winter solstice

Turning earth, you have brought us today to the shortest day of the year.
Your back turned to the sun, we live in slant light this morning.
The air is cold. The sky is gray.
Night is already gathering and will come upon us quickly.

Some of us, too, this morning, are feeling cold and gray.
Disappointed with ourselves and with the circumstances of the world,
we, too, have turned our backs to the sources of light and life.
Doubtful about the future, and despairing of our faith, we, too, sense a long night gathering.

But winter knows nothing of disappointment, doubt, or despair.
Winter relaxes with needed rest and gathering of resources.
The life that will bloom in April lies safe in your womb.
The snow settling on your shoulders will melt into the water we need for August.

Cherish this season to slow down and rest.
Enjoy the warmth of friends all the more for the chill outside.
Pause to name what bright possibility grows within you.
Use the quiet to gather resources that we will spend all next year.

Today we light our candles, loving the darkness.
Today we sing our carols, loving the quiet.
Today we share our gifts of abundance, loving the empty spaces of a winter landscape.
And we give thanks for all of the Earth’s times and moods and for our own changing seasons of life.

God of our Understanding

God of our understanding
Be with us today, surrounding us, filling us,
warming our bodies, brightening our thoughts, lifting our spirits.
Where we are hurting, bring a balm of healing
Where we are fearful, bring a touch of courage
Where we are confused, bring a word of wisdom
Where our lives are chaotic, bring calm peace

We give thanks for the food on our tables
And we pray for those who will not have enough food this week
We give thanks for heated rooms and roofs over our heads
And we pray for those who will sleep outside this week.
We give thanks for friends and families every where gathering together
And we pray for those families separated by necessity or painful choice
We give thanks for all those who work to keep us safe and secure
And we pray for the end of war and all the damage that war does to ourselves and our world.

May our leaders be wise to guide us
May we be strong to do the work required.
May we know the peace of a presence larger than ourselves lifting us when we are down, celebrating our success, and being the constant witness and companion of our lives.

In all the names we give you, in all the ways we know you, and with humble bowing to the mystery that we cannot truly name or know, we reach out in trust and love, and we live in peace and joy.

Holy Spirit of Community

Holy Spirit of Community
We feel ourselves sometimes so alone, and so small
Sometimes it feels we have been left forsaken by friends, by family, by our nation, by our God,

Help us to see that this is always an illusion.
Help us to see that each one of us stands at the center of a vast community.
Help us to see that we can reach out in any direction and find hands reaching back to grasp us.
Help us to understand the truth of our seventh principle that tells us of our place in an interdependent web of all existence of which we are also a part.

We give thanks for the blessing of this community
We give thanks for the ancestors of our faith who support us from the past
We give thanks for the future of this future who encourage us from the future.
We give thanks for the loving support of the spirit of universalism that brings us all to wholeness
And we give thanks for the truth of Unitarianism, that name our personal power, and call us good and able to make our world a better place for ourselves and for all.

Unitarian and Universalist

We give thanks today for the gifts of our Unitarian faith:
That human beings are powerful and good
That we are capable of making joy in our own lives
And in changing the world around us for the better.

And we give thanks today for the gifts of our Universalist faith:
That we are upheld by an irresistible force of love
That all the universe is a single creation
And that all existence will eventually find its way to salvation.

We give thanks for a faith that affirms our power, when we feel powerful,
And that offers us comfort and strength from sources beyond our own when we’re feeling weak and afraid.

With thanks for a faith sufficient to all the times of our lives, we go forward today into our lives, equipped to live lies of peace, love, and justice, in every situation we find ourselves.

May it be so.

prayer to the elements

Spirit of earth
We live from your gifts and walk all our lives on your back,
You give us strength, security, rest
You remind us of our bodies
Thank you for the inspiration of your vistas
Thank you for the food we eat
Thank you for the ability to stand firm

Spirit of water
Life emerged from your womb and depends on keeping you near
You give us health, refreshment, and cleanliness
You remind us of our unity with all life
Thank you for the blessing of rain, the thrill of rivers, and the majesty of the sea
Thank you for the water we drink
Thank you for the ability to change, to try on new forms

Spirit of fire
We live beneath your sun, and we live around your hearth
You give us energy, passion, and comfort
You remind us of our power
Thank you for the warmth of your glow
Thank you for the burning of our desire
Thank you for the ability to rise up and start something

Spirit of air
We live in you, move through you, and take you in to our bodies
You give us a sense of lightness, of possibility, and hope.
You remind us of our spiritual selves.
Thank you for the gentle touch of a breeze
Thank you for the air we breathe
Thank you for ability to see clearly what lies ahead

Loving all the elements of existence, taking them all in and ever-rearranging them, we wonder at the simplicity of being and it’s amazing complexity. We offer today our own simplicity and complexity to the eternal round of creation.

prayer of self-reflection

Highest part of ourselves, that is also the shared, high ideals of the universe;
Deepest part of ourselves, that is also the deep heart of the universe;
Search our beings that we might know ourselves better.
Open our eyes to our true selves.
With the cool calm of this place regard ourselves honestly and help us to become the best we can be, the people we strive to become

If there are thoughts of enmity, let them go.
If there have been unkind words, let them go.
If there have been actions of mean-ness or hurt, let them go.
If we have acted in ways that seprate us from our brothers or sisters, or drove them away when we meant to bring them close, forgive us.
And with humble knowledge of our limitations, urge us toward a better future

Help us be the people that live in peace, that act with justice, that speak with love.
Help us to be the people that bring others together, that invite in, that make the world welcome.
Help us to make a community as large as our ideals, as wide as our arms, as deep as our hearts.

May all who seek this community of peace, and love and justice, find their way to us. And may we be the ones worthy of giving them the welcome they deserve.

Amen

prayer for giving and receiving help

O Life, container of us all, gift from a giver far beyond ourselves, undeserved blessing, we begin in debt to you and pledge our whole lives to making ourselves worthy of the privilege.

We begin our lives helpless, and loving arms reach out to hold us and care for us.

We begin with needs for love, for learning, for safety, and others appear to give us what we need.

As we grow stronger in our bodies, quicker in our minds, and more capable in our lives, we begin to become able to pay back some of the gift given to us, and there we discover that giving to others is as much a blessing as receiving.

Thank you for all the opportunities in our lives to give to others. Thank you for the opportunity to make our lives purposeful and meaningful through the actions that lift up others. And thank you for the understanding that by lifting others we lift ourselves.

Help us today to find ways to express our needs, to let others serve us, and to hear the needs of others, and offer our lives in service to them.

Amen.

Sacred Space

Spirit of light. Spirit of Power. Spirit of Inspiration, Joy and Peace.

We thank you for this special time to be together this morning. We thank you for creating a Sabbath of time, where for this hour, we can bring our lives to the chalice of this community and find our burdens lifted and our troubles eased. We thank you for a place to bring our sorrows as well as our joys, our fears as well as our hopes. We feel again this morning the gift of healing moving through our bodies, the stilling of our restless thoughts, and the much-needed embrace of a community that loves us as we are.

Thank you for all the sacred spaces in our lives. For rooms, like this one, where we find our spirits activated, where we remember, once again, that we are not isolated beings, but connected, physically and spiritually to all existence. Where we remember as Universalists, that the universe is not unfeeling, but constructed from bonds of love. Where we remember, as Unitarians, that we have the power to participate in building the better future we seek.

We pray, in all you holy names, and in every way you are imagined and perceived.

Amen

spirit of love

Spirit of Love, the same spirit we feel in our hearts, that draws us toward other people in friendship and community; the spirit that awakens our sympathies when we encounter the suffering of any creature, the spirit that calls us to acts of compassion and justice-making.

We feel your presence, here in this room this morning. The touch of your spirit is as warm as the summer air, as gentle as a cool breeze, as refreshing as the welcome greeting from a friend, as healing as a caring word.

We pray this morning for ourselves: for our own fears and for our hopes.
We pray this morning for our friends: that they might achieve the happiness they seek.
We pray this morning for our church: that more of our neighbors might hear our message and join us in the important work of our faith.
We pray for our city: that it might deal justly with all our citizens, and care for the land we inhabit.
We pray for our state: that it may fulfill its mission of caring for the least among us.
We pray for our country: for healthcare for all, for world leadership on climate change, for courage to create a new economy based on sustainability, for peace among the nations.

In all your holy names, we pray.

Amen.

prayer before the congregational meeting at First Unitarian Church, Los Angeles

Spirit of Life and Love, Mother and Father of all things, parent of all children, partner of creation, holy dreamer and rememberer of all that ever was or will be.

Today we celebrate the great opportunity to gather together again in this worshipping community. To be a church again this morning, gifted with the friends who support us, gifted with this fine old building that embraces us, gifted with this vibrant city neighborhood that surrounds us.

When we feel fearful at the great responsibility to be the stewards of this church, help us to remember that we are not alone. Help us to recognize the talents and skills brought to our use by the people in this room: the wisdom, the sense of humor, the calm voice, the passionate heart, the strong arms, those with money to give, those with time to give, those with vision, those with love.

When we feel despair, or terrible anxiety. When we feel overwhelmed. Allow us to take a breath, to step back, ad to let others lead for a time. And when we feel hope, when we see possibility. When our power returns. Call on us to take a breath, to step forward, and to take our turn in leadership.

Today we bring together all the resources of this community and we lay them on the altar of this church. From what we have today, supported by the rich legacy of hundreds of other Unitarians Universalists in Los Angeles who founded this church, and built this building, and who loved this church, and bequeathed it to us in pride, we will move this church one more step into the future. And it will be good.

Amen.

Individual and Community

Spirit of Life and Love that dwells within each of us and flows through all things.

Help us to meet you in that true core of our being. Help us to find that true self of the self where we participate in the Divine. Help us to claim identity with that Atman that is also the Brahman. Help us to be what we know we are but resist:

that person of love, that person of grace, that person without fear, that compassionate one, that wise one, that courageous one, that teacher, giver, lover and friend. Help us to release the prisoner of our true self from the cage of misery and fear where we keep it hidden.

And then, releasing ourselves, help us to meet you again in the world around us. Help us to see your holy face in the faces of everyone we meet. Help us to claim identity with the Brahman, the god of all existence, that manifests itself in all things including ourselves.

Help us to be what we know we are but resist: the god of love, the god of grace, the compassionate, wise and courageous spirit that surrounds and fills us. Let us be channels of your spirit moving through us to others, from yourself, back to yourself. Ever with you, ever a part of you. Holinees to holiness. One divine spirit blessing itself.

An Atheist Prayer

Oh best spirit of myself, and highest spirit of this gathered community, vision of all that we can and hope to be, inspiration to self-growth and cultural evolution, I feel you now urging myself and all in this room to develop and use all of the skills and talents naturally present within us.

When we feel afraid, we will find courage within our own heart to face our fears, and we will help others face the dangers of life with bravery.

When we feel lonely, we will remember this community and seek out our companions, and we will be faithful friends to others.

When we feel righteous anger, we will seek justice in the human systems of ethics and laws that regulate fair and equal treatment for all, and we will help others find justice through purposeful action to change the human systems that oppress us.

Through our own actions, and through the actions of all people generally, we can create the world we seek. Today we feel rising in our bodies a new strength and resolve to do what must be done, a new lightness and joy fueling our hopes and optimism, and a new peace that comes with faith in and respect for the inherent worth and power of all human beings.

Amen

May 3, 2009

Spirit of beauty, truth and love.

Spirit that resides inside us, beside us, beneath us and above us.
Send your blessings through us, among us, rising up from the ground into our bodies, raining down from the heavens on all the Earth’s creatures.

Forgive us the times when we have acted against you, against ourselves, and against each other.

Forgive us the times when we failed to notice beauty in our selves or others or the world, when we failed to make the beauty we could have, when we made ugliness instead.

Forgive us the times when we spoke less than the truth to our own advantage, when we used our powers of reason and persuasion to justify actions we knew to be unworthy, when we let damaging lies said in our presence go unchallenged because of our own fear of confrontation.

Forgive us the times when we could have loved more but loved less, or acted from hate. Forgive us the times we failed to love ourselves, failed to love our neighbor, failed to love our enemy, failed to love the holy ideal we claim to seek.

Move us deeper into your realm of beauty. Help us see more clearly the world of justice we can yet create and guide us toward it. Grant that we should live in love, as loving people in loving community, and held in your loving embrace, eternally.

Amen

My experience

I was got the last seat on the Meditation boat at the Self-Realization center when we visited last month. Everyone there seemed well settled into their own private journey.
As quietly as I could I stowed my purse under the chair and centered myself with my hands on my knees. I closed my eyes to the water view and the small shrine at the front of the "houseboat". My breath deepened I forgot the drive to Santa Monica, the other members of our group, my cell phone, the world. I feel deeply into a semi-consciousness that was unique for me in my meditation efforts.

Time passed I really don't know how much slipped by. The water caused a very slight movement to the space. The quiet was perfect in its wholeness.

When I opened my eyes the man next to me had left. I never sensed it nor even felt a ripple in the air. It was as if he just disappeared. It took some effort to get up and leave because the air seemed to hold me. I felt refreshed, uplifted, peaceful.
I think my experience echos Jean's idea of an after "life". I had been carried away from the now perhaps lifted by the energy of the more experienced spiritual beings around me. I thought after I was either alone there or at one with every other person in the room. Perhaps I was given a glimpse of eternity.

Quotation & Response (by Eric Felker)

"When we view ourselves in space and time, our consciousnesses are obviously the separate individuals of a particle-picture, but when we pass beyond space and time, they may perhaps form the ingredients of a single conscious stream of life. As it is with light and electricity, so may it be with life: the phenomena may be individuals carry on separate existences in time and space, while in the deeper reality beyond time and space, we may all be members on one body."

Sir James Hopwood Jeans
astronomer & mathematician


My prayer in response to Jeans' statement:

O Divine One, I joyfully know myself to be one of the separate consciousnesses of being and life. From that viewpoint, I attempt to know myself and know the world around me; I arrive at a changing, partial and imperfect knowledge, a changing, partial and imperfect linking.

Using my partial view, I can, with Jeans, glimpse beyond time and space to the unity of being and life. That glimpse of fuller truth is a great challenge and a great opportunity for me to open my spiritual life to the "one body" that is You.

May I remember every day that I live in the world of time and space and also in timelessness and spacelessness. May the relationship between those two conditions be a deep source of compassion and inspiration, of action and stillness.

Prayer on Easter Sunday 2009

Holy spirit embracing all in ever-constant affection,

We gather together this Sunday a jumble of highs and lows, anxieties and anticipations, troubles too great to bear alone, joys too great to bear alone.

Our hearts turn with random enthusiasms, and ceaseless worries. Our minds scamper with fleeting images, or cling too tightly to weighty obsessions. Some spirits leap up this morning at this day of new beginnings. Some spirits sink down this morning at this day of final endings.

We come thankful for this congregation with room to contain all of our lives: a person filled with doubt and fear, sits beside a person filled with optimism and strength. The hungry man next to the well-fed woman. The healthy beside the sick. The troubled beside the peaceful. The pressed down, beside the lifted up.

Forgive us the times when we let our differences force us apart instead of drawing us closer. Awaken in us a sense of curiosity about lives different from our own. Help us to see your divine face in every face and in all our faces together.

Today we set our solitary lives into the context of this community larger than ourselves and into this faith tradition older than ourselves. Within the great symphony of existence we add our melody.

prayer for the spring

Gods and goddesses of the spring: Persephone, Eostre, Gaia, the Green Man, Mithra, Pan,

We revel in this your glorious season, when every bursting blossom testifies to the power of life, when every sprouting seed preaches new creation, when the lengthening days promise greater joy to come. Our hearts leap up in hope and anticipation of the quickly approaching day of yearly resurrection when all that seems dead and finished is found alive again.

Like any seed buried in the ground we know it will come up.

New healing for the sick and injured

It will come up (repeat after each line)

New community for the isolated and lonely
Comfort for the troubled
Solace for the grieving
New work for the unemployed
New homes for the homeless
A congregation of 150 Unitarian Universalists in the Santa Clarita Valley
A community garden
Marriage equality in the state of California
Marriage equality in the United States
Universal Health Care
Equitable distribution of our water resources
A sustainable economy based on conservation rather than consumption
Hastened development of renewable energy sources
Peace in Afghanistan
Peace in Iraq
Peace in all the world
Peace in our own hearts

prayer for the agnostic

Divine Spirit, who goes by so many names.
Who hides yourself in so many forms,
Who disguises yourself with diverse theologies and a-theologies,
Who may be nothing more than our own best thoughts,
Who may be nothing more than our highest human aspirations,
Who may be far more than we can comprehend or imagine,
We feel your presence with us and around us, through and among the people in this room, from the center of our being to the unending expanses of all existence.

Your presence calms us, comforts us and inspires us.

We bring our sadness and anxiety to the altar of this congregation and take them up again transformed into compassion and hope.

We bring our joys and plans to the altar of this congregation and take them up again transformed into service to others, and deeper resolve to manifest our ideals.

Thank you for the gift of creativity that makes poets of us all, working the rough clay of our existence into lives of beauty.

Thank you for a saving sense of humor, that keeps us humble before life’s immensity, and keeps us delighted before life’s wonders.

We pledge ourselves today, to greater love, to larger community, and to freer expression of the holy people you created us to be.

Amen

prayer for community worship

O Divine Spirit of our yearnings and longings, who represents both the best of each of us, and the idea of the best that calls to us from far beyond ourselves.

We gather today in sadness.

Sadness for our own troubles, sadness for the troubles of our friends and loved ones, sadness for the troubles of our world.

We gather today in celebration.

For the many joys in our lives. For the joys of good people making better lives around the world.

We gather today in a gratitutde.

For the blessings of this church community. For the abundance available to us in this city and nation. For the gifts that come to us from the world we share.

And we gather today in purposeful resolve.

We pledge to take up the experiences of our lives and stretching out our hearts and hands as widely as we can, to use our own gifts and talents to heal the sadness of others, to celebrate the joys in life with others, to offer thanks to all who have so generously blessed us, and to strive faithfully to create a better future for us all.

Prayer for the ancestors

A prayer I wrote for the ingathering worship (Jan. 25, 2009) of our Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, Pacific Southwest District Chapter, winter retreat. Before reading the prayer I asked the gathered ministers to call out into the room the names of people from our faith tradition who have influenced their own ministry.

Our great Unitarian Universalist parents are among us.
As we humbly offer our thanks
 for the many blessings you have given, we extend our love to the infinite end of creation surrounding and upholding all beings, physically or spiritually present, living or dead.
We respect you, honored ancestors, for the suffering that you have endured so that we may not suffer so.
We thank you for the institutions you built that give us communities to live in and work and grow.
Humbly we lift up the great work that you began and carry it forward in you honor.
Spiritual mothers and fathers of us all -
We invoke you to stay near us and furthur lead and guide us to a higher understanding and deeper wisdom and greater love.
Parents of all children, guide this your human family toward a greater unity, and a more cherished diversity. Strengthen our values of compassion, and justice, freedom for all, humility, and peace.
We swear upon the heritage and legacy that you have left to us to uphold and sustain this great religious tradition, in your names and in ours, and to continue the great work of this faith toward the total physical and spiritual liberation of all people.