted into the webbing of each day’s chores and duties, we seldom see the shape our life has taken. When we look back, we can identify the key thresholds where the vital happenings of our lives occurred. These were usually the times when we were confronted with decisions about the paths we wanted to travel. Perhaps there have been seven of these decisive thresholds in your life up to now. When you look at each threshold, you see that you had several choices at each point. You would always choose only one path. In this way, the person you are today is the result of the path you chose. Out of these choices, you have inherited and shaped your life. This is the life you live now. This is the person you have become. When you visit these thresholds, you will see how your chose your life.
The interesting question is what happened to the lives you once had as options, but did not choose? Where do they dwell? Perhaps your unlived lives run parallel to your current life and in some subtle way continue to influence the choices you make. All this might be happening beside you and within you, yet unknown to you. Maybe these unlived yet unfolding lives are the sustenance from which your chosen life draws… Maybe your visible life is but the outer edge of a whole enterprise of creativity and realisation in which you are unknowingly involved. This unseen ground of your unfolding in the world is a place that needs blessing and holds the key to the invisible. Blessing strengthens the network of presence you carry through the world.
Prayer For Presence by John O’Donohue
Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter
the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder.
Amen
Reading by Clifford Haigh, from Quaker Faith and Practice
If we are getting older it will be harder to acknowledge that we have not been called to spectacular service, that we are unlikely now to make a stir in the world, that our former dreams of doing some great healing work had a great deal of personal ambition in them.
A great many men and women have had to learn this unpalatable lesson – and then have discovered that magnificent opportunities lay all around them. We need not go to the ends of the earth to find them; we need not be young, clever, fit, beautiful, talented, trained, eloquent, or very wise. We shall find them among our neighbours as well as among strangers, in our own families as well as in unfamiliar circles – magnificent opportunities to be kind and patient and understanding.
This is a vocation just as truly as some more obviously seen as such – the vocation of ordinary men and women called to continual, unspectacular acts of loving kindness in the ordinary setting of every day. They need no special medical boards before they embark on their service, need no inoculation against anything but indifference and lethargy and perhaps a self-indulgent shyness. How simple it sounds: how difficult it often is; how possible it may become by the grace of God.
Time of Stillness and Reflection The Guesthouse by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
This being human is a guesthouse
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness
Comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and attend them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Welcome difficulty.
[silence]
Learn the alchemy True Human Beings know:
The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given,
the door opens.
Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade.
Joke with torment brought by a Friend.
Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets
that serve to cover, and then are taken off.
That undressing, and the beautiful naked body underneath,
is the sweetness that comes after grief.
Musical Interlude: I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Endings and Beginnings
Experiencing endings and beginnings are part of the process of being alive. In the last couple of weeks, as some of you will know, I have lost my elderly mother, and have also begun to look after my eleven-month old grandson, from 8 am to 4 pm each Tuesday, to help out my son and his partner. Which means I’m having to learn a whole new routine for my week, in which Tuesdays do not play a part. And I am discovering that looking after an active, crawling baby is not as easy when you are 64, as it was when I was thirty years younger! But I am rising to the challenge, and found it consoling to read the words of Clifford Haigh about getting older, which formed our final reading today. Let me share some of them with you again: “A great many men and women have… discovered that magnificent opportunities lay all around them. We need not go to the ends of the earth to find them; we need not be young, clever, fit, beautiful, talented, trained, eloquent, or very wise. We shall find them among our neighbours as well as among strangers, in our own families as well as in unfamiliar circles – magnificent opportunities to be kind and patient and understanding.”
Our lives are full of change; it is in the very nature of being alive. As John O’Donohue pointed out in our first reading, “No day is ever the same, and no day stands still; each one moves through a different territory, awakening new beginnings.” And as we move through our days, making particular choices, the paths we did not take close behind us.
And as he said in our second reading, “When you look at each threshold, you see that you had several choices at each point. You would always choose only one path. In this way, the person you are today is the result of the path you chose. Out of these choices, you have inherited and shaped your life. This is the life you live now. This is the person you have become.”
Like Shakespeare, we know that, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” At different times in our lives, we will begin new things, or complete old things, leaving them behind. But life is never static, never unchanging.
So we need to be careful and mindful about how we live our days, how we approach new experiences. Like many of us, I can become disheartened by the sheer volume of what I need to, would like to, feel I ought to do. When I feel this way, I remember the advice of the American Unitarian Universalist minister, Forrest Church, “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.”
In other words, we don’t need to conquer the world right off the bat. Changes are made by individual people, doing what they can from where they are, day by day, using the skills that they have, and being open to change and growth.
I would guess that all of us can make a list of “things that are wrong with the world”. They might include poverty, war, homelessness, exploitation of the planet, violence… the list is endless, and depressing, and overwhelming. What can we, individual little people, do about it all?
The answer I believe, is in the words of the 13th century Persian poet, Saadi Shirazi. He wrote, “It is not an art to conquer the world; if you can, conquer a heart.” In other words, we must choose to use the mind, heart and abilities we have been given, to change one person’s mind, to pick up one piece of litter, to choose to pay extra for one eco-friendly bottle of washing up liquid, to sign one petition, to attend one protest meeting or march. Then, to further the washing metaphor, “rinse and repeat.”
This approach also applies to tasks which feel “too big”. When faced with a serious and complicated task, it is human nature to procrastinate, to do that which is easiest, and to ignore that which feels difficult and overwhelming. I know this from my own experience: each time I add a new piece of software to my PC, which I know will ultimately make my life easier, it is such a massive temptation to carry on using the same old, less-efficient software. Because the struggle to learn how to use the new one efficiently daunts me.
This is how we get in our own way on the threshold of new beginnings. Yet it is a well-known maxim that any journey starts with a single step. Which is often the most difficult one to take. Think about driving a car: it takes more engine power to move the car from stationary to moving, than it does to move it from slower to quicker. And this is true in our lives; it takes far more emotional and spiritual energy to take that first step. But once we have taken that vital step, subsequent steps somehow seem easier. Because a sort of virtuous feedback loop is set up, and as we form a new habit, it becomes easier to maintain it. We need to always remember that Done is Better than Perfect.
I believe it is essential to keep our hearts and minds open to the possibility of new beginnings, in the face of all the sad endings that are an inevitable part of life. The support and love of other people is vital at such times, and I have been very blessed in the past few weeks by the kind messages I have received.
I have found that the key to moving on is staying curious, being open to starting something new. Luckily for me, it doesn’t take much to awaken my curiosity. I’m like a cat, fascinated by anything that moves, even if it does sometimes mean chasing after rainbows. Or like a dog, nose down, hot on the trail of something new and exciting, my tail wagging. My curiosity, my thirst for learning has led me in many directions. I have continued to learn whenever a subject has sparked my interest. Sometimes, it has led me down a rabbit hole into nowhere particular. Yet I have always enjoyed the journey. Whenever I come across something new, which piques my interest, my response has always been to want to find out more. The foundational skill for all this has been my ability to read, learn and inwardly digest information and stories, for which I will always be grateful to my parents, who passed their enthusiasm for reading and finding out down to me.
It can be both exciting and daunting to make a new beginning. On the one hand, we are excited about the new idea that has seized our imagination and are full of enthusiasm to get on with it. On the other hand, if we make the mistake of looking up from what we are doing at that moment and see how very far we still have to go, we may become discouraged and wonder whether we will ever get there. And this is just as true of communities such as congregations, as it is of individuals.
So perhaps it is best to concentrate only on the next step, whatever the next step might be – to walk an extra 500 steps today, to write a scene of the novel, to complete a planning application for a disabled toilet in our church – there are so many “next steps” in our lives.
And it is also true that once we reach the last part of a project, we can be infused by an impatience to complete it. Which may mean that, unless we are aware of the possibility, the last few “steps” are scamped, rushed, not done with as much care as the rest. Which I believe is a mistake. Yes, it can be difficult to sustain the amount of concentration and dedication required, when it is the hundredth or thousandth step which we are taking, but if we are to attain a good completion, a good ending, it is worth it.
Of course, if we are lucky, the prospect of a (nearly) visible finish line may restore some lost enthusiasm. I can remember running the London Marathon in 2004. My running partner and I were struggling from miles 17 to 23, and wondered whether we would ever get there, ever complete the race. But once we came to within a mile of the finish, we could hear the buzz of the crowd, and I remember feeling so excited, and somehow finding the energy from somewhere for a final burst of speed to take me over the finish line.
Truly, any completion is built on many little interim tasks. Our job is to do each little thing as well as we can, so that when we reach the completion point, we can rest, knowing that we have given it our best. Which is all that anyone can ask of us.
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we understand that life is full
of endings and beginnings,
and be given the strength to navigate both,
with kindness, and the skills we have.
May we share the love we feel,
may we look out for each other,
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 II by Ludovico Einaudi