Unitarian Sunday Reflections

(Hull and Lincoln Unitarians)

15 January 2023

 

 

Theme

“Old, New,

Tradition, favourites, memories, conversations,

and Vision”

 

PRELUDE

 Improvisations on “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” by Thomas A Dorsey

 

WORDS OF WELCOME

Welcome to each and to all:

seekers, journeyers, questing, and content.

May our time of reflection and worship,

fill our desire for wholeness and belonging.

In this time together we are made worthy…..

 

OPENING/REFLECTIVE QUOTE

The Guest House

by Jalaluddin Rumi

 

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

 

Welcome and entertain 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.

 

CHALICE LIGHTING

words by John Carter

 

We light our chalice, this candle,

          as a sign of connectedness….

                     of a beloved faith community,

                               reaching beyond our boundaries…

                                         seeking equity and justice for all creation….

                                                   learning what the human spirit can do and be…

 

OPENING PRAYER

We take a moment to reflect on our life and living of this week… as we reflect…. explore and ask of yourself….

          For what am I most grateful?

          For what am I least grateful?

          When did I have the greatest sense of belonging to myself, others, nature, the                     universe, God?

 

As we end these reflections, as we move to worship, may we continue to reflect on the things that make life whole and how we may grow ourselves into them.

May the Great Spirit of the Journey walk with us today.

Amen.

 

OPENING HYMN

Lincoln

HFL 246 (CD2 WWSFT / TK 26)

“Morning, so fair to see”

words by Vincent Brown Silliman

 

Morning, so fair to see,

night, veiled in mystery —

Glorious the earth and resplendent skies!

Comrades, we march along,

Singing our pilgrim song,

As through an earthly paradise.

 

Fair are the verdant trees;

Fair are the flashing seas;

Fair is each wonder the seasons bring.

Fairer is faith’s surmise

Shining in pilgrim eyes:

Fairer the comradeship we sing.

 

Age after age arise,

‘Neath the eternal skies,

Into the light from the shadowed past:

Still shall our pilgrim song,

Buoyant and brave and strong,

Resound while life and mountains last.

 

Hull

SYF 103

“Mother Earth”

words by Amanda Udis-Kessler (based on Francis of Assisi)

 

Mother Earth, beloved garden, living treasure under foot,

all our days you ground our  being: sage and thistle, grass and root.

Herbs to heal us, plants to feed us, land to till and tend and plough,

with the pendant, deep as midnight, North we ask you: be here now.

 

Father Air, your inspiration holds together all that lives.

As we breathe, our minds see clearly, leading us to live and give.

Raging whirlwind, whispered breezes, violent gale and gentle cloud,

with the blade as sharp as morning, East, we ask you: be here now.

 

Brother Fire, great transformer, share the passion of the sun.

In our hearths, your warmth revives us, cooks our food and heats our homes.

Flaming candle, blood within us, blazing desert, will to grow.

With the wand, directing power, South, we ask you: be here now.

 

Sister Water, ever flowing, ocean, river, pond and rain,

drink we now and quench our thirsting; cleanse us, we began again.

Mist and ice, a host of changes; all that courage will allow,

with the cup, the holy chalice, West, we ask you: be here now.

 

Lover Spirit, intuition in the centre of our souls.

In your love we find relation, all connected, we are whole.

Timeless mystery, quiet conscience, deepest values, voice inside,

with the drum and with the cauldron, this we ask you: be our guide.

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Today’s service began as a reflection on this years Unitarian Minister Journal theme of Generations. I am still not sure if I will write anything, but my mind went to the conversation of generations as systemic hinderance, or empowerment of a congregation…. But I eventually settled on a sort of sound of music them of favourite things. Years of ministry in various churches have shone me this systemic pattern in religious communities, as detailed by Edwin H. Friedman in his book….

 Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue… but it has also shown me how congregations remember and envision. A fascinating dance between memory and vision, oft times disruptive and sometimes helpful. Sometimes for multiple generations of a collective body. I am inviting you to remember and to envision today, By reflecting on your favourite hymns, or readings, or times of season, as well as how does these memories inform or reflection in your vision for the future.

 

READINGS

Faith As An Individual Memory

by Abraham Joshua Heschel, from Essential Writings, Orbis Books, 2011.

 

To have faith does not mean, however, to dwell in the shadow of old ideas conceived by prophets and sages, to live off an inherited estate of doctrine and dogma. In the realm of spirit only they who pioneer are able to be an heir. The wages of spiritual plagiarism is the loss of integrity; self-aggrandisement is self-betrayal.

 

Authentic faith is more than an echo of a tradition. It is a creative situation, an event. For God is not always silent, and humanity is not always blind. In everyone’s life there are moments when there is a lifting of the veil at the horizon of the known, opening a sight of the eternal. Each of us has at least once in life experienced the momentous reality of God. Each of us has once caught a glimpse of the beauty, peace, and power that flow through the souls of those who are devoted to God.

 

But such experiences or inspiration are rare events.

 

To some people they are like shooting stars, passing and unremembered. In others they kindle a light that is never quenched. The remembrance of that experience and the loyalty to the response of that moment are the forces that sustain our faith. In this sense, faith is faithfulness, loyalty to an event, loyalty to our response.

 

 

“My Life Has Turned To Blue”

by Maya Angelou, from And Still I Rise

 

Our summer’s gone,

the golden days are through.

The rosy dawns I used to

wake with you

have turned to grey,

my life has turned to blue.

 

The once-green lawns

glisten now with dew.

Red robin’s gone,

down to the South he flew.

Left here alone,

my life has turned to blue.

 

I’ve heard the news

that winter too will pass,

that spring’s a sign

that summer’s due at last.

But until I see you

lying in green grass,

my life has turned to blue.

 

 

 

SECOND HYMN

Lincoln

HFL 126 (CD 2 WWSFT/TK 11)

“The Larger View”

words by John Andrew Storey

 

In their ancient isolation

Races framed their moral codes,

And the peoples of each nation

Trod their solitary roads.

Now the distances are shrinking;

Travel, and the printed page,

All earth’s many lands are linking,

Spreading knowledge of each sage.

 

Now new times demand new measures,

And new ways we must explore;

Let each faith bring its own treasures

To enrich the common store.

Then no more will creeds divide us —

Though we love our own the best —

For the larger view will guide us

As we join in common quest.

 

Hull

SYF 8

“Be ours a religion”

words by Theodore Parker

 

Be ours a religion

which like sun-shine goes everywhere

its temple all space,

its shrine the good heart,

its creed all truth,

its ritual works of love.

 

READINGS

“Interfaith Conversation”

by Howard Thurman

 

Howard Thurman, 20th century African American, minister, writer, theologian, poet, writes of an encounter that he had….

 

“My chief concern while in India was to have some time with Dr. Singh, who was the head of the division of Oriental studies for Shantiniketan University. One glorious morning we sat on the floor in searching conversation about the life of the spirit, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. When lunchtime came, I had to keep an appointment with some students. Getting up from the floor, massaging my usual Charley horse, I looked at him.

 

He remarked, “I see you are chuckling.”

 

I replied that he was doing the same, adding “Perhaps we are reacting to the same thing.”

 

He then remarked, “Suppose you tell me first.”

 

I said we had spent the entire morning sparring for position…

 

“you from behind your Hindu breastwork, and I from behind my Christian embattlement. Now and then, we step out from that protection, draw a bead on each other, then retreat.”

 

“You are right. When we come back this afternoon, let us be wiser than that.”

 

Howard, in reflection of the day, goes on to say….

 

“That afternoon I had the most primary, naked fusing of total religious experience with another human being of which I have ever been capable. It was as if we had stepped out of social, political, cultural frames of reference, and allowed two human spirits to unite on a ground of reality hat was unmarked by separateness and differences. This was a watershed of experience in my life. We had become a part of each other even as we remained essentially individual. I was able to stand secure in my place and enter into his place without diminishing myself or threatening him.”

 

 

 

“American Gothic”

by William Stafford

from his collection of poems Ask Me, 100 Essential Poems

 

If we see better through tiny,

grim glasses, we like to wear

tiny, grim glasses.

Our parents willed us this

view. It’s tundra? We love it.

 

We travel our kind of

Renaissance: barnful of hay,

whole voyages of corn, and

a book that flickers its

halo in the parlour.

 

Poverty plus confidence equals

pioneers. We never doubted.

 

“A Time to Build Up”

by Joan Chittister, from For Everything A Season, Orbis Books, 2013

 

Revolutions are strange things. They give us a wild sense of triumph and, at the same time, they confront us with the fragility of victory. At the very moment a revolution succeeds, all the dreaming ends and all the theories turn to dust and all the talking ceases. Suddenly, the fireworks go black in the sky. The dawn becomes daylight. The real work of revolution begins at the very moment the old world collapses.

 

Then, whatever the promises that fired the upheaval, they cease to be poetry and begin to be the cold, hard facts of popular politics. The hopes fade into expectations. Heroes turn to humdrum, and all the drum majors of the world are left without a band. When the revolution has been won, the task in life is no longer critique. There is no need then to lead the meddling crowd to wish for brave new worlds. On the contrary,  the crowds depend on them. They demand them. No, the task in life after the dramatic work of a revolution is over is not to envision possibilities; it is to make good on promises. The task in life after the revolution ends is to build up what has been torn down. The task in life when the last note of the march fades is to begin again. “Our grand business.” Thomas Carlyle wrote, “is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.’

 

It is dailiness now that demands the work, not of dreamers, but of doers.

 

THIRD HYMN

Lincoln

HFL 7 (CD2/TK 2

“Source of All Being”

words by Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

Source of all being! Throned afar,

Thy glory flames from sun and star;

centre and soul of every sphere,

yet to each loving heart now near!

 

Sun of our life! Thy quickening ray

sheds on our path the glow of day:

star of our hope! Thy softened light

cheers the long watches of the night.

 

God of all life, below, above,

whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,

before thy ever-blazing throne

we ask no lustre of our own.

 

Grant us thy truth to make us free,

and kindling hearts that burn for thee,

till all thy living altars claim

one holy light, one heavenly flame.

 

Hull

SYF 67

“I am that great and fiery force”

based on words by Hildegard of Bingen

 

I am that great and fiery force sparkling in everything that lives,

in shining of the river’s course, in greening grass that glory gives.

 

I shine in glitter on the seas, in burning sun, in moon and stars.

In unseen wind, in verdant trees I breathe within, both near and far.

 

And where I breathe there is no death, and meadows glow with beauties rife.

I am in all the spirit’s breath, the thundered word, for I am Life.

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

As we look to this year of 2023 what do you bring with you, in joy, in memory, in connections, as well as one specific thing you would like to do?

 

ADDRESS

“Unto the seventh generation”

 

When I was in University, my Anabaptist Theology / Mennonite History professor spoke of how he was always puzzled by the Ananias and Sapphira text in Acts chapter 5.

 

If you would like to look it up and there is much discussion about this text, in a similar puzzled concerns.

 

So, the story is simply about a couple, who see in the actions of the community of their day something that they desire, Praise. The fact that the early believers were communistic in behaviour. That is the new members would sell their property and donate all to the meeting.

 

Something that later analysis always try to ignore…. Then A & S join the community and see the response to the givers of the gift, and they devise a plot to sell all they own, but to give half to the community.

 

Sort of a having one’s cake and eating it too, with ice cream and custard.

 

So they acted and were found out and struck dead.

 

Now this is where everyone gets crazed about this text….

 

I would suggest a study of the various teaching within the greek texts on giving, and you will find a pattern of exception. Giving is voluntary, give what you can, for the good of the whole community. It is voluntary, and it is private.

 

A & S’s sin was lying, saying they gave all.

 

So it is an warning tale of the early church about using giving as a prestige enhancer.

 

Now my prof in reflecting upon his ministry and this discovered another way of looking at this….

 

When we was called as an interim minister to a small mennonite community, He discovered that there was a major issue, undefined but clearly about control and power over the community. After research, interviewing the community, and observation of community dynamics, he came to a conclusion, and then tested it.

 

Essentially two of the oldest members of the community, sort of the matriarch and patriarch, being of different, yet connected families, were sustaining a feud that went on for generations. The whole church knew it, and it became very obvious to any stranger that came into the chapel.

 

That is the understanding of many within the study of group systems and dynamics. One of the biggest hurdles in ministry and church development is the negative systems that seem to arise over the years. I have been known to ask what is holding the congregation back to see how aware they are of these issues. And I have found that these issues appear during my ministry.

 

So my professor said that he and the elders of the congregation visited both persons about this on going feud. And at the end of the individual visits he invited them to reconcile with each other for the benefit of the congregation and community. And they responded with God’s will be done.

 

And no reconciliation.

 

He then told the class that within a week he conducted both funerals. The congregation was able to then move on and was able to grow.

 

He saw the acts 5 text as morality tale of if you hold back, or deny or lie, then it will find you out, so reconcile or face the ultimate punishment. 

 

And Yes this is stark, but I do see his point, if we are unwilling to face our congregational demons, or our mistakes, or our lack of faith in each other, it will lead to disaster, or the death of a congregation.

 

Yet good memories, and healthy habits of congregations also come through the generations as well. Congregations that practice hospitality, welcome, healthy inquisitiveness can grow. Often it is not the theology that attracts new people but the welcome they received.

 

My own experience with my home Unitarian congregation mirrors that of many others, theology played a part, but it was the welcome that was evident at the very beginning that kept me attending. Then the friendships that developed.

 

So what are your dreams, or visions for this congregation?

 

What would you like to see happen here?

 

And

 

How will you help make that happen? 

 

 

MUSICAL INTERLUDE:

“O schöne Zeit, O sel’ge Zeit” By Carl Gotze.

 

REFLECTION & PRAYER

“Times & Seasons”

by Rev A Powell Davies

 

“O God who hast given us to share earth’s life and to know its times and seasons, give us grace so to live that we may love what Thou hast given.

 

Help us, O God, in a world so full of what is wonderful, ever changing, ever surprising us with new revelations of life’s power and beauty, to accept with gratitude all that gladdens us, and with fortitude all that brings us grief.

 

Let us take time to watch the morning and the evening skies, to look often and long at the marvellous earth and all that lives upon it, to be with heart and soul a friend and neighbour and a part of humankind.

 

Let us rejoice in the heritage bequeathed to us from yesterday, and in the festivals of faith and hope.

 

Let us look at our world as it is, and seek a wisdom that is not censorious. Let us look in tour own hearts and be brave enough to separate the evil from the good. Let us look into our own hearts and be brave enough to separate the evil from the good. Let us be learning always, from all that we see and do, and from all that happens to us.

 

And if shadows overtake us, let us not dim within ourselves the light that helps others to live.

 

Give us, O God, to carry with us the kindness that we look for, to be gentle as we wish the world were gentle, and by being loving, to bring closer to fulfilment all that is the fruit of love.”

 

NOTICES

 

FINAL HYMN

Lincoln

HFL 208 (CD2 (WST)/Tk21)

“Forward through the ages”

words by Frederick Lucian Hosmer

 

Forward through the ages

In unbroken line,

Move the faithful spirits

At the call divine:

Gifts in differing measure,

Hearts of one accord,

Manifold the service,

One the sure reward.

Forward through the ages

In unbroken line,

Move the faithful spirits

At the call divine.

 

Wider grows the kingdom,

Reign of love and light;

For it we must labour,

Till our faith is sight.

Prophets have proclaimed it,

Martyrs testified,

Poets sung its glory,

Heroes for it died.

Forward through the ages

In unbroken line,

Move the faithful spirits

At the call divine.

 

Not alone we conquer,

Not alone we fall;

In each loss or triumph

Lose or triumph all.

Bound by God’s far purpose

In one living whole,

Move we on together

To the shining goal!

Forward through the ages

In unbroken line,

Move the faithful spirits

At the call divine.

 

Hull

SYF 210

“When the Song of Life is Ringing”

words by David Charles Doel

 

When the song of life is ringing

through the green fields and the wood

and the love of God is singing

in your mind and in your blood,

holy angels come to give you

wondrous gifts of joy and peace;

and the soul will leap with rapture

in a dance of glad release.

 

But when life’s harsh road has brought us

only hurt and grief and pain

and the darkness hides the promise

we feel now was made in vain,

sad the song we sing amidst tears

from the well of human woe,

for no angel’s song the soul hears,

where the heart is stricken low.

 

Yet in life, if we stay faithful

to the trust we cannot shake,

if we honour our creator

with this life we did not make,

we shall find how God supports us —

God who’s true in everything —

brings us through the dark and lean times

to that place where angels sing.

 

BLESSING

For Earth Day and every day….

by Rev John Carter

 

May we so live our lives,

Today, and every day,

Simply,

So that all life on earth may simply live.

 

Amen.

 

POSTLUDE

(on accordion): “Sous le ciel de Paris” By Hubert Giraud.