You can also enjoy a Zoom version of this service at 11am on Sunday 7th June. 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.
Is Anything Sacred Anymore?
Invocation
I invite us still ourselves
in silence and invite a loving presence to be amongst us and to awaken within
us...
Chalice Lighting
Welcome to this sacred time and space…let us be awaken to of love...
Welcome to this our sacred space in this sacred hour...
Welcome in the spirit of love, in the spirit of openness,
in the spirit of reverence...
In this time may awaken to reverence. Reverence for life,
reverence for one another, reverence for ourselves and reverence for the Spirt of
all life
In this time and space may we know peace, rest, comfort
and challenge...
May we find togetherness despite our separation may we
find meaning in our suffering and sometimes pain.
May we know we are loved, accepted and encouraged to be
all that we were born to be...
Know that you are accepted, wanted, needed and loved…no
matter who you are and where ever you have been...
Welcome to this sacred space and this sacred hour
Welcome in the spirit of love...
Amen.
Hymn 139 “Sacred The
Body” words Ruth Duck Music Tenderness 5.5.10.D by Colin Alexander Gibson
(Purple Hymn)
Sacred the body
God has created,
Temple of spirit that dwells deep inside.
Cherish each person,
Nurture relation,
Treat flesh has holy that love may abide.
Bodies are varied,
Made of all sizes,
Pale, full of colour, both fragile and strong.
Holy the difference,
Gift of the Maker,
So let us honour each story and song.
Love respects persons,
Bodies and boundaries;
Love does not batter, neglect or abuse.
Love touches gently,
Never coercing;
Love leaves the other with power to choose.
Holy of holies,
God ever loving,
Make us your temples; indwell all we do.
May we be careful,
Tender and caring,
So may our bodies give honour to you.
God has created,
Temple of spirit that dwells deep inside.
Cherish each person,
Nurture relation,
Treat flesh has holy that love may abide.
Bodies are varied,
Made of all sizes,
Pale, full of colour, both fragile and strong.
Holy the difference,
Gift of the Maker,
So let us honour each story and song.
Love respects persons,
Bodies and boundaries;
Love does not batter, neglect or abuse.
Love touches gently,
Never coercing;
Love leaves the other with power to choose.
Holy of holies,
God ever loving,
Make us your temples; indwell all we do.
May we be careful,
Tender and caring,
So may our bodies give honour to you.
Prayer
We pray today to be
renewed in the love that never faileth.
We would be renewed in
confidence that the long littleness of our life serves no small purpose, that
the words and deeds of our days have meaning beyond themselves, that the
highest purposes of life may be served even in the humblest of acts.
God, help us to realize
that the world of the spirit and the world of the body do not exist alongside
one another but within one another; that acts of the spirit are the deeds of
our daily lives; that justice is created when we act justly; that mercy is made
manifest in merciful work.
Help us to live our lives
with a deeper awareness of the meaning and significance of what we say and do;
help us to see that even the smallest act done in the spirit of love helps to
move the world in the direction of the Commonwealth of Love.
"To know justice and
live justly is to become just; to know love and so to live is to become
loving." Everything avails. Like footsteps on the sands of time all that
we attempt and all that we do makes its impression. We do not live wholly to ourselves
nor do we die wholly to ourselves. We are each part of a wholeness, part of a unity moving
through time and through space, a wholeness to which we belong, bound together
by the mystery of love. We feel its power sometimes with profound personal emotion.
At other times we know its reality in the radiant peace of a winter sunset: the
hint and reminder of the love that moves the sun and the other stars -- the
love in whose fullness we know that even in our deepest loneliness we are never
alone -- the love that never faileth.
Amen.
Lord’s Prayer
Story
The Gift of the Blue Moment,"
an excerpt from “SMALL GRACES” by Kent Nerburn
Her garden has fallen to ruin. Irene is old now, maybe ninety. Her memory has fled, leaving her eyes like lights in an empty room. I always try to say “hello” to her when I see her. She is guileless, full of wonder, a child in awe of the universe.
Her garden has fallen to ruin. Irene is old now, maybe ninety. Her memory has fled, leaving her eyes like lights in an empty room. I always try to say “hello” to her when I see her. She is guileless, full of wonder, a child in awe of the universe.
Her garden used to be the most beautiful around.
She took such pleasure in tending its flowers and plants. She and my wife would
share knowledge of bulbs and buds.
There is no such knowledge in Irene now. Her eyes are watching other worlds. When she answers at all, it is in response to questions only she can hear.
I listen to her closely. What remains alive in the dim chambers of her memory?
She thinks I am her son, goes on about her mother. A story about a little dog. It makes no sense.
But this is not about sense. She has woven other tapestries from the threads of her life. She is responsive to other colors, moved by other winds.
I would leave, but there are echoes here.
I am carried back to a time years ago when I was living in the medieval university town of Marburg, Germany.
There is no such knowledge in Irene now. Her eyes are watching other worlds. When she answers at all, it is in response to questions only she can hear.
I listen to her closely. What remains alive in the dim chambers of her memory?
She thinks I am her son, goes on about her mother. A story about a little dog. It makes no sense.
But this is not about sense. She has woven other tapestries from the threads of her life. She is responsive to other colors, moved by other winds.
I would leave, but there are echoes here.
I am carried back to a time years ago when I was living in the medieval university town of Marburg, Germany.
I was 25, penniless, alone, frightened, and ill. I
was living in a garret. I had no friends and I was far from family. My days
were spent working in an antique restoration shop of an embittered alcoholic
man, and my nights were spent wandering the streets watching the passing lives
of people who neither spoke my language nor knew of my cares.
I had never been so alone.
The mother of the man for whom I worked was a very insightful woman. As a child of twelve she had watched the Nazis come into her classroom and take the Jewish children away. No one spoke of it and class went on as if nothing had happened. But day by day, night by night, she saw her friends and playmates disappear.
She became a watcher and a survivor.
For months she watched me struggle with the demons that were driving me. She would see me sitting with the neighborhood children, drawing cartoons in the shadow of the castle. She would see me staring vacantly into the distance when I thought no one was watching.
One day she took me aside.
I had never been so alone.
The mother of the man for whom I worked was a very insightful woman. As a child of twelve she had watched the Nazis come into her classroom and take the Jewish children away. No one spoke of it and class went on as if nothing had happened. But day by day, night by night, she saw her friends and playmates disappear.
She became a watcher and a survivor.
For months she watched me struggle with the demons that were driving me. She would see me sitting with the neighborhood children, drawing cartoons in the shadow of the castle. She would see me staring vacantly into the distance when I thought no one was watching.
One day she took me aside.
“I watch you,” she said. “I see the loneliness in
your eyes. I watch your heart running away. You are like so many people. When
life is hard, they try to look over the difficulty into the future. Or they
long for the happiness of the past. Time is their enemy. The day they are
living is their enemy. They are dead to the moment. They live only for the
future or the past. But that is wrong.
“You must learn to seek the blue moment,” she said.
She sat down beside me and continued. “The blue moment can happen any time or any place. It is a moment when you are truly alive to the world around you. It can be a moment of love or a moment of terror. You may not know it when it happens. It may only reveal itself in memory. But if you are patient and open your heart, the blue moment will come. My childhood classmates are dead, but I have the blue moment when we looked in each other’s eyes.”
I turned and stared into her lined and gentle face.
“Listen carefully to me,” she continued. “This is a blue moment. I really believe it. We will never forget it. At this moment you and I are closer to each other than to any other human beings. Seize this moment. Hold it. Don’t turn from it. It will pass and we will be as we were. But this is a blue moment, and the blue moments string together like pearls to make up your life. It is up to you to find them. It is up to you to make them. It is up to you to bring them alive in others.”
She brushed her hand through my hair and gave me a pat on the side of the head.
“Always seek the blue moment,” she said, and returned to her work.
“You must learn to seek the blue moment,” she said.
She sat down beside me and continued. “The blue moment can happen any time or any place. It is a moment when you are truly alive to the world around you. It can be a moment of love or a moment of terror. You may not know it when it happens. It may only reveal itself in memory. But if you are patient and open your heart, the blue moment will come. My childhood classmates are dead, but I have the blue moment when we looked in each other’s eyes.”
I turned and stared into her lined and gentle face.
“Listen carefully to me,” she continued. “This is a blue moment. I really believe it. We will never forget it. At this moment you and I are closer to each other than to any other human beings. Seize this moment. Hold it. Don’t turn from it. It will pass and we will be as we were. But this is a blue moment, and the blue moments string together like pearls to make up your life. It is up to you to find them. It is up to you to make them. It is up to you to bring them alive in others.”
She brushed her hand through my hair and gave me a pat on the side of the head.
“Always seek the blue moment,” she said, and returned to her work.
Irene’s mind is wandering now. A little dog. Her
sister. Names I’ve never heard.
I smile and nod. She smiles back and continues. The blue moments are calling to her, filling her memories with light.
I smile and nod. She smiles back and continues. The blue moments are calling to her, filling her memories with light.
Hymn 250 “Reverence for Life” words by John Andrew
Storey music Deerhurst 87. 87. D. James Langran (Green hymn book)
In life’s complex web of being
Each
is fitted for its place,
Plants
and beasts and all things living,
Peoples
of the human race;
But
the balances of nature
Exploitation
has disturbed,
And
all creatures she will nurture
Only
when this greed is curbed.
Dolphin leaping through the waters,
Skylark
over lonely fen,
Timid
fawn in dappled forest,
Hungry
lion in its den,
Butterfly,
the bee and flower,
Each
should have its chance to thrive;
Humankind,
restrain your power
And
for wider kinship strive.
Readings
From “The Myth of Human Supremacy” By Derrick Jensen
A summary of the
differences between a supremacist and a non-supremacist worldview
"In addition
to this being a book about human supremacism, it's a book about supremacism in
general. And ultimately, it's a book about an ideological and physical war that
has been going on for ten thousand years between those who hold supremacist and
non-supremacist worldviews. The winner of this war determines whether the
planet survives. And of course, right now the supremacist side is winning.
"The
supremacist side in this war believes that members of 'our' category – whatever
that category may be – are superior to all others, and that this superiority
entitles us to exploit them. In fact, our exploitation of these others is
ultimately the primary way we know we're superior. This side believes that
difference leads to hierarchy. Men over women. Whites over non-whites.
Civilized over indigenous. Humans over non-humans. Animals over plants. Plants
over rocks. Mind over matter. Those higher on the Great Chain of Being over
those lower. This side in this war believes all life is war, and that the point
of life is to defeat others in this war, to scratch and claw and bite, and then
to stab and shoot and bomb and poison your way to the top of the hierarchy
you've set up (the hierarchy where you already see yourself at the top); and
then from the top to exploit all those below you, not merely so you gain the
benefits from being so marvelous, but to maintain your position 'at the top of
the food chain.' You and your SUV.
"The
non-supremacist side in this war believes that difference leads to complexity
and community. A forest wouldn't be a forest without the contributions of
everyone who lives there. It recognizes that the exploitation of some other is
no validation of superiority, but merely the exploitation of some other. It
believes that life is not a war, but rather simply life, and the point of life
is to live and die, and to do so in such a way that you contribute to the
overall health of the community. "The worldviews are simply that:
worldviews. They're not reality. Reality is more complex than any worldview.
These worldviews have consequences for reality, of course. But they are
worldviews nonetheless."
To my granddaughters who visited the
Holocaust
Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzhak Rabin
– Wendell Berry
Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,
Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzhak Rabin
– Wendell Berry
Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,
for I know that you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know
there is no answer
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.
But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine
though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.
You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be
the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.
for peace. It will be
your light.
Meditation
I ask that we now still ourselves in a time
of prayer, contemplation and meditation. A personal time, but a time shared
with one another...I ask that we still ourselves
Lets now be still and silent...let’s quieten
our minds, connect to our bodies, to our breathing...feel the breath of
life...in...and out...in...and out...
Silence
Amen
Music for
meditation
Hymn 191 “We Have A Dream” words Michael Forster
based on a speech by Martin Luther King jr. Music Woodlands 10. 10. 10. 10.
Walter Greaves
1. WE HAVE A DREAM:
this nation will arise,
And truly live according to its creed,
that all are equal
in their maker’s eyes,
And none shall suffer through another’s greed.
2. We have a dream
that one day we shall see
A world of justice, truth and equity,
Where children of the slave
and of the free
Will share the banquet of community.
3. We have a dream
of desert’s brought to flow’r,
Once made infertile
by oppression’s heat,
When love and truth
shall end oppressive pow’r,
And streams of righteousness
and justice meet.
4. We have a dream:
our children shall be free
From judgements based
on colour or on race;
Free to become
whatever they may be,
Of their own choosing
in the light of grace.
5. We have a dream
that truth will overcome
The fear and anger
of our present day;
That black and white
will share a common home,
and hand in hand
will walk the pilgrim way.
6. We have a dream:
each valley will be raised,
And ev’ry mountain,
ev’ry hill brought down;
Then shall creation
echo perfect praise,
And share God’s glory
under freedom’s crown!
this nation will arise,
And truly live according to its creed,
that all are equal
in their maker’s eyes,
And none shall suffer through another’s greed.
2. We have a dream
that one day we shall see
A world of justice, truth and equity,
Where children of the slave
and of the free
Will share the banquet of community.
3. We have a dream
of desert’s brought to flow’r,
Once made infertile
by oppression’s heat,
When love and truth
shall end oppressive pow’r,
And streams of righteousness
and justice meet.
4. We have a dream:
our children shall be free
From judgements based
on colour or on race;
Free to become
whatever they may be,
Of their own choosing
in the light of grace.
5. We have a dream
that truth will overcome
The fear and anger
of our present day;
That black and white
will share a common home,
and hand in hand
will walk the pilgrim way.
6. We have a dream:
each valley will be raised,
And ev’ry mountain,
ev’ry hill brought down;
Then shall creation
echo perfect praise,
And share God’s glory
under freedom’s crown!
Address
I’m going to be some words of verse “Your Body is Welcome Here” by Sean
Neil-Barron. They were written as words of welcome for worship, but I wanted to
begin my reflection with them.
Your body is welcome here, all of it.
Yes, even that part. And that part. And yes, even that part.
The parts you love, and the parts you don’t.
For in this place we come with all that we are
All that we have been,
And all that we are going to be.
Our bodies are constantly changing, cells die and cells are reborn
We respond to infections and disease
Sometimes we can divorce them from our bodies,
and other times they become a permanently part of us.
Your body and all that is within it, both wanted and not wanted has a place here.
Our bodies join in a web of co-creation, created and creating.
Constantly changing, constantly changing us
Scarred and tattooed, tense and relaxed
Diseased and cured, unfamiliar and intimate
Formed in infinite diversity of creation
Your body is welcome here, all of it.
So take a moment and welcome it
Take a moment to feel in it.
Take a moment, to be in it.
Yes, even that part. And that part. And yes, even that part.
The parts you love, and the parts you don’t.
For in this place we come with all that we are
All that we have been,
And all that we are going to be.
Our bodies are constantly changing, cells die and cells are reborn
We respond to infections and disease
Sometimes we can divorce them from our bodies,
and other times they become a permanently part of us.
Your body and all that is within it, both wanted and not wanted has a place here.
Our bodies join in a web of co-creation, created and creating.
Constantly changing, constantly changing us
Scarred and tattooed, tense and relaxed
Diseased and cured, unfamiliar and intimate
Formed in infinite diversity of creation
Your body is welcome here, all of it.
So take a moment and welcome it
Take a moment to feel in it.
Take a moment, to be in it.
I like most folk, with a heart, lament at life at
times at our inhumanity to one another. It is easy to get caught up in the
despair. It is easy to see only what is wrong, where the pain is. I have heard,
from time to time a phrase resurfacing in my heart once again. “Is nothing
sacred anymore? Does matter really matter? Does anything matter?” We see violence
and threats and violence, people treated as somehow less than others because of
there skin tone, their gender, their age and or infirmity. A powerful example
being the “Black Lives Matter” movement. People seen as merely commodities, a
means to an end to something. Some folk considered superior to others, the
horror of supremacist views of all kinds. People considered as merely numbers
on a graph or spread sheet, not precious loved ones, expendable because they
are not an ideal or useful, it bothers me intensely. I know I am not alone in
being disturbed by this. It is nothing new, I know that too.
It has always troubled me that some life is
considered of more worth than others. During these last few weeks of lock down
I have heard talk, from time to time, that some folk are expendable because of age or infirmity,
that it would be not only acceptable but advantageous to sacrifice some people for
some perceived greater good. I have even heard it said that this is some kind
of natural culling, that it will lift a burden from society. There has been talk
once again of eugenics too, although to be fair this talk was resurfacing
before the current Corona Virus crisis. I know that people would not want to
utter the word, but it has been heard and reheard again.
Eugenics came to prominence during the later years
of the nineteenth century. It proposed the elimination of undesirable traits
through selective breeding and the sterilisation of “inferior” human “specimens”.
Eugenics was driven, in part, by fears that modern institutions had set aside
the beneficial aspects of natural selection. Eugenicists continually played on
the spectre of weak and sickly humans beings preserved through modern medicine,
hygiene, and charitable institutions, while the more intelligent and supposedly
“better” human beings were beginning to voluntarily restrict their reproduction,
which they claimed was producing biological degeneration. They proposed the introduction
of artificial selection by restricting the reproduction of the so-called “inferior”
and encouraging the “superior” to procreate. They proposed marriage
restrictions, compulsory sterilization, and sometimes even involuntary
euthanasia for the disabled, who were deemed biologically inferior. It stressed
racial inequality, promoting racist ideologies. Many biologists,
anthropologists, and physicians considered black Africans or American Indians
less evolved than Europeans. Attitudes that have remained long after eugenics became
a “dirty” word.
The most grotesque manifestation of eugenics was
found in Hitler’s National Socialism. Nazism endorsed discrimination and ultimately
death for those with allegedly inferior biological traits. Claiming it would promote
evolutionary advance for the human species by fostering higher reproductive
levels of those considered superior biologically. Hitler’s regime murdered about
200,000 disabled Germans, 6 million of europes Jewish people and hundreds of
thousands of the Roma people, commonly known as Gypsies in their effort to what
they saw as “improving” the human race.
It was thought that with the defeat of Nazism that
eugenic ideology died with it. Certainly the word was considered “dirty” and
yet supremacists ideas have remained and talk of eugenics has resurfaced once
again in recent months. Racist and discriminatory ideologies have not gone
away. They are with us today and talk of eugenics are back with us too.
Professor Richard Dawkins recently got himself into
trouble for a tweet suggesting that in theory exploring such ideas were possible.
He wrote:
“It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological,
political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work
in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs &
roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.”
Now as you can imagine there was a huge backlash.
To be fair to him he wasn’t suggesting it was morally ok to follow such an
idea, just that it was possible. Many responded and criticized on moral grounds but
also on scientific ones too. The following by David Curtis a psychiatrist and
geneticist at University College London being one example. He tweeted “People who support eugenics initiatives are evil
racists. Also, modern genetic research shows that eugenics would not work.”
There have though been wiff’s of eugenic planning
in public policy too. An example being the resignation of one of the Prime
Minister’s advisors Andrew Sanisky who in 2014 had suggested that compulsory
contraception could eliminate a "permanent underclass". He wrote:
"One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a
permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term
contraception at the onset of puberty." There have been other wiff’s of
eugenics in other public policy places too. The government adviser Dominic
Cummings has offered some controversial opinions on the use IVF treatment
within the NHS.
And then there is the talk I have heard, ok in
whispers, but talk still the same of the value of some lives during this crisis
we have all been living through. Those that speak of the lives of the elderly
and infirm somehow being of less value and that the young and healthy are not
under threat from the virus. I have heard it said why should their lives be put
on hold? We need to open up everything and keep on progressing ever onward. I
have to say it has troubled me more than anything these last few weeks. It
bothers me that some life is valued above other lives. Is nothing sacred
anymore?
It matters how we
view life and how we view one another. If we reduce one another and all life to
a meaningless nothing then really where do we find our moral compass, surely
anything goes; if nothing is sacred where do we find our moral compass, what stops
ideas like eugenics from developing?
I have recently
been reading Viktor Frankl again. Last week I read a collection of his lectures,
delivered within a year of his liberation from Auschwitz and before he wrote “Man’s
Search for Meaning”. The following quotation speaks powerfully of the dangers
of reductionist and how it can lead dehumanising activity. Here he is
commenting on the way that the thinking prevalent in Europe in those early
years of the twentieth century had helped prepare the way for Nazi atrocities.
He stated, "If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we
may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a
mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a
mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to
which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted,” Frankl
continued, “with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration
camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of
the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment—or,
as the Nazi liked to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that
the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared
not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the
lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”
For Frankl once life becomes meaningless then nihilism follows and then
any horror is possible.
For me life is a sacred thing. This is why I have
come to believe that everything matters. Every thought, every feeling, every
word and every deed. Everything that we do and everything that we do not do
really does matter. For if matter does not matter then anything goes.
I would like to share with you a poem by Kayla
Parker “This Body”
“This Body” by Kayla Parker
This body is not
what it was
I got shin splints from running today
Ten years ago all I’d get was smelly feet
My back aches just from sitting these days
In my youth, all my pain came from climbing trees
I got shin splints from running today
Ten years ago all I’d get was smelly feet
My back aches just from sitting these days
In my youth, all my pain came from climbing trees
This body is not
what it was
Not some alien thing thrust upon me
So clumsy, always in the way
I know it and move it like it’s mine
Didn’t say I never walk into walls from time to time
Not some alien thing thrust upon me
So clumsy, always in the way
I know it and move it like it’s mine
Didn’t say I never walk into walls from time to time
This body is not
what it will be
When the sagging of old age sets in
And simple backaches are fond memories
So I’ll take and enjoy what it is right now
Not yet frail from old age but sometimes awkward and weak
(Really, it suits what’s inside quite nicely)
When the sagging of old age sets in
And simple backaches are fond memories
So I’ll take and enjoy what it is right now
Not yet frail from old age but sometimes awkward and weak
(Really, it suits what’s inside quite nicely)
This body is not
what it was
Or what it will be
And thankfully, right now
It seems to just fit me
Or what it will be
And thankfully, right now
It seems to just fit me
I like the poem and it brings to mind some of
the ideas explored by Frankl in those series of lectures I recently read. He spoke
of how meaning is found even when we lose most of what we see as vital to our
lives. Before the war Frankl had worked on reducing suicide amongst students at
his university, he had done so with great success. He showed how meaning can be
found even as we lose so much of what once gave us our greatest purpose. He
gave countless examples of people losing so much and yet still finding meaning
in life, in fact some people found their greatest meaning during their last days
of life. I am sure we have all experienced this in many ways these last few
weeks. We can find meaning and sacredness even in the darkest moments of life,
even when everything we thought gave us meaning is taken away. Frankl spoke
particularly powerfully against prevailing attitudes towards disability of all
kinds. Something where some progress has been made. I remember as a child
growing up that most people with disability whether mental or physical were usually
kept hidden from society. There is progress, we have progressed in many areas
in attitudes, but there is a long way to go.
Who decides what is of value and meaning in
life?
As I was thinking about this I was reminded
of a sermon delivered by Bill Darlison at the valedictory service at Unitarian
College Manchester, I think it would have been 2012. I asked Bill for a copy of
it at the time. I thought I would use them some time, well it’s taken me eight
years. Here is an extract from it:
“Do you
remember the book The Diving Bell and the
Butterfly? It was written by Jean-Dominique Bauby in 1998. The author had a
stroke which completely paralysed him. He could only move one eyelid, but he
contrived to write this book – called by the Financial Times reviewer, ‘one of the great books of the century’ -
operating under that severe impediment. Bauby says, as so many have said before
and since, that only in adversity did he find out the meaning of love. Are we
ready for love, for genuine, deep, aching, draining, heart-breaking love, or do
we seek to escape the pains of it all as we ‘get on with our life’? ‘Adversity
makes men; prosperity makes monsters,’ wrote Viktor Hugo. ‘I don’t want to be a
burden on anyone’. Maybe, sometimes, it is our duty to be a burden on people,
just to stop them becoming monsters.”
He also quoted an address delivered in 1983, by
the Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It spoke of the dangers inherent
in societies which had lost all sense of the ultimate value of the individual. Solzhenitsyn
said:
Over half a century
ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer
the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia:
‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’ Since then I have
spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our revolution; in the
process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal
testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own towards the
effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked
today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution
that swallowed up some sixty millions of our people, I could not put it more
accurately than to repeat, ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has
happened.[i]
Bill added “Solzhenitsyn, I am sure, doesn’t
want us to all to become conventional theists. He wants us to rediscover and
reaffirm that sense of transcendence, of meaning and of purpose which, for a
variety of reasons, we seem to be in danger of losing, if we haven’t lost it
already. This is the 21st century’s most important task – for
believer and non-believer alike - to find a new language of holiness in a world
consumed by the trivial, the crass and the hedonistic; to reaffirm the
sacredness of human beings, at a time when we are increasingly being told we
are ephemera living in an indifferent universe.”
I have a mantra, I’m sure you’ve heard it too many
times, but that is mantras for you. “Either everything matters, or nothing
matters. Either everything is sacred, or nothing is sacred. Either everything
has meaning, or everything is meaningless.” We are all part of the one
human family, the family of life. When we no longer recognise this we begin to
fail to acknowledge one another’s sacred mystery. We begin to separate one
another, we begin to dehumanise. We are not all exactly the same we have
different qualities, different characteristics, different gifts to offer as
well as different needs. That said we are all made of the same substance, the
very same substance that the whole universe is made of, or at least the matter
we have knowledge of and I believe that the same spirit runs through all life.
I do not personally believe it controls all of it, but it is certainly present,
always there offering the lure of its love. It is our task to choose this love,
because if we do not then we will begin to separate and alienate and I believe
that it is this that causes the distrust and fear that leads to hatred and
dehumanising violence.
The solution is simple, I believe, as solutions
usually are. The solution is a reawakening to this sense of sacredness of all
life, all existence. To fill life with meaning, to make life meaningful.
You see either everything matters, or nothing matters; either everything is sacred, or nothing is sacred; either everything has meaning, or everything is meaningless. What do you believe? Do you believe that everything ought to be sanctified or that life is devoid of any meaning at all? What is your choice to be?
You see either everything matters, or nothing matters; either everything is sacred, or nothing is sacred; either everything has meaning, or everything is meaningless. What do you believe? Do you believe that everything ought to be sanctified or that life is devoid of any meaning at all? What is your choice to be?
It matters you know, it
really does.
Hymn 200 “What Does The Lord Require” words by
John Bunyan (Lines 1 to 4 by A.F Bayley Music Darwall’s 148th 66.
66. 88. J. Darwall (Purple Hymn Book)
What does the Lord require
For praise and offering?
What sacrifice desire,
Or tribute bid us bring?
But only this; true
justice do,
Love mercy too, and
walk with God.
True justice always
means
Defending of the
poor,
The righting of the
wrong,
Reforming ancient
law.
This is the path,
true justice do,
Love mercy too, and
walk with God.
Love mercy and be
kind,
Befriend, forgive,
always,
And welcome all who
come
To sing with us in praise:
And in this way,
true justice do,
Love mercy too, and
walk with God.
Yes, humbly walk
that way,
Fre from all pompous
pride,
In quiet
simplicity,
God always at our
side:
Thus evermore, true
justice do,
Love mercy too, and
walk with God.
Blessing
May the spirit of love
open our eyes.
May it shine light even
upon the darkest of days.
May recognise the
sacredness of one another, the sacredness of all life in all time and in all
spaces
May we experience the
thickening of all time so as to know the “Thin Places” in all life.
May we bring this sacred
vision with us...
In all that we feel,
all that we think, all that we say and all that we do
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