Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 10th of September, 2000
Mark Belletini, Minister First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio
Opening Words [Next] [back to top]
We are here
with the whole of our community,
every age and every kind
to worship, to flow with our singular lives
into the great common stream of history and time
held by currents of ceremony, silence, song and word.
With high mountains and green valleys,
soaring birds and croaking frogs,
swimming fish and leaping gazelles
we join together to make a world and a wonder.
North, south, east and west, encircle our gathering now
assembly: And may we be true to ourselves, true to each other, and
true to our visions of what we can together become…
Prayer before silence [Next] [back to top]
Behold the day that is ours,
flowing from the barest trickle of morning
to the deep blue sea of evening!
Every minute flows quickly;
ours is only to bow low to the deep, deep river,
quench out thirst,
and let the water flow on in peace.
To bow and drink deeply the moment
the receive the cool and refreshing present
of presence,
this is our ample worship,
our perfect thanksgiving,
our amen to life.
Let us stop the whirling of our busy lives for a moment,
(bell/silence)
As we continue our circle in silence this morning,
we call to mind those among us whom we would embrace
with our care…
Rev. Carol Brody, who had surgery to correct a broken wrist this week,
Pat Bentz who fell and broke her leg while on vacation in Italy and came
home for further treatment,
Martha Saenger who suffered several bouts of angina
this week and is in Riverside for treatment,
and all those whose names we do not know
who also are afflicted in body or mind
and lastly, we hold up the family of Charles Williams, our church counsel, our Religious Education coordinator Susan Williams, and their children Nathan and Robin, who lost Francie this week, beloved mother, mother-in-law and grandmother. We kindle this light to sign the brightness of the love that embraces Francie's family and embraces us all. We keep a time of silence for the Williams family in their sorrow.
silence
And we bring to our common time the names of all those in our own lives whom we care about, whom we struggle with, whom we miss, in whom we take delight. Aloud or silently, we name them to sign the context and reality of our worship this morning.
The First Reading [Next] [back to top]
comes from the Newsletter of the Salt Lake City Unitarian Universalist Church, specifically the column of the senior minister there, Tom Goldsmith. It was written a few years ago now, and I have edited it for pulpit reading.
When I was twenty-one, I succumbed to peer pressure and took my first ride on a roller coaster. I have yet to regain my color.
This may have been my greatest theological experience, perhaps even tilting me toward ministry, as I engaged in a long conversation with God during those two minutes of screaming. Perhaps it was a monologue on my part, but I was safely delivered which left a profound impression on me.
I offered some difficult-to-keep promises, but I have tried to live a good life ever since.
I finally feel vindicated for that tortuous episode in my life, which got my friends to infer several weaknesses in my character. Made to feel flawed for not embracing the sensations created by traveling at great velocity upside-down, I am now able to point to current research done on the deficiencies of people who pursue roller-coaster rides and other excitements.
Dr. Marvin Zuckerman claims that people who ride roller coasters (or seek other such thrills) might have an imbalance in a brain chemical, mono-amine oxidase. Excitement seems to change the level of the chemical in some people, lifting them from the blahs to excitement.
Oh, I respect people who tell me they would rather hang-glide or parachute than go to church on Sunday morning, but I do find I worry about their mono-amine oxidase levels. But at least I no longer feel inferior to these thrill seekers like once I did.
I look forward to the new church year. It too is a ride of sorts, but in this case, no one knows where the bumps are in advance. The challenge comes from lifting the spirit from the blahs to excitement without defying gravity. Ours is a ride without illusion, without a sense of danger, where people do not need to rely on centrifugal force to keep body and soul together. We offer collisions with hard questions, and the comfort of each other's company. All are welcome here, people with apparently too much mono-amine oxidase like me, and those people with too little mono-amine oxidase. When they are done hanging upside-down, they might find it thrilling just to stand on terra firma, and walk into a Unitarian Universalist Church where anything can happen… and usually does.
The Second Reading [Next] [back to top]
comes from the South African social critic, pacifist and writer, Oliver Schreiner, who died in 1920.
Only the sea is like a human being. The sky is not, nor the earth. But sea is always moving. Always something deep in itself is stirring. It never rests, it is always wanting.
Sermon: Water Celebration and Roller Coasters [Next] [back to top]
Well, if you want to know the truth, I don't care for roller coasters much either. I get sick just driving past them on the highway. Some friends of mine in college, who had once seen me turn white and then green on a diabolical ride called a "Wild Mouse" offered me a small fortune of money if I would ride the big roller coaster at Cedar Pointe. They thought it would be amusing I guess, to watch my face turn into a Picasso painting, with one eye up here, one eye down here, and my mouth sitting side-saddle on my green cheek. As needy as I was as a student, I turned them down.
I assure you, maturity has not changed my reactions to roller coasters a bit. When I was visiting my friend Harlan in Minneapolis just a couple of years ago, he took me to see the local sites, specifically, the Great Mall of America, the largest shopping center in the States. It was pretty big, but they have the nerve to keep an INDOOR roller coaster inside the place. Harlan said cheerfully "Let's ride the roller coaster."
I said, not terribly cheerfully "Let's not."
He asked "Why?"
I said "I HATE riding roller coasters. They make me green and white."
"Oh, c'mon," he said to me. "It's just a little roller coaster. It's indoors, man, look at it. It's small. The first hill is less than five stories high!"
This line of reasoning continued for a half an hour.
Unfortunately, I could see where it was leading. Worse, on top of Harlan's arguments, I heard all these voices in my head saying "Oh, c'mon Mark, he's right, it is just a tiny little roller coaster. You have this fear that you have built up out of proportion. You are being too dramatic about this."
So I gave in. We rode the roller coaster, Harlan and I.
When the ride was over, Harlan turned to me and said "I will never, I mean never, ride an amusement park ride with you as long as I live, and maybe longer. I have never been so embarrassed in all my life. The sounds you made! I have never in my life seen anyone grab the side of the car so tightly that they left fingerprints in the metal railings, but you did. And you are still whiter than I thought it was possible to get without being a zombie.
Well, who knows why I am this way about terrifying amusement park rides. Maybe, as the first reading suggests, I have too much monoamine oxidase in my system, and Harlan has too little, since he enjoys roller-coasters, tilt-a-whirls and other tortures that reduce me to muttering and whimpering.
What I do know is that both Harlan and I are human beings, and Unitarian Universalists who are active in our respective churches. The differences between us can be embraced by both categories very nicely.
My character is not deficient because I hate rides, and his is not deficient because he loves them. We can even love each other as dear friends. At the very least, I think, our church is based on this basic principle.
I also like the principle found in the second reading. Human beings are like water, she says. They are not like land or earth, and they are not like the sky, or heaven. They are like water, most of all. Why? Because, she says, we are always moving…
I think that's true. I was Mark when I was a baby, I was Mark when I was a teenager, I was Mark when I turned 30 and I am still Mark…yet I do not resemble a baby or, sadly, a 30 year old any more. I have been someone called Mark all along, but my body has been moving from one shape to the next all my life. We are always moving, always changing, and as the author says, always being stirred up and moved by something "deep inside us."
And we "want," says Olive Schreiner.
I know I want a lot of things. I'd like some order in my office and some time to sit and think. I'd like more time with friends and less time with housework. I'd like a new paint job in my loft and more time for oil painting.
But these wants are not my real wants.
Underneath it all, the thing that connects them all, that really stirs me up on the inside, that really moves me, is my desire for balance in my life.
Balance. You know, like water wants balance. When a storm makes waves in the sea, the sea doesn't stay all messed up forever. It becomes level again. Water, as they say, seeks its own level.
When spring rains swell a river and it floods, it does not stay that way forever. Eventually, it moves back within its banks, and returns to the size it was and follows the course it was following before the spring rain.
And even after that pesky roller coaster, despite all its highs and lows, eventually finds a level spot where we can all get off, some laughing, some green.
Churches are different than roller coasters though. You can see in advance where the bumps are going to be in the tracks of a roller coaster. Churches, being human institutions, are a lot more like water. You can never exactly tell when the waves will be high or the tide will be low.
You just know that waves and tides will happen, and that eventually the sea finds its own level between the high and the low, between heaven above and earth below.
The water we bring from all over the earth this morning is just water I suppose. But it can stand, if we let it, for the spirit that always seeks its own level, that is homesick for balance and wholeness.
People sometimes use the words "high" and "low" to describe churches. It refers to their style of worship or formality, supposedly. Are we a high church? A low church? God, I hope we're neither. I hope instead we will see ourselves as a whole church, a balanced church. I pray we always find our center no matter what ups and downs come our way. And that we can do all of our work this year without needing either tight seatbelts or centrifugal force to hold us in our seats. Just two basic principles…we are all welcome here no matter what our differences are, and two, its all about being moved and moving others to a sense of levelness, balance, wholeness.
We are like water. We flow, move and seek our level.
We are like water, but the water is greater than us. We do not control or own the water, mind you, or drink it all down like the great greedy frog did in the Australian story. No, we can only laugh and let the water flow how it will flow, always downstream toward the great sea of the future, pausing each Sunday to drink from its refreshments only one small handful at a time. You can't hoard water or own it.
You can only gather up small amounts of it, and let the rest flow back into the earth once again.
Everyone is welcome here…people who travel far and people who stay close to home.
Everyone is welcome here…people who like roller coasters and people like me who turn green on them.
Everyone is welcome here…grown ups and children and teenagers and seniors and, well, everyone.
Together this year, we will flow like water together into the common bowl of community, and then, because we are a whole church, neither high nor low, neither greedy nor indifferent, we will pour ourselves back into the earth, working to make it all…. neighborhood, city, nation, world and planet a place of laughter, wholeness, kindness, compassion, justice and joy. Welcome home.
Prayer for the Pouring of Water [back to top]
Waters of the North, flow into this place, our home. Bring us wholeness, bring us connection and bring us peace:
Behold, cold waters from the far Nenana (Nee-nah-nuh) River in Alaska flowing off Dinali, from Anchorage of the Midnight Sun, the land of sea-lions and great bears, and a grandmother meeting her grandchild for the first time…
and waters from shining Vancouver and the Canadian mountains, dark blue against the powder blue sky,
and waters from Door County in Wisconsin, and from the Second City, Chicago and from several places along the east shore of Lake Michigan where at a gathering of joy, passionate people chanted and drummed and circle-danced under the stars;
and from Littlefield Lake in Michigan, where old families and new wove a fresh pattern of relationship and connection, and from the beaches near Ludington, with its tree lined streets and finely painted houses, from Detroit with its memories of fire and factory, social art and immigrant wisdom
and waters from the Avon River in Ontario, Canada echoing with the loud miracles of actors bringing Shakespeare to life once again,
and waters from far Labrador and Newfoundland, where the Vikings left their footprints on wind-whittled land and icebergs sail like catamarans down the wide St. Lawrence River, even in August,
and waters from the deep Oslo Fjord where a woman says goodbye to long held family land on a day when the sun barely sets.
Bless us, waters, and bring us home to ourselves.
Waters of the East, flow into this place, our home, bring us wholeness, bring us memory, and bring us peace.
Behold, waters from a land of deep heritage, from the Sea of Galilee, a small lake shaped like a harp in the middle of green rocky hills dotted with red poppies, and water from the shallow Jordan River, from fresh fountains in Jerusalem and salty pools at the Dead Sea,
and waters from one of our ancestral lands of the spirit, Poland, from the Baltic Sea and the flowing Vistula River, lined with both the golden memories of our ancient forbears in Racow and Cracow, and the ashen memories of Auschwitz, and the Warsaw ghetto.
And waters from the silver Danube and jagged Tatra mountains in Slovakia, where two men find a bit of both roots and wings;
and waters from the canals in civilized Amsterdam, and from the grey and wide Thames near Buckingham Palace, from mystic Stonehenge and the elaborate Roman baths at Bath,
and from the pewter Irish Sea where it laps the mossy stones of castles,
and waters from the Atlantic Coast, from Portland Maine to North Carolina, along the shoals of Onslow Bay not too far from Cape Fear, and from the Chesapeake Bay where the salt water meets the fresh near Buzzard's Bay,
and from the steamy memorial fountains in Washington DC, and its lazy Potomac River
and from the Delaware River near Swarthmore, New Jersey, where the heritage of the Quakers still shines, to Ellis Island in New York where Polish families who had no memory of their Racowian heritage saw their future home for the first time, to the Dyke Bridge at famous and sad Chappaquiddick in Massachusettes to Boston itself, our continental homeland of history and heritage.
and many waters from Lake Hope in Ohio, along the Zaleski trail, and water from Captina Creek shaded by box-elders and drooping willows, and rain water collected in blue bowls suspended from trees next to a house on the east side of Columbus.
Bless us, Waters, and bring us home to ourselves.
Waters of the South, flow into this place, our home. Bring us wholeness, bring us challenge and bring us peace.
Behold, waters of Chiapas in the south of Mexico salted with human tears,
and waters from Wahculla Springs near Tallahassee, near a swamp knit with cypress roots,
and waters from the Mississippi at Memphis, with wedding bells echoing across the banks of the river,
and water from the near the memorial to slain Civil Rights martyrs at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery Alabama,
and water from Selma Alabama from the river of the same name from under the Edmund Pettis bridge close to where one of those martyrs, Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb died.
and waters from the Cumberland River flowing through singing Nashville, and more waters from Lake Hope,
and waters from a water-lily pond at a home in Victorian Village, and finally, waters representing the waters that hold us all as we are born, waters that held Riley Winder Jones, a boy born June 20th and water holding and receiving Sasha Rable Collins, born Aug. 23rd, joys made flesh, hope alive.
Bless us waters, and bring us home to ourselves.
Waters of the West, flow into this place, our home.
Bring us wholeness, bring us hope and peace.
Behold, waters from places so far west they are called east, waters from Beijing in The Middle Land or as we call it, China, waters from the Ibo river and from near the great castle Himeji in Nippon, or as we call it, Japan,
and waters near and on the west coast of the United States from Gig Harbor up in Puget Sound and Muir snowfield on great Mount Ranier in Washington State, to Land's End in Lincoln City, Oregon, to the cold waters from San Francisco Bay dotted with sail boats, and from Alameda, where old friends bonded, and from beautiful Monterey Bay, and warmer waters from Coronado near San Diego, and the Malibu beaches, and Zuma Beach and up the coast to Carpenteria,
waters from the Jewel of California, Lake Tahoe, and from the great inland West, from the White River in Colorado where a family camped under aspens and found their delight in the movements of squirrels, chipmunks and hummingbirds, to waters from the prairies near DesMoines Iowa, and waters from the wide Mississippi near Dubuque and waters from that river a bit closer to the source, at Winona, where even a pontoon boat run aground could not take away the joy of a family reunion.
And water from a frog pond on a farm in Indiana, where friends renewed their relationships, and water from homes here in Columbus where families gathered to renew their lives of love together.
Bless us, waters, and return us home to ourselves.
From ocean, mountain snow, river, prairie, sea and pond the waters find their level in this place. May we also, so much like water, moving and changing and flowing find our peace in this place. Blest is the life we share. Amen. (interlude)
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