Sunday, March 24, 2019

 

Call to Worship by Kathleen McTigue (excerpt)

Here in the refuge of this Sabbath home
We turn our busy minds toward silence,
And our full hearts toward one another.

We move together through the mysteries:
The bright surprise of birth and the shadowed questions of death.

In our slow walk between the two we will be wounded,
And we will be showered with grace,
Amazing, unending…

And though we each walk within a vast loneliness,
The promise we offer here is that we do not walk alone.

Come, let us worship together.

 

Journeys in Poetry: an Introduction to this Service

We are now in the season of Lent, in the Christian tradition. Lent is a 40-day period, beginning with Ash Wednesday and ending with Easter Sunday. Ash Wednesday reminds people that we are mortal, and Easter celebrates rebirth and resurrection. In between, for those 40 days, regardless of our beliefs, is an excellent opportunity to engage in a spiritual practice of reflection about this human journey we are part of. A journey can be a literal one: a pilgrimage, for example. A journey can also be a spiritual one, in which our bodies remain motionless, but our hearts and minds grow and change. It can be a metaphor – for example 40-day period of Lent is reminiscent of Jesus’s 40 days in the desert wilderness, a metaphor for a spiritual journey.

Throughout history, our literature has been full of tales of journeys – of quests. From the Bible to Greek mythology to classic childhood and adult stories, we are reminded continually that we become lost at various points in our lives, and we must set forth from where we are, to seek a new life, a new home for our bodies and our spirits. Sometimes we are forced away from a life where we might be comfortable and content, but not growing. Sometimes our unhappiness drives us away from all we know. We become lost for a time, wandering in the wilderness. How do we find our way?

Our service this morning offers a variety of poems and readings about the experience of journeys, of finding ourselves lost and seeking the way forward.

 

Reading The Layers, by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Introduction to Next Reading

The story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale in the Hebrew Bible is usually told as a story of what happens when we try to get away from God, and what God wants us to do. Jonah was trying to run away from God, and ended up in the belly of a great fish. But the story also offers us some insight into those times when we are truly lost, those times when it is dark and we can’t see a way out of the predicament or the situation we are in. The reading that follows can offer us some thoughts of how to handle those in-between times, when we feel trapped and not able to move forward.

Reading Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale by Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

Introduction to Reading

One of the great tales of all time about a journey is Homer’s Odyssey, the tale of King Odysseus’ attempts to return home to Ithaca following the Trojan War. It is a story of devotion to home and family, and to how many obstacles sometimes must be overcome along a journey. In the case of the Odyssey, the Greek gods and goddesses had to intervene in order to help Odysseus make his way home to Ithaca. Sometimes our own journeys can feel like that. Sometimes we need outside help – if not divine intervention, help from friends or family or therapists, or addiction programs. Our journeys can be long and arduous, but we should always remember to find what goodness we can along the way.

Reading Ithaka, by C. P. Cafavy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Reading The Journey, by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Closing Words Nelson Mandala

I have walked that long road to freedom,
I have tried not to falter,
I have made missteps along the way,
But I have discovered the secret that
After climbing a great hill,
One only finds
That there are many more hills to climb.
I have taken a moment here to rest,
To steal a view of the glorious vista
That surrounds me, to look back
On the distance I have come.
But I can rest only for a moment,
For with freedom come responsibilities,
And I dare not linger, for my long walk
Is not yet ended.

Blessed Be.
Amen.