"Beginnings . . ." (Early January)
Sounding the Bell
We ring the bell 3 times. Once for those who have gone before, once for those here today, and once for those who will carry on our living tradition.
Welcome Rev. Dr. Beth Johnson
Opening Song Alleluia
Call to Worship Rev. Beth
Why I Wake Early, Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
Best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
Chalice Lighting Lisa Franklin
A Morning Offering by John O’Donohue
I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
All beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone by dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
On Wings of Song John Rott
Time for All Ages Storyteller, Christina Chairez
Sharing from Our Abundance
Children bring forward food offerings for the Interfaith Community Services.
Children’s Recessional We sing to you
Offertory Caroline Celia & John Rott
Silence
Joys and Sorrows
Filled with Loving Kindness #1031
Silence
For a New Beginning, John O’Donohue
In out-of-the way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease even in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits.
Silence
Musical Interlude
Reflections on beginnings… Rev. Beth
Dawn…
Blessed dawn of days and years and decades…
Beginnings…
Blessed beginnings born of dark and deep and chaos…
We are always beginning again…
Awakening again….
Brought into being…
That is the assurance of endings…
That the new will arise…reborn from the deep and the darkness and the chaos of uncertainty and loss…
We, though, do not know, sometimes, just what is beginning…
How we will wake up…
Just what is being brought into being…
We don’t know what this new thing – attitude, job, place, awakening will bring or look like…
Being alive, awake, and aware… striving, living, loving insures that we all, always, beginning again and again and again…
It is unavoidable…
It is in the nature of things…in the nature of life…
From the letting go, the release, the endings comes some fresh possibilities for wholeness or hope or just plain fun…
Sometimes these are beginnings of our making and choice…
Gladly anticipated and planned and prepared for…
Sometimes this beginning, this new thing is thrust upon us and we are started by its presence and shape and form…
Messy, this…
Inchoate…
Vague…
Uncertain..
Beginnings…
What is being born in you in this moment?
What is stirring?
Making itself known?
At the dawn of this new day, this new year, this new decade, is there an new adventure calling you?
What is seeking consciousness?
Calling you to wake up?
Perhaps it has been born of loss…
Perhaps it is a simple seed…
Perhaps it is an idea whose time has come…
Will you awaken to the song being born in you?
Will you risk starting anew?
Morning Has Come #397
From The Soul in Grief by Robert Romanyshyn
“It was not yet light, the moment just before the day, the last moment of the night.
The hills were still dark, but their jagged edges were already ribboned and outlined with a soft hue, crowning them in purple.
It was a knife-edge moment when the world was still deciding whether it would slip back into sleep, or stretch itself to become another dawn.
One of those rare moments when you actually do sense that the sunrise is never a guarantee, when it seems that each dawn is a decision made again and again by the world itself.
If you are awake in such a moment before the dawn, that last second before the choice is made, you know that everything which you continuously anticipate, the entire round world of all creation, could fold back into eternal night.
And you stand, then, poised on that knife edge, motionless within the moment, wrapped in its stillness, waiting for the world to renew itself again. In such moments you are empty; you are only an empty waiting.
At first I hardly noticed – it was so soft, and it seemed so singular, so far away. But it was enough for those few notes of the bird to awaken me.
I stirred, and the song began to build.
The solitary singer became a chorus, and over there by the hills the light exploded in a joyful song of delight.
Song and light had begun, and in the first moment of the new day it seemed as if the entire space of the world would not be large enough to hold this swelling song of spreading light.”
Sing and Rejoice #395
Going Forth in Service
Extinguishing the Chalice
Although we extinguish this flame
we carry in our hearts the light of truth,
the warmth of community
and the fire of commitment
until we are together again.
Closing Hymn
Sing and Rejoice #395 reprised
Benediction Rev. Beth
Morning Watch Barbara Pescan
Patiently
we waited in the dark
the planet turned
and we upon it
stupid with sleep
hoped something would happen.
While we leaned toward the east
the weight of the night sank behind us,
toward the north a comet passed so close
we could see it through the sleep in our eyes,
and then dawn flung itself up
swirling with clouds and color and birdsong.
Look – this is our world for another day.
Reach out to it, it is your own life.
Know too that t his day is dear
even to strangers you will never know.
Stretch out your arms to embrace it.
Do not go back to sleep.
Postlude Caroline Celia
We ring the bell 3 times. Once for those who have gone before, once for those here today, and once for those who will carry on our living tradition.
Welcome Rev. Dr. Beth Johnson
Opening Song Alleluia
Call to Worship Rev. Beth
Why I Wake Early, Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
Best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
Chalice Lighting Lisa Franklin
A Morning Offering by John O’Donohue
I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
All beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone by dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
On Wings of Song John Rott
Time for All Ages Storyteller, Christina Chairez
Sharing from Our Abundance
Children bring forward food offerings for the Interfaith Community Services.
Children’s Recessional We sing to you
Offertory Caroline Celia & John Rott
Silence
Joys and Sorrows
Filled with Loving Kindness #1031
Silence
For a New Beginning, John O’Donohue
In out-of-the way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease even in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits.
Silence
Musical Interlude
Reflections on beginnings… Rev. Beth
Dawn…
Blessed dawn of days and years and decades…
Beginnings…
Blessed beginnings born of dark and deep and chaos…
We are always beginning again…
Awakening again….
Brought into being…
That is the assurance of endings…
That the new will arise…reborn from the deep and the darkness and the chaos of uncertainty and loss…
We, though, do not know, sometimes, just what is beginning…
How we will wake up…
Just what is being brought into being…
We don’t know what this new thing – attitude, job, place, awakening will bring or look like…
Being alive, awake, and aware… striving, living, loving insures that we all, always, beginning again and again and again…
It is unavoidable…
It is in the nature of things…in the nature of life…
From the letting go, the release, the endings comes some fresh possibilities for wholeness or hope or just plain fun…
Sometimes these are beginnings of our making and choice…
Gladly anticipated and planned and prepared for…
Sometimes this beginning, this new thing is thrust upon us and we are started by its presence and shape and form…
Messy, this…
Inchoate…
Vague…
Uncertain..
Beginnings…
What is being born in you in this moment?
What is stirring?
Making itself known?
At the dawn of this new day, this new year, this new decade, is there an new adventure calling you?
What is seeking consciousness?
Calling you to wake up?
Perhaps it has been born of loss…
Perhaps it is a simple seed…
Perhaps it is an idea whose time has come…
Will you awaken to the song being born in you?
Will you risk starting anew?
Morning Has Come #397
From The Soul in Grief by Robert Romanyshyn
“It was not yet light, the moment just before the day, the last moment of the night.
The hills were still dark, but their jagged edges were already ribboned and outlined with a soft hue, crowning them in purple.
It was a knife-edge moment when the world was still deciding whether it would slip back into sleep, or stretch itself to become another dawn.
One of those rare moments when you actually do sense that the sunrise is never a guarantee, when it seems that each dawn is a decision made again and again by the world itself.
If you are awake in such a moment before the dawn, that last second before the choice is made, you know that everything which you continuously anticipate, the entire round world of all creation, could fold back into eternal night.
And you stand, then, poised on that knife edge, motionless within the moment, wrapped in its stillness, waiting for the world to renew itself again. In such moments you are empty; you are only an empty waiting.
At first I hardly noticed – it was so soft, and it seemed so singular, so far away. But it was enough for those few notes of the bird to awaken me.
I stirred, and the song began to build.
The solitary singer became a chorus, and over there by the hills the light exploded in a joyful song of delight.
Song and light had begun, and in the first moment of the new day it seemed as if the entire space of the world would not be large enough to hold this swelling song of spreading light.”
Sing and Rejoice #395
Going Forth in Service
Extinguishing the Chalice
Although we extinguish this flame
we carry in our hearts the light of truth,
the warmth of community
and the fire of commitment
until we are together again.
Closing Hymn
Sing and Rejoice #395 reprised
Benediction Rev. Beth
Morning Watch Barbara Pescan
Patiently
we waited in the dark
the planet turned
and we upon it
stupid with sleep
hoped something would happen.
While we leaned toward the east
the weight of the night sank behind us,
toward the north a comet passed so close
we could see it through the sleep in our eyes,
and then dawn flung itself up
swirling with clouds and color and birdsong.
Look – this is our world for another day.
Reach out to it, it is your own life.
Know too that t his day is dear
even to strangers you will never know.
Stretch out your arms to embrace it.
Do not go back to sleep.
Postlude Caroline Celia