Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words by Katie Kandarian-Morris
Here we have come into this sacred space—
quieter now with our readiness
Hushed voices, hoping, trusting for so many things:
For connection, for communion
For inspiration, for information
For healing, for wholeness,
For words, for music,
For celebration and consolation,
Here we have come into this space bringing all of who we are,
Let us be willing… however we are changed.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). words by Jane Blackall
May the light of this chalice be a reminder of the
shared values and principles around which we gather:
upholding the inherent worth and dignity of every person;
cherishing all those diverse creatures and habitats
with whom we share this Earth, our home;
seeking human liberation and flourishing;
serving the common good of all.
May this little light, and all it represents, make a home in our hearts;
where it will ever guide us back to our highest aspirations,
and help us be responsive, creative, just, and loving,
in this complex and ever-changing world.
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.
Help us to be grateful for the freedoms we have
and to respect the wishes of others.
May we hold in our hearts all those
Who are grieving, lost, alone,
Suffering in any way,
Amen
Story: Think Positive found on the internet
Once upon a time there was a bunch of tiny frogs, who arranged a running competition. The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower. A big crowd gathered around the tower to see the race, and cheer on the contestants, but quite honestly, no-one in the crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower. There were comments like:
‘Oh, WAY too difficult!’ ‘They will NEVER make it to the top.’ Or ‘Not a chance that they will succeed. The tower is too high.’
The tiny frogs began collapsing. One by one … Except for those, who in a fresh tempo, were climbing higher and higher … But the crowd continued to yell ‘It is too difficult! No-one will make it!’
More tiny frogs got tired, and gave up … But ONE continued higher and higher and higher … This one wouldn’t give up! She kept on going, her little legs taking the strain, until she finally reached the top. When she got back down again, all the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how she had managed to do it. How she had found the strength to succeed and reach the goal.
It turned out … the winner was DEAF! And the moral of the story is: never listen to other people’s tendencies to be negative or pessimistic, because they take your most wonderful dreams and wishes away from you – the ones you have in your heart. Always think of the power that words have, because everything you hear and read will affect your actions. So a little selective deafness when people tell you that you cannot fulfil your dreams may take you very far indeed.
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 The Last Victory by Stanley A. Mellor
Optimism, generally, is a way of facing the mystery and problem of life that is characterised by a certain ability to “cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt”, to believe that doubt, difficulty, and even despair, have a sunnier side. That on the whole, and in the last resort, the significance of this universe and of our lives is a real significance, and not an illusion, and is expressible, if at all, then truly only in terms of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, our longing for these and achieving of these. Such optimism, you will observe, stretches away to the furthest confines of time and bounds of space. It is not limited to events of a day and hour, nor concerned only with breaking the clouds of a moment. … The optimism one really wants has to be infinitely more than a pious belief in the future, more than a mere worship of progress, more than even the brightest, though illusive, certainty that, if only you give them time enough, things will all come right in the end. One needs the optimism that is born out of blackest pessimism, that is bought with a price, paid for in heart’s agony and blood, the optimism that realises the delusiveness of time, the possible vanity of progress, and will not be content to establish itself on anything less than recognition of the eternal here and now.
Prayer by Marta Hardy
Divine Spirit, be with us as we consider yet again the great questions.
If we reasoning creatures become given over utterly to reason, help us to consider that there might be light to be found beyond reason.
If we are struggling with the pain of fresh wounds help us to have confidence that they will heal, and help us to regard our scars not with bitterness and resentment but as medals of survival and marks of our beautiful uniqueness.
If our inclination is to be like the fabled three monkeys, covering our eyes, ears, and mouths so as not to perceive or speak evil, help us to be more honest and braver than that, accepting that with faculties alert we will contend with evil and good as well, and knowing that we can and must speak for the good.
Let us say with Martin Luther, “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
And if we look backward, help our looking to be not only in the spirit of seeing how far we have come but also of looking for things of worth we might have dropped in our haste to move forward on our journey.
Amen
Reading : from The Last Victory by Stanley A. Mellor
The optimistic view of life needs inspiration always, but circumstances sometimes emphasise the need. Such circumstances we are living in today. Consider the mental and spiritual atmosphere of our existence at this moment, its crudities and violences, its narrowness of judgement, its frequent failures to hold fast the purity of professed ideals, its problems and contradictions, its apathy and indifference. We know how these things, to which we cannot be blind, press upon the spirit of faith, and tend ever to darken and make heavier the actual cloud lowering on our world of worry, pain, anxiety, and loss.
Anyone who thinks that a splendid, buoyant belief in the ultimate worth and goodness of life, in God and eternal values, in the glorious destiny of the individual soul and the human family, is easy in such a time, is surely deluded, does not really know what faith is and means. …. Every optimism needs its continual inspiration. Every soul touched by faith, moved at all by holy spirit, needs strength to endure and patience to remain loyal to love and the peace of inward realization. … In such times, then, we need … all the inspiration for our faith that we can possibly find, and needing it, we must diligently seek it, since we cannot expect it to visit us altogether without cooperation of our will. [We can find it] in the heart’s silence, in study of poetry and great books, in the world’s religious literature, in lives of good men and women, in reflection on deeds and words of faith.
Time of Stillness and Reflection by Andrew Usher
Spirit of Life and Love,
Having gathered in this Oasis of Peace: having come from many places and with many differing thoughts: we pause in the quiet to reflect on our lives, and to offer to that which we find most holy our worship and our prayers – our hopes and our dreams – our confessions – our thanks for the blessings we have received.
We pray for a better world – more peaceful and more caring, and we ask for the strength and the courage to do what is needed to fulfil our dreams. We confess that so often we fall short of our own ideals, and we remember Jesus’ saying that the one who is without sin should cast the first stone. For all our mistakes, we pray for forgiveness, and we pray too that we may find it in our hearts to forgive the mistakes of others.
May we have the power of vision to look past both the specks in our own eyes and the outward appearance of other people in order to see that divine spark of life – that of God – which is present in all human beings.
We pray today particularly for those who are marginalised within our society – those whose inherent divinity is so often unrecognised – and for those who live or work in conditions we ourselves could not accept. For them, and for all people who find life difficult, we pledge ourselves to the task of helping to make this world a better place – even if it is simply by a smile or a welcoming word.
As we pause now in the quietness of our own thoughts, let us consider both the blessings and the trials of our lives, and dedicate ourselves to sharing our blessings and to doing what we can to ease the trials of others.
We pause in the shared good silence … [silence]
May our prayers be heard. Amen
Musical Interlude I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Faith in the Good
A few years ago, I received an unexpected, but most welcome, gift through the post, a copy of a slim, manila-coloured book called The Last Victory: Studies in Religious Optimism by Stanley A. Mellor, Unitarian minister of Hope Street Church in Liverpool. And I have just re-read it. Each of the four short sections is based on an address delivered at the church during the darkest days of World War One. The author explains: “Their purpose was … to remind people again of the conditions under which glowing faith must always furnish its warmth in a finite world, to face certain fundamental perplexities in the life of faith, and to provide encouragement and hope. The responsibility of surviving into the world of peace after war … must press heavily on every sensitive spirit, and the need for radiant constructive faith in the ultimate goodness and worth of life is very great, and will become greater.”
The whole book is a paean of hope; of “radiant constructive faith in the ultimate goodness and worth of life”. It spoke to me very deeply. Rev. Mellor was a Unitarian pacifist, at a time when this view was most unpopular, and with William J. Piggott, he wrote a wonderful rallying cry entitled The Fellowship of Emancipation for Freedom and Peace, which resulted in the foundation of the Unitarian and Free Christian Peace Fellowship in 1916. It included the following profession of belief:
“I. Peace depends on Freedom, spiritual, economic, political and social: Peace and Freedom go together. It is not a question of individuals and nations saying ‘We will not do this or that’, but of determining ‘We will do this: we will be that.’
No mere physical victory of one portion of humanity over another will or can produce the positive spiritual determination necessary to a better way.
- Freedom demands, as a minimum in social change, the following things:
- a) That the present economic conditions of life, which admittedly deny to the majority of humankind (mankind) the opportunity for real physical, intellectual, and spiritual development, shall be removed, and new conditions found.
- b) That service of the common good shall be substituted for the pursuit of private profit as the object of industrial activity.
- c) That direct responsibility for the welfare of the community, in industry and in citizenship, shall be extended to all members of the community alike.
- d) That women shall be emancipated completely from religious, social and legislative subjection.
- e) That barriers of wealth and privilege shall be removed.
- f) That the principle of equality of opportunity shall receive practical application all round.
These demands involve not simply reformation of our social and industrial system, but radical reconstruction. They are, further, logically implied by any acceptance of the command to love our neighbours, apart from any question of our individual duty towards God.
III. Freedom demands, as a minimum, from the individual, the ceaseless effort to purify the inward life and character, to practise the Christian virtues of goodwill, forgiveness, sympathy, justice, generosity, kindness, to their full extent, to get rid of hatred, ill will, and selfishness completely, and to give oneself in utter devotion to the only two possible worthy lines of human activity, purification of the inner heart and emancipation of the world from the bondage of ignorance, injustice, cruelty and inequality.”
The attitude that shines through all of this is his “certain ability to ‘cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt'” – an immovable belief that life is fundamentally good; and that ultimately, the good will prevail. He is careful to explain that this is “infinitely more than a pious belief in the future, more than a mere worship of progress, more than even the brightest, though illusive, certainty that … things will all come out right in the end.” The religious optimism Mellor espouses is “unswerving belief in what I have called the solidarity of goodness, the belief that, if once you get hold of the good in any measure or degree and give your life to it, to support it and do battle for it, then, no matter what appearances to the contrary may be, in the last resort, the whole universe is on your side, you are in touch with something solidly triumphant from first to last throughout the whole amazing and problematical texture of history and experience.”
The whole book has resonated with me at a profound level, in these dark days in which we are living. I have had a true epiphany – that I am that kind of religious optimist, who continues to believe in the ultimate good in the face of the evidence. Which is why the words of Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings have always moved me so greatly: “It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass. … There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
The part of The Last Victory which has brought the most enlightenment is where Mellors insists that “Optimism is not a scientific certainty, no true optimist ever said it was. It is an affirmation of the spirit, a risk accepted by the soul. … Call it what you will, belief in the unseen world, belief in the reality of the Ideal, faith in the solidarity and eternal value of goodness … the certainty remains that without it Humanity cannot go forward, and without it we ourselves can do no good and worthy work in the world.”
This kind of optimism is what fires volunteers to work to alleviate the terrible conditions in the refugee camps at Gaza and elsewhere, to give just one example; that inspires people to join pressure groups which are working for a better world. A world such as Mellors and Piggott dreamed of in their Unitarian and Free Christian Peace Fellowship manifesto, way back in 1916. A world which is still worth fighting for, cynical politicians to the contrary. People may sneer, and dismiss me and others like me as hopelessly idealistic, but without optimists like us, what good would ever happen? If Nelson Mandela had not had belief in spite of the evidence for a free South Africa, would it have happened? If Gandhi had not believed in equality for the people of India, would it have happened?
In our Unitarian context, I believe that the most important thing to establish is what our congregations are *for* – what their primary purpose is. A congregation is not a social club, nor is it a closed clique. At their best, Unitarian congregations are supportive places in which everyone is free to explore that which brings truth and meaning to their lives. At their best, Unitarian congregations are sacred spaces to which people can bring their whole selves, knowing that they will be wholeheartedly accepted, with all their doubts and questions, no matter what their gender, sexual orientation, race or class. I say “at their best”. Sadly, some congregations do not live up to this ideal of open-hearted acceptance. But we could, if we dedicated ourselves to making it happen.
I will finish by repeating part of the beautiful prayer which formed our Time of Stillness and Reflection, by Andrew Usher:
“Having gathered in this Oasis of Peace: having come from many places and with many differing thoughts: we pause in the quiet to reflect on our lives, and to offer to that which we find most holy our worship and our prayers – our hopes and our dreams – our confessions – our thanks for the blessings we have received.
We pray for a better world – more peaceful and more caring, and we ask for the strength and the courage to do what is needed to fulfil our dreams. We confess that so often we fall short of our own ideals, and we remember Jesus’ saying that the one who is without sin should cast the first stone. For all our mistakes, we pray for forgiveness, and we pray too that we may find it in our hearts to forgive the mistakes of others.
May we have the power of vision to look past both the specks in our own eyes and the outward appearance of other people in order to see that divine spark of life – that of God – which is present in all human beings.
We pray today particularly for those who are marginalised within our society – those whose inherent divinity is so often unrecognised – and for those who live or work in conditions we ourselves could not accept. For them, and for all people who find life difficult, we pledge ourselves to the task of helping to make this world a better place – even if it is simply by a smile or a welcoming word.”
May our prayers be heard, and may they translate into good actions. Amen
Closing Words by Angela Maher (adapted)
Spirit of Life and Love,
We are blessed with an abundance of good things, for we which we are truly thankful – as long as we remember them.
We are privileged with great freedom and power, for which, in return, we act with responsibility.
We are lucky to have shared this time and space together, because we are lucky to have each other.
May the spirit of this place, and these friends, go with us as we rejoin the world.
Amen
Postlude Stella del Mattino by Ludovico Einaudi