Contents 2003:
"When Death
Comes," Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes
and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door
full of curiosity wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
ending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life
something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
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Louise Gluck, "Nativity
Poem"
It is the evening
of the birth of god
Singing &
with gold instruments
the angels bear down
upon the barn, their wings
neither white
wax nor marble. So
they have been recorded:
burnished,
literal in the composed air,
they raise their harps above
the beasts likewise gathering,
the lambs & all the startled
silken chickens . . . . And Joseph,
off to one side, has touched
his cheek, meaning
he is weeping –
But how small he is, withdrawn
from the hollow of his mother’s life,
the raw flesh bound
in linen as the stars yield
light to delight his sense
for whom there is no ornament.
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"The Greatest Love,"
Anna Swir
She is sixty. She lives
the greatest love of her life.
She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind.
Her dear one says:
"You have hair like pearls."
Her children say:
"Old fool."
James Agee
In every child who is born,
under no matter what circumstances,
and of no matter what parents,
the potentiality of the human race
is born again.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Our concern
is not to worship
in the catacombs,
but how to remain human
in the skyscrapers.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
I am part
of all
that I have met.
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"My Dead Friends,"
Marie Howe
I have begun,
when I am weary and can’t decide an answer
to a bewildering question
to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear
Should I take the job? Move to the city?
Should I try to conceive a child in my middle age?
They stand in unison
shaking their heads and smiling –
whatever leads to joy,
they always answer.
to more life and less worry.
I look into the vase where Billy’s ashes were –
it’s green in there, a green vase,
and I ask Billy
if I should return the difficult phone call,
and he says, yes.
Billy’s already gone through the frightening door.
Whatever he says I’ll do.
Leon Bloy
Joy
is the infallible sign
of the presence of God
in us.
Walt Whitman
I
celebrate
myself.
Jane Austen
One cannot have too large a party.
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"Gift," R. S. Thomas
Some ask the world
and are diminished
in the receiving
of it. You gave me
only this small pool
that the more I drink
from, the more overflows
me with sourceless light.
Chinese proverb
It is only when
the cold season comes
that we know the pine
and cypress
to be evergreens.
Jean Juares
We should take
from the past
its fires
and not its ashes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The years teach
what the days never know.
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"Breath," Kabir
(translated by Robert Bly)
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
You will find me in stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly –
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.
Paul Allen:
The ability of all creatures
to share in the process of ongoing creation
makes all things sacred.
Samuel Butler:
Life is like
playing a violin solo in public
and learning the instrument
as one goes on.
Oscar Wilde:
To live
is the
rarest thing
in the world.
Most people
exist,
that is
all.
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"A particular truth can be stated in words
– that life is better than death and love than hate, that there
is a god or is not, that light travels faster than sound and
cancer can sometimes be cured if you discover it in time. But
truth itself is another matter, the truth that Pilate asked for,
tired and bored and depressed by his long day. Truth itself cannot
be stated. Truth simply is, and is what is, the good with the bad,
the joy with the despair, the presence and absence of God, the
swollen eye, the bird pecking the cobbles for crumbs. Before it is
a word, the gospel that is truth is silence, a pregnant silence in
its ninth month, and in answer to Pilate’s question, Jesus keeps
silent, and even with his hands tied behind him manages somehow to
hold silence out like a terrible gift."
Frederick Buechner
If twentieth-century
Christians are to speak the truth
for their sociohistorical situation,
they cannot merely repeat the
story of what Jesus did and said
in Palestine, as if it were
self-interpreting for us today.
Truth is more than the retelling of
the biblical story. Truth is the
divine happening that invades our
contemporary situation, revealing
the meaning of the past for the
present so that we are made new
creatures for the future . . . .
Our commitment to the divine
Truth . . . requires us to investigate
the connection between Jesus’
words and deeds . . . and our exis-
tence today. This is the crux of the
christological issue that no
Christian theology can avoid.
James H. Cone
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"Deeply Woven Roots," Gary Gunderson
We shall not, we shall not be moved.
We shall not, we shall not be moved.
Like a tree that’s planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.
It is hard not to look up into the high reaches of a deep
and healthy forest. But the true story is in the dirt, the roots. And what is
forest loam but fallen trees? Although a forest may span miles, one tree has
to grow where it happened to sprout, hoping to bear all the fruit it can.
Storms and fires sweep aside the weak. Some are more resilient than others,
some keep growing even after they are knocked down. But the big difference is
whom they grow next to, whose roots tangle with their own.
Like a tree that’s planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.
A forest’s resilience reflects diversity. Any one tree
relies not just on its own roots but on an interwoven fabric of roots. And
while it is a good thing to put down roots, grow into the wind, and rise high
into the sky, it is also a good thing to know that even in our falling, even
as our individual memories slip behind, we will be part of the whole.
Like a tree that’s planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.
The most important thing to understand about a redwood tree
– and about a community – is how it passes life on. Where does the next
generation come from? Redwood trees don’t usually spring from individual
seeds; they spring from the roots of older trees. It is nonsense to describe
one redwood tree. Not only are they tangled together at the top, they are
inseparable at the bottom, where the roots are deeply woven together. We, too,
spring from the roots of those who precede us.
Like a tree that’s planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.
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His Widow Complex
| . . .
[Jesus] was sitting that morning in the temple looking at the
treasury-box in which all kinds of people were throwing their money from
rattling and loud clanking bags.
And then in that row of rich people
very politely and submissively greeting by the temple - askaris, . . .
and all the others
* * *
there is again that widow with her
two five-cent pieces carefully knotted in her handkerchief.
She stepped in front of the box
unknotting her coins; the others were getting impatient already, and she
dropped her two five-cent pieces, and was pushed on immediately. Jesus
stood up, his disciples too, and he said to their astonishment: |
". . .
She gave all she had, everything; she gave more than anyone else."
* * *
. . . if our baptism in him means
anything to us then our lives too should integrate the example of [the widow]
who gave all [she] had in view of God . . . .
When he took his bread that last
evening of his life, when he took his cup and said:
"This is my body, this is my
blood," he must have been thinking of . . . that widow . . . in the
temple.
-- Joseph O. Donders
|
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"A Hasidic Tale"
When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune
threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of
the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special
prayer and the miracle would be accomplished and his misfortune averted.
Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezeritch,
had occasion,
for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to
the same place in the forest and say, "Master of the Universe, listen!
I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the
prayer,"
and again the miracle would be accomplished.
Still later, Rabbi Moseh-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his
people once more,
Would go into the forest and say, "I do not know how to light the fire,
I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be
sufficient."
It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.
Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome
misfortune.
Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God:
"I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot
even
find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and
this must be sufficient."
And it was sufficient.
Elie Wiesel
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Call to Worship: Alycia
Stuart, leader
Leader: Consider
Freedom as Creator --
Freedom as All People.
People: We stand in humility.
Leader: Freedom needed a place to play
and gathered all the dust in the universe and formed the planets and the
stars. Freedom’s eyes are the moon and the sun.
People: We stand in wonder.
Leader: Freedom sneezed and birds and
insects were created. Freedom dug in the earth and pulled forth animals from
the soil. Freedom was hurt while digging in the earth and began to cry.
Individual was formed from some of Freedom’s tears. The rest of the tears
watered the earth and gave rise to flowers and trees, grasses and all other
plants that cover the earth.
People: We stand in awe.
Leader: To Individual, Freedom gave
compassion and with compassion, Individual must care for the earth and all the
creatures on it.
People: We stand in need.
All:
Heavenly Creator, be within us, be around us, hear us and guide us, we pray.
Amen.
** Written by the Youth Bible Study
as their first creation story
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October 19, 2003
"When I Pray the Prayer of St. Francis"
When I pray his prayer, or even remember it, my
melancholy is dispelled, my self-pity comes to an end; my faith is
restored because of this majestic conception of what the work of a
disciple should be.
So majestic is this conception that one dare no longer
be sorry for oneself. This world ceases to be one’s enemy and becomes
the place where one lives and works and serves. Life is no longer nasty,
mean, brutish, and short, but becomes the time that one needs to make it
less nasty and mean, not only for others, but indeed also for oneself.
We are brought back instantaneously to the reality of
our faith, that we are not passive recipients but active instruments.
Alan Paton, Instrument of Thy Peace
In every place where humans dwell there is a house for
worship.
In every heart there is a room for God.
In every mind there is a need for meaning.
In times of darkness we seek light in words of eternal truth
and in the laws of nature.
Many would join Dag Hamarskjold’s words:
"I pray to the One I do not know but to Whom I belong."
Bishop Gunnar Stalsett,
Cathedral of Oslo, 29 August 2003,
Memorial Service for the victims of the bomb attack
on the United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad
UN Resolution 52/15 declares 2001-2010
"International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence
for the Children of the World"
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October 12, 2003
Things of This World
Theresa of Avila surely had a gold thimble
and John of the Cross suffering from sleepless fears
lit the wick in a clay lamp
and by its light the stool grew on his cell’s wall
From earth’s clay none can free themselves
and the spirit has some kinship with clay
therefore absolve me God from objects
which lead me humbly
to the rim of the abyss only to leave me there
but I don’t hold it against my father’s violin
my mother’s glasses my grandmother’s cane
they walked with them as much as they could
demanding nothing without moaning or complaint
Taking leave from the scored edge of a table
usually isn’t easy from a low stool for your feet
from an old porcelain inkpot
I speak to them with the tongue of love
so they won’t get covered up with an icy glaze
I feed them with radiance with a lamp’s light
they like it knowing they will endure
calm and poor like the camel in the Gospel
who pushes his hump to heaven through the needle’s eye
-- Anna Kamienska, translated from the Polish
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October 5, 2003
"The Creation"
Using the same old materials
of earth, air, fire, and water,
every twenty-four hours God
creates something new out of
them. If you think you’re see-
ing the same show all over
again seven times a week,
you’re crazy. Every morning
you wake up to something
that in all eternity never was
before and never will be
again. And the you that
wakes up was never the
same before and will never
be the same either.
Frederick Buechner,
Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC
A spiritual seeker should carry two stones in a pocket.
On one it should be inscribed, "I am but dust and ashes."
On the other, "For my sake was the world created."
And the seeker should use each stone as needed.
Hasidic Teacher, Rabbi Bunam
When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean
what is left;
it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.
Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt;
Therefore I am commanding you to do this.
-- Deuteronomy 24:21-22
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