Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words A Regular Sunday by Jeffrey Bowes
Here we have gathered to make another link in the chain of days that binds our lives in fellowship.
We bring our whole self to worship, with all the pleasures and the pains of our daily lives. All our hopes and dreams and fears are here with us. Our remembrance of days past and of people gone before us rests in our hearts. In thought and prayer, we gather our loved ones around us, those who are with us today, those who are close as neighbours and family and friends, and those who are far away.
We trust and hope that here there will be ease for the heart, refreshment for the spirit, challenge for the mind, and a way to make peace in our lives and bring peace in the world.
We offer our friendship in fellowship, our service in community, our care in mutual support through the trials and troubles of daily life, and our devotion one to another in sharing the high days and the happy days.
May we feel, as true presence, a spirit of unity and love, of friendship, of mutual desire to find joy, happiness, high aspiration, and a deep sense that we are connected as one with all living things.
This meeting is for a brief time on this holy day, a moment for renewal and refreshment of mind and heart and spirit. When we leave, may the blessings we find in this company go with us that we may be a blessing to the world in all we encounter until we meet again.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). Words by Laura Dobson.
We light our chalice candle as a symbol of the light of love.
The light reminds us that love is the greatest power in the world,
the love we share and bless each other with,
here in our beloved community;
the love we take out into the world,
bearing and sharing the light,
wherever we are and whoever we are with,
every day of our lives.
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 Three Things by Jan Taddeo
The storm outside echoes the
storm raging within my soul.
So many people in need…
so much pain, so much grief.
Too many causes and campaigns
fill my mailboxes, sap my energy,
beg for my money.
Three things I must do…only three things?
You’ve got to be kidding…which three do I choose?
Books and letters, magnets and movies
implore me to dance as if no one is watching
learn seven habits and make four agreements
give generously, vote often, express myself!
Yet hundreds, thousands, millions live with hunger
and thirst, in poverty, enduring violence, and disease.
Did Mother Teresa and Gandhi cry out
with despair from the darkness of overwhelm?
What three things did they choose?
Three things. Three things we must do.
Is it to act in kindness, serve justice, love God and your
neighbour even as you love yourself?
But where do I start?
So much thoughtlessness,
hatred and fear.
Too little justice, too much selfishness.
Where is God? Who is my neighbour?
Three things…seven principles, ten commandments, twelve steps…
all number of things speak to us; and yet,
we must choose.
We must choose to do something, so three things
may be the right number…not too few, not too many.
But which three things shall I do? Will you do?
Here’s an adage I’ve always liked:
Don’t just do something, stand there.
Stand in the surf, or sit on a rock, or lay your
body across the earthy loam…and be quiet.
Very quiet.
Do you hear it? That still small voice, the
echo of your soul, reverberating with the call
to your own true self to emerge.
Then the calm within becomes the calm without.
The storm blows over, the sun recovers its position of strength,
And that glorious symbol of hope and unity emerges across the sky.
At the end of this rainbow, a treasure…
the three things you must do:
Go outside yourself and know the needs of the world.
Go within and discover your Life-given gifts.
Then arch yourself like a rainbow bridge between the two and
create a more beautiful world.
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 A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough by Wayne Muller
We make only one choice. Throughout our lives, we do only one thing – again and again, moment by moment, year after year. It is how we live our days, and it is how we shape our lives.
The choice is this: What is the next right thing for us to do? Where in this moment, shall we choose to place our time and attention? Do we stay or move, speak or keep silent, attend to this person, that task, move in this or that direction?
With each succeeding moment, we make a new choice. After each decision, there is another. And another. These are not enormous choices, decisions about whether to change careers, get married, or move to a new city. Our choices are small, quiet, intimate things that flow from us as water from a mountain spring, simple, endless, each thimble of water tumbling into the next, creating a small stream that somehow, with neither a map nor a plan, through surprising twists and curving around unforeseen obstacles, somehow inevitably finds its way down the mountain to the sea.
If we follow our tiny stream, we will see that at every turn it makes a choice, to go right or left, over or around, or to pool up for a while, waiting to spill over. The stream knows nothing of what is ahead, is not conscious of planning for the future. It simply follows the path of least resistance, motivated by gravity. … So it is with our lives. The only choice we make – what is the next right thing to do – responds to a similarly vital inner gravity, an invisible thread that shapes our life, as our life meets the world.
Prayer Help us to love by Cliff Reed, from We are Here
Living Spirit of Love, we come before you
once again in need of your help.
We hear your call, and sometimes we even try
to respond, but we don’t do very well.
You would have us love our neighbour as we love
ourselves. You would even have us
love our enemies. But so often we have heard those
words, admired the sentiment,
and then forgotten them.
Help us to love, O God, to get beneath the hatred and the prejudice,
the ignorance and the self-righteousness,
to see another human soul as weak as our own.
In this hour of quietness, help us to hear
your call, but more important still, may we
hear it and obey it when we return
to the world beyond these walls.
We ask this for the sake of our neighbours,
our enemies and ourselves. Amen
Reading Before the action, the pause by Jopie Boeke, from With Heart and Mind
Some years ago, I came across the above saying. It has stayed with me ever since and has helped me in times of difficult decision-making.
Waiting is difficult for many people, including me. I get impatient in long queues. I groan when I just miss the green traffic signal and I sigh when my husband does not answer my question immediately. Zen teachers say, ‘When you are most tempted to do something, don’t.’ This is probably good advice.
We are tempted to work constantly on things. Home improvement centres give us an opportunity to work on weekends and evenings as well. Many times people tell me they cannot go to church because they have too much to do on Sundays. My usual answer to them is, ‘I understand’. And I do, I truly do!
But what would happen if instead I reminded them, and myself, of the value of sitting down quietly sometime each day (and if not each day, then at least once a week at church!) to let distractions go, to refuse busy thoughts and to listen for the ‘still small voice’ that speaks below the noisy world? We just might find the real foundation for action, at the same time discovering solace and direction in the quiet centre within each of us. In the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘Just because we do nothing does not mean that nothing is being done.’
Time of Stillness and Reflection words by Jopie Boeke, from With Heart and Mind (adapted)
Spirit of Life, I confess that too much of my life
consists of responding to questions;
whereto…
wherefrom…
why and how?
I yearn for times when the wheels of hurry! Hurry!
will temporarily stop
and no-one interrupts the quiet.
Spirit of silence,
shut the door of the busy world,
let peace surround me.
Lead me to an open plain
so that my soul can expand –
one with the earth and the universe –
as far as the infinite horizon.
Only then shall the fertile field of my heart
Receive the seeds of calmness.
[silence]
Please, spirit of stillness, give us such times of solitude and peace.
Amen
Musical Interlude I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Three Things
I came across Jan Taddeo’s wonderful poem, Three Things, which we heard as our first reading, some years ago, and saved it away in the ‘Ideas for Services’ folder on my laptop. Then forgot all about it – until now.
For me, and perhaps for many of us, it poses some important questions about how we live in the world. He asks, “Three things we must do. Is it to act in kindness, serve justice, love God and your neighbour even as you love yourself?” He worries that we have so many concerns that we may find it hard to choose which three things are the most important… “Three things, seven principles, ten commandments, twelve steps… all number of things speak to us; and yet, we must choose.”
It can be very confusing, trying to discern what is the next right thing to do. There are so many conflicting ideas about how to live our best lives, how to make a positive difference in the world. In his book, A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough, Wayne Muller asks, “What is the next right thing for us to do? Where in this moment, shall we choose to place our time and attention? Do we stay or move, speak or keep silent, attend to this person, that task, move in this or that direction?”
I don’t know about you, but to me, this seems to be such a simple approach to life, much less stressful than being worried about a thousand possible alternatives. You just concentrate on the Next Right Thing – give that your time and attention, and then go on to the next one.
But I’m very conscious that “simple” does not mean the same thing as “easy”. This moment by moment approach to our lives *is* elegantly beautiful in its simplicity, but it is by no means easy to do. Because it means that we have to be conscious, awake, moment by moment, so that we make our many small choices with awareness, rather than blindly, depending on how we are feeling at the time. Actively considering each choice, moment by moment, actually sounds like quite hard work. But it is the most important work in the world.
If we look at our lives, really examine them, we can see that they *are* the result of all the choices we have made, in the past days and months and years. Like Wayne Muller’s mountain stream, it is a gradual, moment by moment, process. Like the stream, we “know nothing of what is ahead, [are] not conscious of planning for the future. [We] simply follow the path of least resistance, motivated by gravity. … The only choice we make – what is the next right thing to do – responds to a similarly vital inner gravity, an invisible thread that shapes our life, as our life meets the world.”
Yes, the results of this process have shaped our lives. All of us are where we are now, today, because of our past choices. And where we end up, tomorrow and the next day, will depend on the choices we make today. Which three things shall we choose to guide us?
It’s about learning to understand what is right for us on the deepest level – what will nourish our hearts and souls, as opposed to making us feel fearful, worried, or empty. Of course it is never possible to re-track, to un-do the choices we have already made; but we can try to be more aware of the choice-making process, so that we don’t compromise all the time, choosing the seemingly easy over the right. Because very often, a choice made in haste, just to get it over with, actually leads to more worry and heartache, rather than less.
So how can we cultivate this very sane approach to our lives? How can we follow the “breadcrumbs from God”, as Wayne Muller so beautifully expresses it, elsewhere in his book? Discerning what is the next right thing is something we need to practice every day. We also need good, honest friends, to whom we can go for advice when we are struggling, and who will tell us honestly and compassionately how we are doing; whether we seem grounded and centred, on the right track, or off-course and flailing. We also need to *be* such friends, to one another.
Perhaps our best bet will be to follow Jan Taddeo’s advice, and ask ourselves his questions: “We must choose to do something, so three things may be the right number… not too few, not too many. But which three things shall I do? Will you do?”
And I really like his suggestion for how we might discern what our own three things might be, for each of us. “Don’t just do something, stand there….and be quiet. Very quiet. Do you hear it? That still small voice, the echo of your soul, reverberating with the call to your own true self to emerge. Then the calm within becomes the calm without. The storm blows over, the sun recovers its position of strength, And that glorious symbol of hope and unity emerges across the sky.”
In other words, we will not discover our truest, best path by rushing headlong into things, by making swift, ill-considered decisions. We have to spend time with ourselves and God, in the quietness, as Jopie Boeke advised us in the words of our Time of Stillness and Reflection. Only then will we hear the still, small voice of our conscience (or the Divine, depending on our beliefs) telling us what those three things might be, for us.
Living with uncertainty is not easy. In fact, most of us find it distinctly un-easy. But this is where faith comes in. We have to have faith that if we can live with the uncertainty of a particular choice, the next right thing will reveal itself to us. Brené Brown defines faith as “a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.” We have to believe that if we follow our intuition truly, it will not let us down. We need to learn to live mindfully.
How might a mindful day look, spent in quiet contemplation of our lives and where they are going? In his wonderful book, The Miracle of Mindfulness, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh suggests dedicating a whole day to this practice, once a week. We might even call it a Sabbath day. Then he takes the reader through what such a day might look like. His description of it is fascinating – full of words like “slow”, “quiet”, “calm”, “mindful”, and “relaxing”. He suggests doing each thing with full attention, saying “Don’t do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be at one with your work.”
He recommends ending the day in quiet meditation, perhaps reading a passage of scripture, or a poem that means something to you, then taking a quiet walk in the night air, just following your breath. Doesn’t that sound lovely? A whole day, spent in conscious awareness of your life and actions, just following the next right thing. No hurrying, no worrying, no thinking ahead. Just Being. Just. Being.
I wonder how different our lives would be, if we were able to do this on a regular basis? Because we’re not supposed to live like this. Every person needs to have some time to centre down, to be at peace, to recharge their emotional and spiritual batteries. I believe that one of the most important of God’s creations is the Sabbath – a time to rest, to re-group, and come back to our everyday lives refreshed. One reason why my faith is so important to me is that it has taught me that there is another way of living, even if I don’t always follow it. On my rest day, usually a Wednesday, I consciously try to live more slowly, more mindfully, more peacefully.
As usual, the Quakers have got it spot on: number 3 of their Advices and Queries sums it up beautifully: “Do you try to set aside times of quiet for openness to the Holy Spirit? All of us need to find a way into silence which allows us to deepen our awareness of the divine and to find the inward source of our strength. Seek to know an inward stillness, even amid the activities of daily life. … Hold yourself and others in the Light, knowing that all are cherished by God.”
This is how we can learn to discern what our own “three things” might be. Then perhaps we will be able to follow Jan Taddeo’s advice, and
“Go outside yourself and know the needs of the world.
Go within and discover your Life-given gifts.
Then arch yourself like a rainbow bridge between the two and
create a more beautiful world.”
May it be so, Amen
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we learn to sit awhile in quietness,
and to discern what our own three things,
our own best choices, might be,
for ourselves and for our world.
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