“The Final Freedom: Choose Life, Choose One’s Attitude”

This is the fifth piece of devotional worship that I have put together for sharing, during the shutting down of worship due to the Corona virus outbreak. I am posting it before Sunday. If you would like to share it with myself and the two congregations I serve, please feel free to do so. We will worship together but physically apart, either at 10am or 11,30am on Sunday 26th of April. all you need is an open heart, mind, spirit and soul. A small candle will be helpful. All are most welcome. come as you are, exactly as you are, but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.

You can also enjoy a Zoom version of this service at 11am on Sunday 26th April. If you wish to access the serivce the code is as follows: Meeting ID: 841 9082 8195

This is a recurring meeting so it will be the same code each week and for all future groups. 

“The Final Freedom: Choose Life, Choose One’s Attitude”

A service led by Rev Danny Crosby and Susan Crosby. Sources of inspiration include Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning”, Mary Shelley’s “The Last Man”, Moses, Nietzsche, Parker J Palmer, and personal reflections on our lives, professions and the current situation we all find ourselves in.

Welcome

Invocation

I invite us to still ourselves together in silence, united in heart, mind, spirit and soul, despite our physical separation. Let us invite a loving presence to be here amongst us and to awaken from deep within us.

Chalice Lighting

We join together in our physical separation, but united in our devotion to life and love.

Help us to sing for joy, like the birds each morning sing their faith in being alive and being here.

May we know the deep connections that sustain us, the roots that hold and nurture beneath the surface of our lives.

May we not be afraid to explore the depths of being, the many layers of life.

May we remember that we are deeply connected in heart, mind, spirit and soul.

May we be open to all that this day brings

To all that life offers and may we offer our all to life.

May our being become a vessel this day and all days

Amen

Hymn  210 “When the song of life is ringing”

Words David Charles Doel Tune Converse 87. 87. D Charles Crozat Converse

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 angels’ 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.

Prayer  

I invite us now to join together in a time of prayer. These words of prayer will followed by the prayer that Jesus taught, the Lord’s Prayer which I invite us to share together.

Let us pray

At this quiet time and in the spirit of worship we would seek to know more deeply what it means to love one another.

We know so well our own needs. We know that we, ourselves need understanding, affection and recognition. Why is it then that so often we hesitate to extend these precious gifts to others? The cost of a kind word is small. The moment that it takes to listen could hardly be better used. A gesture of forgiveness can mark a new beginning. An embrace or a note of appreciation can convey crucial encouragement and comfort. And yet, so often we fail even within our own families to live by the sacred command that we should love one another.

O Power that is Greater than all and yet present in each, strengthen our faith, increase our resolve to give more generously of ourselves. We pray for the courage to take the risks of love. We pray for the insight to see ourselves and others in perspective. We pray for humility and understanding that we may always stand ready to forgive and begin anew.

Amen.

Lord’s Prayer (spoken)

Stories

There is a story told of a rabbi in ancient times who gathered his students together very early one morning, while it was still dark. He put this question to them: "How can you tell when night has ended and the day has begun?" 

One student made a suggestion: "Could it be when you can see an animal and you can tell whether it is a sheep or a goat?" 

"No, that's not it," answered the rabbi. 

Another student said: "Could it be when you look at a tree in the distance and you can tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree?" 

Again the rabbi answered: "No." 

After a few more guesses the students said: "Well, how do you tell when night has ended?" 

The rabbi answered: "It is when you look on the face of any man or woman and you see them as your brother or sister. If you cannot do this, then, no matter what time it is, it is still night."

“Looking for Coins”

One day a little boy was walking along the pavement when he spotted a shiny new coin on the ground. He picked it up and put it in his pocket. “I’ll save this,” he thought, and when he arrived home he put the coin in a jar. So excited was he by his find, that he would look for coins whenever he went out, and there was rarely a day that he didn’t find something.

“This is easy money,” he said to himself, “all I have to do is to keep my head down, scan the ground carefully with my eyes, and pocket my reward! People are so careless! Can’t they hear the coins falling from their hands?”

He continued his daily search into adult life, and over the years he accumulated quite a sum of money, well over a thousand pounds. He was able to fill ten jars with coins.

Unfortunately, because his eyes were cast down most of the time and money dominated his thoughts, he missed a thousand spectacular sunsets, ten thousand smiles of greeting, the annual blossoming of the cherry tree, and three hundred and ninety seven rainbows.

He sold all these wonders for less than a penny each.

Hymn 151 “Be Thou My Vision”

Be thou my vision, O God of my heart;
naught be all else to me, save that thou art.
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

Be thou my wisdom, and thou my true word;
I ever with thee and thou with me God;
thou my soul’s shelter, thou my high tower,
raise thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor world’s empty praise,
thou my inheritance, now and always;
thou and thou only, first in my heart,
Sov’reign of heaven, my treasure thou art.

Sov’reign of heaven, my victory won,

May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun.

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,

Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.

Readings

“Your Life Is a Shrine to Meaning” by Parker J Palmer

I love this poem, “So” by Leonard Nathan and it needs little commentary from me. Behind it lies a question many of us ask ourselves from time to time: Given my small, ordinary, un-famous, and fleeting life, what can I do that’s of true worth and value? Then it offers an answer that I find simple, real, moving, and doable.

I re-read this poem occasionally and ask myself, “Using everything I have — including my own ‘costly gifts of hunger, choice, and pain’ — what can I do today to keep raising the ‘modest shrine to meaning’ I’d like to create with my life?”

Maybe it’s planting a tree, maybe it’s a random act of kindness to a stranger, maybe it’s offering comfort to someone who’s hurting, maybe it’s writing a thank-you letter to a mentor who saw your potential and drew it out…

There’s always something meaningful I can do to honor the gift of life in myself, others, and the world around us. Just do it!

“So?”

So you aren’t Tolstoy or St. Francis
or even a well-known singer
of popular songs and will never read Greek
or speak French fluently,
will never see something no one else
has seen before through a lens
or with the naked eye.

You’ve been given just the one life
in this world that matters
and upon which every other life
somehow depends as long as you live,
and also given the costly gifts of hunger,
choice, and pain with which to raise
a modest shrine to meaning.

By Leonard Nathan

Sue’s Reflection

In our newly changed household there have been many really meaty discussions. Lockdown has enforced our company on each other more than we would probably have chosen. At least I’m pretty sure that Lucy, aged 16, would really rather be going to college, hanging out with her friends and able to see her boyfriend rather than sharing a house ALL DAY EVERY DAY with her mum and new stepdad! But we are adapting.

I am not one of those who have been furloughed, I am self employed and busier than ever with work. However my ‘spare’ time cannot be spent in my preferred way of going out to the cinema, theatre, listening to music and other entertainments.

So I’m doing more in the way of connecting and chatting to friends and family and that pile of books by the bedside is being dusted off...

In truth I had not heard of Victor Frankel before meeting Danny but there is a book so important to him that I have been intending to read it for some time “Man’s Search for Meaning” written about his experiences of life and suffering in more than one concentration camp.

Reading it has bowled me over. I was particularly touched by this statement:

“... everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.

I have experienced a change in my own attitude this week as regards my work.

As a funeral Celebrant attempting to help families and conduct ceremonies within the restrictions of this time it is challenging. But is it helpful to apologise to the family for only being able to offer a sub-normal service? To emphasise the reduction in size of the congregations or the time restrictions? I don’t think that has been helpful at all.

Families are then left with a feeling of not being enough, not giving enough to their dear one.

A month ago Danny and I were supposed to be married with a very big hurrah. 250 hurrahs actually. It took me about 3 weeks to change my attitude from utter disappointment to something more constructive. I realised I was living with the feeling that we would ‘do it properly’ further down the line...

The reality of that was that I didn’t really feel like we had “done the do”.

I compared this feeling to those of my bereaved families. Many of them wanted ‘to do it properly’ with big celebrations of their loved ones lives. Without them, with only 10 or 15 people present, were they therefore not ‘properly’ laid to rest? If this is the feeling they were left with then I was not serving them well and they would not have completed a very important leg of the bereavement journey.

We are working within confines that are real and are necessary but is it still possible to feel satisfaction and comfort. Can we adapt?

My motivation had to be to help these families (as I have been trained to do) to move from one state to another. To find peace with the reality of the time.

Victor Frankel was fond of quoting Nietzche “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how”

So at the moment ... the how to live is ‘Stay home’ and the why is to ‘Save Lives’

This works if it feels relevant to our survival, the survival of those we love but it is harder to convince a population to follow this ‘for the greater good’.

We have to battle the personal apathy and self-centred attitude that can be human nature.

There have been many wonderful and varied acts of kindness and warmth in the last month. There have been reports of courage, resilience and generosity. In fact the news as I experience it does seem to give more stories of hope and humanity than usual, presumably to balance the frightening figures and reality of a global pandemic. We make can make some sense of the suffering and the restriction of these times through searching for meaning.

The writer Mary Shelley made some sense of her own deep grief on the loss of 3 of her children and her husband through her books. 2 of those children had died of widespread infectious diseases that science has since contained.

She lost her mother before she knew her. The trailblazing Mary Wollstonecroft died through complications in childbirth bringing Mary Shelley into the world. Childbirth was a ‘common’ killer of so many women, another medical situation that has improved through scientific advances.

What was common has become uncommon.

Mary Shelly, in her grief, wrote the novel ‘The Last Man’ in which the human species is gradually erased (by a pandemic) leaving this sole survivor. What is the question left for him? “Why live?” Shelley’s answer:

“There is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves and contribute to the happiness of others”

 That seems like a most excellent rule of thumb, but is that spirituality?

Well, whatever the label it works for me. What has felt very clear to me is that the way to go is through acceptance of all of this, everything that is going on.

All that is lost, all that is found and that this life and what we do now, how we are, is enough.

Back to Victor Frankel .. “we who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread”

This is both astounding and beautiful.

They were exercising that last freedom left to them - their attitude, they could still choose their “own way”.

Where one may hide their tiny rations and even try to steal others, another man is there giving away his. What makes the difference?

Faith? Hope? Love? I have heard these words before. They are from another book.

So we come back to the how and the why of it.

We live like this now, with restrictions and with social distancing, with safe numbers of people kept apart by 2 metres, that is how ... and why we live like this is to protect those we love, whether we ‘know’ them or not.

Because if we love each other as if we are all family, all kin, then our hearts can stretch to capacity, we can find ourselves adapting and coping with things we thought we could not bear to be without (or live with).

All are equally worthy of protection, we hold and support each other and by doing so we protect ourselves from the real danger to humankind - apathy.

Meditation

Let us now join together in time of prayer, meditation and contemplation. Please time to settle into quietness, to still your mind, to connect to your body, to breathing…to the breath that connects all life. Let us be still and silent together…

SILENCE

Amen

Music (Of your own choosing)

Hymn 21 “Come and find a quiet centre”

Words Shirley Erena Murray, Music Lewis Folk Melody 87. 87. D

Come and find the quiet center

in the crowded life we lead,

find the room for hope to enter,

find the frame where we are freed:

clear the chaos and the clutter,

clear our eyes, that we can see

all the things that really matter,

be at peace, and simply be.

Silence is a friend who claims us,

cools the heat and slows the pace,

God it is who speaks and names us,

knows our being, touches base,

making space within our thinking,

lifting shades to show the sun,

raising courage when we're shrinking,

finding scope for faith begun.

In the Spirit let us travel,

open to each other's pain,

let our loves and fears unravel,

celebrate the space we gain:

there's a place for deepest dreaming,

there's a time for heart to care,

in the Spirit's lively scheming

there is always room to spare!

Reading

“Open Eyes” by Victoria Safford

To see, simply to look and see, is an ethical act and intentional choice; to see, with open eyes, as a spiritual practice and thus risk, for it can open you to ways of knowing the world and loving it that will lead to inevitable consequences. The awakened eye, is a conscious eye, a willful eye, and brave, because to see things as they are, each in its own truth, will make you very vulnerable.

Think of yourself as a prism made of glass, reflecting everything exactly as it is, unable to exist dishonestly -- reflecting beauty where there is beauty, violence where there is violence, loveliness and unexpected joy but there is joy, violation where there is violation.

Here's the front page of the paper; here's that seedy, gossipy conflict at your job; here's a memory, unblurred by wishful thinking; here's a perfect afternoon in spring, and buds now on the trees, and blackbirds in the marsh. Here's the world, just as it is -- now look!

That kind of seeing is a choice, and it is sacred practice.

And then there is refraction -- taking into yourself, as a prism takes in light, the truths of what you see and hear and transforming it somehow, changing its direction, acting on it, rendering it somehow, anew. That again is holy work. The spring day, received, comes out again as gratitude (dispersed into a spectrum); a sorrow, yours or someone else's, fully realized and received, not denied, not covered up, not justified or explained away, ignored -- some sorrow clearly, previously seen is taken in, absorbed and felt, and reemerges, bent now into compassion. To see clearly is an act of will and conscience. It will make you very vulnerable. It is persistent, holy, world transforming work.

Danny’s Reflection

It is not easy to look at the world as it actually is, in all its beauty and its violence, all its joy and suffering, to truly accept the blessings and curses that come with choosing life. I am sure we all feel tempted to turn away from time to time, to close our eyes, to try and not look on the suffering, to avoid. You may be able to insulate your heart from the pain for a time, but you also cut yourself off from the love and joy, the blessings in life and in so doing you experience the worst of all sufferings, the suffering within the suffering, this sense of being utterly disconnected from the love present in life.

On Monday morning I conducted the funeral of a woman Joan who is loosely connected to the Urmston congregation, her daughter Beverley is married to Julian who is one of Stella’s sons. It was a deeply upsetting occasion as only Joan’s other daughter Alison and her husband Dave were able to be there. It was the hardest service I have ever conducted, in many ways. Deeply distressing holding them both through this process while other family members and loved ones could not be there. I did the best I could, but it did not feel enough. The family though I know appreciated what I did. They were glad to have someone there, a human face to hold them through this deeply distressing time. I also witnessed just how visibly distressed and how tough it is for all who work in the funeral industry at this time. I have been holding all who work in this vital area of service, one that is not recognised publicly, deep in my heart these last few days. They are offering a vital service in heartbreaking times.

I looked into the eyes of many people that day, all of whom were deeply distressed. My eyes were certainly open and awake. I have noticed all my senses are wide awake too, maybe not touch as we cannot be in physical proximity, but my eyes and my ears have never been more awake, perhaps they are compensating. This is allowing me to experience the natural beauty of this Spring, it feels like the most beautiful I have ever known, like no Spring I have ever witnessed before. My eyes are feasting on colours, I have never seen more Robins, hopping around observing physical isolation naturally. I am also hearing the blackbirds singing more sweetly than they have ever done before. There were a couple of beautiful blackbirds singing their hearts out at Altrincham Crematorium, singing the sweetest songs I have ever heard. Perhaps these songs of life were their blessings for the grieving.

My eyes, my ears, my senses are open and exposed I am not turning away from the suffering. I am choosing life in all it’s challenges and life is responding as I notice things in ways I have perhaps never done before.

Good old Moses has been on my mind. I and many others are experiencing both the blessings and curses of “Choosing Life”. He led his people through the wilderness to the Promised Land. In Deuteronomy 30 vv 11-19 Moses speaks to the people on his 120^th birthday. God had just informed him that he would not enter the Promised Land, after fourty years of journeying through the wilderness.

As they reach the Promised Land the people gathered to receive Moses’ final blessing. And what does he say? He tells them that they must “choose life.” They are told that in order to keep the freedom that they have been given they must make thoughtful choices about their lives. I am sure that this must have been scary for them, for after all they were frightened of their freedom. Throughout their time in exile whenever they were given freedom they did not want it, they hoped that someone would make their decisions for them. Again this is such a universal predicament, it echoes through the ages. How often do we wish that someone would make our decisions for us? Wouldn’t that make life easier? But we must make the decisions, we must live our lives. We will make mistakes. I have made many and will make many more.

Now "Choose Life" is a phrase that has seeped into public consciousness on at least two occasion over the last 30 years. Two places that would at first glance seem highly unlikely.One was in a "Wham" pop video to the song "Wake me up before you go-go". I feel fairly confident in claiming that George Michael, Andrew Ridgley and Pepsi & Shirley didn't know they were quoting Moses when they were dancing along to this song. It is also the inspiration for a poem by John Hodge that was spoken by Ewan McGregor to the tune for "Lust For Life" by Iggy Pop for the trailer to the film "Trainspotting". A film that is definitely not about "choosing Life", as it’s a film about heroin addiction. Addiction is the ultimate rejection of life.

In “Choosing Life” we choose all of life, blessings and curses. We do not get one without the other, but we do get life, the ultimate free gift. The biggest mistake we ever make in living is that we wish so much of our lives away, we dream of some other place, a heaven, a nirvana, an Oz, an Ithaka. Life though is not some other place it is here now, The Promised Land, the Kingdom of Love, Nirvana is here now, in our mortal lives.

Choosing life is not always easy, it takes courage. Past experiences can often stop us dead in our tracks. Fear can block our attempts to step out into the world and back into the adventure of life with all its many challenges. Fear is always present to stop us to block us along the way, but so is faith and courage also.

So what’s the choice? Well the choice is to keep on turning to life, with all our senses open, doing whatever we can, with whatever we have. It will not be easy, it never has been, no doubt it never will be. There will be suffering, for suffering is a part of life. You cannot transcend it, nor do you have to be consumed by it. You can though be transformed by it and if you stay open and keep on turning towards, instead of away from life, you will also experience the joys and the blessings too and live a life deep and rich in meaning.

We have before us life, blessing and curses, suffering and joy, the beautiful journey, for life itself is the Promised Land, the ultimate free gift, the ultimate Grace. Let’s choose life.

Let’s keep on journeying on and on and on.

Amen.

I invite us to listen to this prayer poem “Each new Morning” by Penny Quest prayerfully…

Let us pray

“Each New Morning” by Penny Quest

Each new morning two choices are open to every one of us:
The choice to live that day in the joyfulness of Love,
Or in the darkness of Fear.

Each new day, as the sun rises,
We have another opportunity to make that choice.
The symbolism of the sunrise is the removal of shadow
And the return of Light.

Each new morning we have another chance
To rid ourselves of the burdens, sorrows and fears of the past,
To rejoice in the joy of the present,
And to look forward to a future of fulfilment
On every level of our being.

Each sunrise is a fresh opportunity to release fear,
To choose a different life-path,
To commit ourselves to joyful, light living,
To trust in ourselves and in the Universe,
To trust in the forces of Nature and in Mother Earth,
To trust God, the Creator, the all-That-Is.

Amen

Final Hymn 201 “What shall we say to them”

Words Peter Sampson Music Diademata S.M.D.

What shall we say to them

When we all want to know

that God is in the world and feels

their inmost secrets glow?

We all must say to them

What we all know for sure

That there’s a goodness in the world

Which ever shall endure.

What shall we do for them

When they are in distress

And anguish burns within their hearts

For which they seek redress?

We all must help them live

With confidence and trust

That if we hold fast to the truth

Love lights up even dust.

What is our vision bright

which we must show the world;

how perfect love can cast out fear

and life’s flag be unfurled?

We may not give up hope;

we will not give up love.

Our lives are grounded in the faith,

in one God we all move.

Benediction

Go now in love. 
A love for life

A love for one another

A love for self

A love for God

And may we carry this love with us in all that we feel and all that we think and all that we say and all that we do.

Amen