Readings and Unison Prayer from August 4th, 2019 Hymn Sing Service

By Lovina Sylvia Chidi
Music is freedom that relentlessly exists
Freedom of speech
Freedom of thought
Freedom of creativity
Freedom of imagination

Music is ever soothingly healing
A bombardment of on-going expression of feelings
Music is a tool of unity
Always bringing people together as family
Hence be described as a mentor of spirituality

Music is magic
Performing its tricks
With sweet instrumental tones and lyrics

Music is emotionally captivating
Music is positively distracting
Music is a form of beautiful art
Passed on as a message on a public stage

Music is as powerful as water
Flowing in and out of generations
Trapped ever so often only by its own enormous power
Music is an angel
Singing out from the skies as she flies
Music is love
Music is the food of all moods
Music is perfect and it is good for you

Unison Prayer by Maren Tirabassi
Our Feather,
one small brush of the grand and lifting wing,
holy are all the names of God.
Your kindness come
and your kiss be felt warm
on every lump of soil,
gust of wind,
lapping of salt sea and fresh water.
Give us today
and let us recognize it
as a gift —
the bread and beauty of it —
and that it is like no other.
Forgive us all the love
we owed but hoarded,
and our careless or angry trespassing
on the lives of your children,
even as, with unbearable effort,
we forgive
the taking and the trampling
of what is precious to us.
Draw your hush across our lips,
and pull us back
from what we would regret.
Find us an escape or stay with us
when there is none,
for yours is the place our hands are held,
yours is the courage of the sequoia
and the broken atom,
yours are galaxies of starlight,
and the hum of bees —
Now … and when we come to sing
all our todays
into your tomorrow.
amen.
Benediction by Rev. Dawn Skjei Cooley
Let us go out into the world singing.
We know these songs. They vibrate through time, in our very souls.
They are the songs that give us life.
They are the songs that give us meaning.
They are the songs that give us purpose.
Now it is our turn, to take these life-giving songs out into the world.
Let us go now—singing these songs with voices deep and strong.
And may the world join us in praise and in celebration and in love.
Amen.