Chalice Lighting
The essence of myself
And the essence of the universe,
These two are one;
There is no separation.
For each of us carries within our individual self the Universal All.We light the chalice to celebrate this coming together of our separate selves into the Sacred Oneness that we truly are.
Call To Worship
We come together knowing only partly, who we are, apart,
Knowing only partly where we are, where we go;
We touch: Mind and heart and hand, and
Through that touch begin to better understand
The one we are, together,
Where we are, together,
Where we go, together.-Rev. Gerald D. Sylvester
Meditation
Eagle Poem by Joy Harjo
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
we see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
we are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon, within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.What is Spirituality? A Collage for Voice Choir
There are so many
words we use
to get at the mystery of Life:
God!
Of course!
Jahweh
Allah
The Tao
Ground of Being
Goddess
The Oversoul
The Prime Mover
Atman
The Great Spirit
The Eternal Now
The Mystery of Mysteries
Brahma
The Ultimate Truth
To Whom It May Concern!Words words words words words words words
How about the dictionary? A dictionary will help? Won’t it help? Dictionaries should help shouldn’t they?
(holding a dictionary) Spiritual - (spir-it-choo-al), adjective. 1. of the human spirit or soul, not physical or wordly.Hmmmmmmmmm
Spirituality is:
The internal life.
Feeeeelings
Spirit of Life
(sing) Spirit of life, come unto me, sing in my heart, all the stirrings of.....
awe;
the primary religious emotion is awe.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
The response is awe!
.....watching a gorgeous sunset....
The response is awe!
The path to spirituality is through the human heart
(hands on chest - sound effect: lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub)
Living is a form of not being sure.
We take
leap after leap
in the dark.
(sing to the tune of “Amazing Grace”)
What grace is this that moves in me – and makes my spirit grow.....?
Spirituality is:
connectedness,
imagination,
relatedness to something outside of ourselves
and larger than ourselves.
(sing to the tune of “Amazing Grace”)
It helps me feel a part of all, and still uniquely me.
STOP! This is too vague and ambiguous. How can we talk about something that means so many things to so many different people???
When I use a word I want to say what I mean
and mean what I say! We all need to agree on a definition of spirituality!
words words words words words words
words diverge, contend
hearts writhe with diverse meanings
minds never agree
words words words words words words
Label! label! What’s your label?
Secular HumanistReligious Humanist
Atheist
Theist
Deist
Buddhist
Agnostic
Mystic
Earthist
Pagan
WiccanAre you religious?
I believe!Are you spiritual?
I perceive!Are you rational?
I measure!Are you mystical?
I experience!STOP! Let us just tell our stories!
Listen.....listen....listen....listen....to each other.
We mortals are seekers of meaning --
(looking far off) seekers of meaning, seekers of meaning......
Spirituality is:
the experience of connection;
the interdependent web of all existence;
the oneness at the center;
unity with all things.words words words words words words words
listen.........listen.....listen.....listen.........listen.......
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time.T. S. Eliot
May there be peace on earth,
May the hearts of all people
be open to themselves and to each other,
May all people awaken
to the light of their own true nature,
May all creation be blessed
and be a blessing
to All That Is.Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen;
Shalom - Saalam - Blessed Be.
ah-ah-men, AMEN!
Shared Sermon:
“What Grace is This That Moves in me?
--Existential Spirituality"Mark Knight:
When it comes to spirituality, I would have to say that I am an existentialist. Now this means many things—I spent almost three years studying it as an undergrad, after all—but to put it simply and directly: my perspective as an existentialist means that I am interested in the “lived experience” of the individual in the “here and the now.”
So when I hear people talk about “spirituality” I am not looking for abstractions. “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” doesn’t interest me. What I want to know is what does spirit, spirituality, spiritual practice, whatever, do for your life, in the present moment.
We’re not talking beliefs here. You’ve lost me if you start describing the entities in your cosmology. Instead tell me what the experience is like for you. What does it feel like in your body? How about your emotional self. And what part does your rational self play? I AM interested in the richly varied, profoundly subjective variety of human experiences which get labeled spirituality.
But don’t stop with the description. Tell me as well, what difference this makes in your life. What meaning have you made of it? How has this experience or collection of experiences informed your existence? What fruits has it born? Has it brought healing? Peace of mind? New motivation for social action? Increased compassion? A keener sense of inequities. More laughter? This to me, is a spirituality I can live with¼
A spirituality that manifests in the world as more peace, more justice, more kindness.
You want to talk spirit with me--let’s talk the spirit of life.
Jane McKeel
The first extended trip away from home that I can remember was a family vacation in Florida when I was seven. My aunt and uncle lived in an orange grove, and I secretly staked out a portion of that grove as my special place for the week's visit. I spent some important and happy time each day among five distinctive trees. On the day of our departure, I ran down to "my" tree to say goodbye¼and found myself overwhelmed by sadness. In a short time, five citrus trees had become my close companions, and bidding them farewell brought a pain that caught me totally by surprise: I belonged to them, and they to me - it was a connection I felt very deeply. I think I recognized even then that - together - the trees and I occupied sacred ground.
Strongly felt connections¼to nature, people and animals, to places and happenings ¼have nurtured my life always. Sometimes the connections touch potentially perilous things - like dark, seething thunderclouds; sometimes they occur in a crowd - like a gathering of like-minded people rallying for justice. Sometimes the connections happen very suddenly, unexpectedly¼.
But what do these connections mean? And how do impulses deep within me find affirmation ¼and meaning?
The Ogallala Sioux visionary Black Elk said that the Center of the Universe is in me, in you, is really everywhere. And that at that center flourishes the Tree of Life - warmed by our laughter and watered with our tears. My experience indicates that Black Elk was right: the dogwood blossoms and the blossoming of friendship and of courage, too, all grow upon that universal Tree of Life - or to use the image from the Hebrew Scriptures, all have their roots in sacred ground - like my long-ago orange grove. So does the special synergy I feel in my relationship to animals; they and I seem to meet beneath the shade of that legendary Tree. There was the large just-killed snake that I picked up with my bare hands at age two - alarming my family, and a few years later, Henny Penny, a quite ordinary-looking hen, who used to fall asleep in my lap. The indescribable bond that sparkles back and forth between the four-footed and the feathered and myself connects and grounds me to a luminous reality. It strengthens my resolve to work for animal health and safety. From the great elephants (now disappearing across the African savanna) to the large, golden eyes of Gumbi, our Maine Coon cat, I distill an essence of mysterious beauty¼and rapture far beyond words. Through this awareness, I am more whole, more healed. But there's more: I also sense that this beauty and joy are the true birth right of all - humans and non-humans, and that meaning for my life takes shape if I can use my power positively in places where that natural beauty and joy are denied, whether through ignorance, neglect, or greed.
If there is a "spiritual truth" that supports and nourishes my life at its core, it is this: the extraordinary seems to be always just there -- inside each ordinary moment. All we have to do is open our heart - and catch it if we can¼.
The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning expressed this insight in traditional Christian language: "Earth's crammed with heaven," she wrote, "and every common bush afire with God."
Heaven, God - these words help articulate it for many people. For me, Black Elk's language resonates more clearly: the Center of the Universe with that fabulous mythical Tree can be found anywhere. Since early childhood I have experienced the world of the physical senses to be inextricably intertwined with the world of spiritual insight in some vast wondrous web of being.
Just open your heart and connect. It's all sacred ground.
Lindsey Harmon - “Reconciliation”
I, like Jane, have had the experience of a spiritual relationship with a
place. In my case it is the experience of a lifetime--the accumulative
relationship that developed in childhood and has extended into old age.
The experience developed and changed over the life cycle, and changed
also with the times.I grew up in a little one-horse farm in Minnesota, just outside of South
St. Paul. We were dirt poor, but I loved the place. The lake--just a
pothole left by the retreat of the glaciers 10,000 years ago--became a part of me. So did Breisler's Hill, nest door, the mightiest pile of moraine for miles around. And the little rows of rhubarb and asparagus, which had been there for years before I came. And so much more--it all became a part of me, and I treasured the memories, though poverty was our lot on a place with no electricity and no indoor plumbing.Fifty years or so later I re-visited that farm. The house and barn were gone, and only the roots of the old windmill were still there, sticking out of their concrete footings. The place was desertedd now; nobody lived there any more. But the asparagus and rhubarb were still growing, and we picked some to take home, to taste how it had been. Breisler's Hill and the lake were there, and we could recognize some of the old trees. All this was still a part of me.
More years passed, and times changed. The town expanded, and needed room to grow. A flood came to the Mississippi River nearby, and Breisler's Hill was sacrificed to stem the flood, and to make flat land for the city's growth. All the features so dear to my heart had vanished. A part of me had been taken away. I felt violated, ravished. A part of me had been destroyed. I never wanted to see the place again. It was a bitter blow. It led me to reflect on how the Native Americans must have felt--and feel still--when we Europeans drove them off their sacred places, their ancestral homes, and onto "reservations"--land nobody wanted. Their trauma was a thousand times what mine was, but similar in kind, and I could understand.
Yet I did see that land again, just last summer, when my brother took me back there--as near as we could get, for a chain link fence now surrounded those acres, and a sign warned that it was public property.
It apparently is being alowed to revert to nature, and forests have begun to grow again, reclaiming their ancient heritage. Outside the fence homes have grown up in old pastures and orchards. Now new schools, new homes, with gardens and children grow there--happy families who know nothing of the ancient landscape I had known. On that land they "live and move, and have their being." In spite of the wrenching change, this was good. Gradually, I was reconciled. I accepted the changes, and my spirit was at last at rest again.
This, then, is the story of a spiritual connection with the land--a piece of land--that developed in my youth, persisted into my adult years, was threatened and torn in my later years, and restored again just last year: a spiritual relationship that spanned three quarters of a century. The experience deepended and extended my appreciation of race relations in America, and made me more compassionate with the trauma that others must feel.
Steve Smith
In my quietest moments, I can see an image of my life's path. In retrospect, I see that I have crossed a bridge. From this side I can look back and even go back, but this new side is blissful, a beautiful place. I occasionally go back across to see old friends, but some seem rough, kind of unwashed. This bothers me a bit, for I preach egalitarianism, that people are all equal, but I don't judge the feeling, I just observe it, and scurry back across the bridge. There are people on the new side, mostly you folks who bless me for my happiness, who have enough strength to allow that. But how did I get here.
I started as a pure scientist, an Astronomer, all grey matter. Over the years though, that and an unbridled materialism began to harden my heart. Now it's a wonderful and frightful truth that the mental eventually manifests itself in the physical, and a hardened heart eventually led to my calcified heart valve. In the wake of its replacement, my spiritual growth began. Believe me it was not fun. First I regained my ability to empathize. Unable to rise from my bed without help, I experienced helplessness for the first time, and understood how callus I'd been when I'd observed it in others.
During this time and for a couple of years before, I'd become a regular
meditator. It deepens the inner journey. I discovered that the Universe in here [within] is as deep and as broad as the Universe out there. During my meditation, I learned some new rules to live by. Now it's important to know that I haven't lost my Scientific Humanism, I've gained a softer heart, a measure of inner bliss. And that's important, without heart, and soul, good actions are empty. With enough spiritual bliss you cease to want as much of what the world offers, and want only to do God's work, however that manifests itself in your life.
Inner peace is most important, because it doesn't rely on outer stimulation for happiness. Clothes, houses, furniture, other people, all legitimate sources of happiness, all transient. Inner bliss is always available when you know how to access it. You need to only focus inward. I use Meditation, pranyama, a breathing exercise, and yoga. It's led to an easier quieter attitude toward life, More acceptance of the vicissitudes of life.
Along the way I have had some explicit spiritual experiences. Until the
most recent in May a year ago, I hadn't recognized them as such. Last May during Yoga, I was listening to my new heart valve, it makes a soft ticking sound. All of a sudden, I seemed to be surrounded by a halo of blue light. It was external to me and inside too. In that moment I felt god's love for me and his blessings on my new valve. I was also able to return that incredible love in full if only for a moment.
For months afterward, I moped about. I was a wreck. I wanted more, I
wanted the light back. I wanted to live in it. Later I realized that these
experiences come only when you need them, but my life has improved since then. My wife, also a meditator, and I have grown closer. We've worked hard together. I've learned to sublimate some of my desires to accommodate hers. She is learning to be freer to be herself, and in return I get a real person for a wife.
There is also more synchronicity in my life, more opportunities than I've ever had before. But most of all I have experienced an invincible faith in God. I'll never doubt his, her or its existence again. After that experience how could I?
So I'll wait and meditate. Perhaps one day, my nervous system will be
completely conditioned to live in that light. Will I still be here on Earth
when that happens? Will you recognize me? Will I still recognize you? I don't know. But I'll tell you when I find out.
Rev. Joan Gelbein
Mark started off by asking his own question – what does spirit, spirituality, spiritual practices do for your life, in the present moment? That’s what he finds tantalizingly interesting. How do spiritual experiences inform the life you choose to live. How does the pragmatist find meaning? Or, maybe, how does meaning find the pragmatist? Maybe it’s a little of both.
The search for meaning is a religious search. Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die. This is what we mean when we talk about “Spiritual Existentialism” in the title of this service. We are alive - we have to die - is any meaning possible in this situation? Is it possible to be alive WITHOUT meaning? No! I think we gave to create some meaning within our lives. Atheist - Christian, it doesn’t matter....we are all doing it.
We mold and remold our lives from human clay. Our lives are carved and weathered, built and remodeled. This art of meaning in the everyday can be called, “Lifecraft.” Lindsey created a life sensitive to the strong connecting principle of sacred place, returning and returning and returning to his sacred roots, reflecting on the meanings of change, and finding the most precious and practical gift in the whole world – hope.
Our spiritual search comes in small understandings and increments - we can add up little truths one by one; life’s meanings come in delicious tidbits - with a new insight or observation or feelings of awe, or love.
Many people have grown up with one answer to the question, “What does life mean?” If a Christian, the answer is “God sent his only son, Jesus, to die for our sins, in order that those of us who believe that he is Lord and Savior may be baptized in his blood and go to heaven when we die.”
We Unitarian Universalists, who cannot embrace a dogmatic creed, are open to the many possibilities for discovering and creating meaning. We reject absolutes. Our lives are more like interactive mosaics - a pastiche of works; our lives ever under construction and development. Life is not a puzzle to be solved, finally - but a series of projects to accomplish as best we can. It's not a work in progress but a series of works in progress. Meaning is everywhere; available and accessible to each and every one of us.
It refracts through many filters. It comes to us through many doors, in many ways, according to our need and receptivity. Spirituality – the art of experiencing deep connectedness - is one way open to all of us for receiving meaning, and then crafting a life - in part - around it. Like Jane, and Lindsey, and Steve.
So many of us today lead lives of wounded fragmentation. There is a longing for what the poet, T.S. Eliot called “a further union, a deeper communion.” Spirituality emanates from an intelligence that rests in that deep part of the self that is connected to wisdom from beyond the ego, or conscious mind; it is the intelligence with which we not only recognize existing vales, but with which we creatively discover new ones.
Our spiritual intelligence can help us to be flexible, visionary, creatively spontaneous. It gives us a deep sense of what life’s struggles are about, and it is our compass “at the edge.”
“The edge” is the border between knowing comfortably what we are about, and being totally lost. Spiritual intelligence is our deep, intuitive sense of meaning and value - it is our guide at the edge. As Steve’s heart failed, he came to see it as the symbol for a hardened and empty life that was failing him as well. Surgery and a heart valve gave him new life, but so did a new-found life of spiritual inquiry and discipline, and the personal revelation of universal love. Amazing grace!
Going beneath the appearance of things to a truer reality, we learn to see things in a new way. -- Jane’s dear citrus trees; a deep connection with non-human life - a receptivity, a door, to a sustaining compassion. -- This kind of knowledge and understanding are passionate things which cause us to engage deeply with the world around or within us. We move to the center - the place of connection with the whole of life
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time.”S. Eliot
Sung Benediction
Music - “Amazing Grace”
- Rev. Gretchen Woods
What Grace is this that moves in me
and makes my spirit grow-–
As powerful as the endless sea,
and delicate as foam?
It leads my mind to question all
and test what comes my way—
Still in my heart there burns a joy
that welcomes each new day.
It gives me ties to all of life,
and love for all I see—
It helps me feel a part of all,
and still uniquely me.
Spoken Benediction
May there be peace on earth,
May the hearts of all people
be open to themselves and to each other,
May all people awaken
to the light of their own true nature,
May all creation be blessed
and be a blessing
to All That Is.
--Amen, Shalom, and Blessed Be
