March 23, 2013
St. Andrews Scotts Memorial Church
Land
To tend a garden is a precious thing.
But dearer still the one where all may
roam,
the weeds of poison, poverty, and war,
demand your care, who call the earth your
home.
Kathy Galloway, Soul Weavings
Come and be still
surrounded by candlelight darkness, meditative liturgy, prayers, chants and
readings. Providing space for interior reflection and quiet, this meditational
Saturday evening service is offered when the work of the week is completed and
the calm of the weekend’s eve settles over our hearts and minds. Come and be
still.
About our altar: Each month the gathered community will
create the sacred space according to the theme of the month. You are invited to
bring a reading or an object to share. We will also provide some materials for
you to create a response to our theme.
The service begins
with the sound of the bells
Welcome
Music
Kristen plays flute
Lighting of
candles in bowls while we sing
God to Enfold Us (Iona) singing 3 times
God to enfold us, Christ to uphold us,
Spirit to keep us in heaven’s sight;
So may God grace us, heal us, embrace us,
Lead us through the darkness into the light
Opening Prayer (from Rabbi Arthur Waskow)
One: In the beginning, darkness covered the
face of the deep.
Many: Then the rushing breath of life hovered over
the waters.
All: Let us breathe together.
One: Let us catch our breath from the need to
make, to do.
Many: Let us be conscious of the Breath of Life.
One: We breathe out what the trees breathe in.
Many: We breathe in what the trees breathe out.
All: Together we breathe each other into
life.
Blessed is the One within the many.
Blessed are the Many who make one.
This is My Song (tune Findlandia) verse 1
This is my song, Oh God of all the nations,
a song of Peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart
is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred
shrine.
but other hearts in other lands are beating,
with hopes and dreams as true and high as
mine.
Reading or Sharing
This is My Song verse 2
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,
a song of Peace for their land and for mine.
Reading or Sharing
This is My Song verse 3
May Truth and Freedom come to every nation;
may Peace abound where strife has raged so
long;
that each may seek to love and build together,
a world united, righting every wrong;
a world united in its love for freedom,
proclaiming Peace together in one song.
Reading or Sharing
“Come and fill our hearts” (Taize) three
times
Come and fill our hearts with your peace.
You alone, O Lord, are holy.
Come and fill our hearts with your peace,
alleluia
Prayers for Ourselves, Others, and Creation
“Were You There When They Crucified My Lord”
Chorus: Were you
there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there
when they crucified my Lord?
Oh! Sometimes it
causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there
when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there
when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there
when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh! Sometimes it
causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there
when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there
when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there
when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh! Sometimes it
causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there
when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there
when God raised him from the dead?
Were you there
when God raised him from the dead?
Oh! Sometimes it
causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there
when God raised him from the dead?
Reading or Sharing
Sharing the Sign of Peace
Sending Song Bless Now, O God, The Journey
Tune: Nettleton
339 Words: Sylvia Dunstan
Bless now, O God,
the journey that all your people make,
the path through
noise and silence, the way of give and take.
The trail is found
in the desert and wends the mountain round.
Bless sojourners
and pilgrims who share this winding way;
your hope burns
through the terrors, your love sustains the day.
We yearn for holy
freedom while often we are bound;
together we are
seeking the road where faith is found.
Divine eternal
lover, you meet us on the road.
We wait for lands
of promise where milk and honey flow,
but waiting not
for places, you meet us all around.
Our covenant is
written on roads, as faith is found.
Sending Prayer
Sending Blessing
Deep peace of the
running wave to you.
Deep peace of the
flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the
quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the
shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the
infinite peace to you.
Readings
My homeland is not
a traveling bag.
Nor am I a passing
traveler.
It is I who am the
lover.
And the land is my
beloved.
Mahmoud
Darwish, Diary of a Wound
Genesis 8: 6-12
At the end of 40
days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out a raven;
and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he
sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of
the ground; but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him
to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put
out his hand and took it into the ark with him. He waited another seven days,
and again he sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in
the evening, and there in his beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah
knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven
days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him anymore.
I thank You God for most this amazing
day for the
leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true
dream of sky, and for everything
which is natural
which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died
am alive again today,
and this is the
sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of
love and wings: and of the gay
great happening
illimitably earth)
how should tasting
touching hearing seeing
breathing
any---lifted from the no
of all
nothing---human merely being
doubt unimaginable
You?
(now the ears of
my ears awake and
now the eyes of my
eyes are opened)
ee cummings
Good people,
most royal
greening verdancy,
rooted in the sun,
you shine with
radiant light.
In this circle of
earthly existence
you shine so
finely,
It surpasses
understanding.
God hugs you.
You are encircled
by the arms
of the mystery of
God.
Hildegard of Bingen
Deuteronomy 8: 6-10
Therefore keep the
commandments of the Lord your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him.
For the Lord your God
Is bringing you
into a good land, a land with flowering streams, with springs and underground
waters welling in valleys of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of
olive trees and honey, a land where you can eat bread without scarcity, where
you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you
may mine copper. You shall et your fill and bless the Lord your God for the
good land that he has given you.
The dignity of
nature as creation needs to be bound up with our responsibility for the
preservation of life.
World Council of
Churches
We know that in all Creation
Only the human family
Has Strayed from the Sacred Way.
.
We know that we are the ones who are divided
And we are the ones who must come back together
To Walk in the Sacred Way.
.
Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion, and honor
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.
-- A prayer of the Ojibway Nation
…A small evening
a neglected
village
two sleeping eyes
thirty years
five wars
I witness that
time hides for me
An ear of wheat
The singer sings
Of fire and
strangers
Evening was
evening
The singer was
singing
And they question
him
Why do you sing?
He answers them as
they seize him
because I sing
And they have
searched him:
in his breast only
his heart
in his heart only
his people
in his voice only
his sorrow.
Mahmoud
Darwish from poem of the land
I
have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated
it---and God knows I have hated it for the sheer human cost of it. But the
sight of it, from a far or inside the labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every
inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their deaths and
their birthmarks pressed deep into the city’s viscera and onto the rubble of
its edges. The deified and the condemned have set their footprints in its sand.
It has been conquered, razed, and rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to
possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet somehow, it exhales humility. It sparks an inherent sense of familiarity in
me---that doubtless, irrefutable Palestinian certainty that I belong to this
land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, because its soil is the
keeper of my roots, of the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private
lust of my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate,
tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of
this inalienable title, far more than yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land
registries, the iron keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of
superpowers could ever do.
From Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa
