Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 18th of November, 2001
Mark Belletini, Minister First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio
Opening Words [Next] [back to top]
We are here
on this beautiful Sunday morning in late fall
to be mindful together of the wonder of our lives
to sing our thanks and praise
for all the diverse gifts of life,
which we use to serve the common good.
May our reason and passion keep us true to ourselves, true to each other,
and true to those visions of what we can together become...
About the Naming Ceremony (9 am service) [Next] [back to top]
At the eleven o' clock service, I will conduct a naming and blessing ceremony for a young girl.
I do not often conduct such ceremonies at the 9 AM service, although I have done so once in my tenure here. I thought it would be good to offer you a sense of why this ceremony developed in the first place.
In most human cultures known to anthropologists, children are welcomed into human community with a Naming Ceremony.
Sometimes this ceremony is linked to other ceremonies of a religious or cultural nature, such as infant baptism, or circumcision. Sometimes the Naming Ceremony is more the provenance of the family or clan rather than the church, synagogue, mosque, sangha or temple. But in all cases the Naming ceremony represents a welcoming, a joining of human commitment to the actual act of birthing. It was an honoring of young life, and an antidote to the practice of infanticide which was commonly practiced in much of the ancient world.
Our ancestors were Anabaptist Christians who would baptize only adults who were committed to the congregation they were joining. But we were also among the first to deny that baptism was in any way necessary to live a good and gracious life. Still, parents insisted on having a ceremony for their young children and babies that blessed them. So, little by little, various Unitarian and Universalist congregations came up with ceremonies based often on Baptist ceremonies that involved water, like Baptism, or water and a rose bud, or sometimes just a rosebud, symbolizing the blossoming potential of a young child. Sometimes these were called Dedications, which is a word that comes out of some Protestant practices. At other times, the traditional language Christening is used.
In recent years, the ceremony of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water - has developed, beginning with a Naming Ceremony conducted by the Rev. Vern Barnett for his own son, and developed by several California ministers, myself included. The idea of using interpretive blessings for each of the child's names is a ceremonial I developed to celebrate the uniqueness of each child, while stressing both their rootedness and promise.
In future years, these ceremonies, called Namings may take other forms; certainly in different Unitarian Universalist congregations, their forms are different. But their meaning among us, whatever their form, is that these children are both precious and good, born not broken into pieces by sin from birth, but innocent and full of particular promise.
Let us sing hymn #409 which summarizes the beauty of this ceremony with great tenderness.
Naming Ceremony (11 am service) [Next] [back to top]
We are here to Name and Bless this girl according to our practice. For all children are gifts, gifts to the parents, to family and friends, and gifts to us all, our common future.
Bridget and Ronald, you are the mother and father of this child, who, nonetheless, in the words of poet Gibran, is "life's longing for itself."
You already know the dedication, time and complex workings of the human heart your parenthood requires of you. Therefore I ask you: Do you bring self-examination, cooperation, and the fullness of your vulnerability and strength to the raising of this girl?
We Do.
And do all the family members of this girl, especially the loving grandparents, Mary and Philip, here present, speaking both for yourselves and for those who could not be here, and recognizing that it takes a whole community of love and care to raise any child, herewith affirm your support to this young one and her parents? Will you help teach this child, encourage her, offering her your honesty, your spiritual counsel and earnest questions? Will you set aside special time for her and be generous of spirit to her?
We will.
And do you, all the members and friends of this congregation here present, promise your support for this family as well? Will you be a loving presence to this growing child?
We will
Molly Packard Wilson, this child has personal roots. But now she shares special access, through you as her godmother, to her wider heritage of spirit. Thus, to be a godparent is a special privilege. Seek therefore, always to guide but to never contain this young spirit. Hold her close to the disciplines of your trust and largess, but always bless her for being exactly who she is, and no one else.
Having said these things, let us bless this child, joining in an act of love and beauty to bless her with the elements of our common creation, and with the glory of her distinct and beautiful names.
With earth, which is as strong as your given frame, my child, we bless you. Take care of yourself as a body, be good to yourself - for you are a good gift to this world.
With air, which moves and changes even as your given passions, my child, we bless you. You will know contentment and discontent, joy and sorrow, anger and deep love in your life - feel your feelings, my child, for they are good gifts.
With fire, which is as illuminating as your given intellect, my child, we bless you. Think things through, and reason and question carefully, for the light that shines in your mind is a good gift.
With water, which is as clear as your spirit my child, we bless you. Enlarge in conscience, and grow a deep and rich spiritual life, for spirit too, is a good gift, a welcome that quickens your heart and strengthens the character.
We bless you with your name Samantha. Samantha is a form of the Hebrew word meaning "the one who listens." In all your days,
Samantha, people will talk. Learn to listen for what they are saying behind the words they say, for listening is never shallow, but always deep. Your name is Samantha.
We bless you with your name Jordan, again from the Hebrew Yarden, which means "that which flows down," referring to a famous river. Life, like water, seeks its own level, and flows down toward it when we refuse to block its flow. When it finds its own level…there is peace and contentment. You too, Samantha Jordan, learn to flow to the place where you find contentment. Your name is Jordan.
Your last names are Schweri and Asbury, which reveal your ancient roots. The first is from Germany, a land of dark forests and great cities, the land of Beethoven and Brahms, of Goethe and Schiller. The second name rises out of the same soil that holds the great monuments at Stonehenge, and echoes with the writings of Shakespeare and Wollstonecraft, and the music of Sting and Vaughan Williams. These are rich cultural heritages, offering you both wisdom and beauty. Come to know them both…they are yours. Your last names are Schweri and Asbury.
We bless you with your names Samantha Jordan Schweri Asbury.
Now in the presence of all here gathered, and in the presence of Love Most High, our true end and our best means, we dedicate you Samantha Jordan Schweri Asbury to the living of a good and grace-filled life in the context of our free and rich tradition of spirit. Be blest in our words, be blest in our respect, and be blest in the singing of this beautiful song. #409
Prayer Before
the Great Silence
[Next] [back
to top]
During this week when our Muslim sisters and brothers have moved deep into
their fasting month, the month of Ramadan, it comes to me that I too might
join this fast. If I will not fast from food from sunrise to sunset, then
at least perhaps I can fast from my easier anger and cheaper frustrations,
my quick leaps to judgement, my too-easily raised eyebrows.
As fasting from food makes us mindful of the food, may fasting from these swift reactions make me mindful of the reality that how I come to the world shapes the world. May I fast ten times each day from work or play for a few moments, and pause to breathe the air around me, sweet, free, nourishing. May I fast ten times each day from my rushing and schedules, pausing to simply note the precise shade of the sky at that moment, or the color of the carpet on which I stand, or the shape of the whip-like branches I can see outside the window where I sit. May I fast from my sense of self-importance at least twenty times each day, and pause to remember that I am bound with all things in a communion of infinite reality that is seamless, without division, and without condemnation. Blest is such fasting, which is solace for the human soul, and which I begin now by fasting, if for but a moment, from words themselves.
silence
Mindful of the world's sorrows, of planes falling from the sky, and villagers moving across the lands, mindful of those in hospitals and those struggling to recover, mindful of both the roundness of pumpkin pie and the roundness of an empty plate, we return at last to ourselves and our own lives. Mindful of the communion of reality which binds us to all who live, and love and suffer and weep, we can each take up the privilege of calling to mind our friends, our loved ones near and far, those whom we miss, those who we watch grow into their grace, and all those who have loved us into this moment. These we name aloud in the common air, or let rest in the silent sanctuary of our hearts.
naming
Blest are You, Love, our best means and best end, our deepest wisdom and our joy, our challenge and our limits, for you are present in this room when we are. And now as an Amen to our prayer of communion, let the full chorus sound and sing our thanks and praise.
The
Reading [Next]
[back to top]
this morning is taken from the 1998 book The Path of Blessing, by Rabbi
Marcia Praeger.
One summer evening after a Jewish women's retreat, I was invited to have dinner with one of the participants and her family. In our brief pre-dinner conversation her husband, Stan, spoke of his years of Buddhist practice - such a welcome refuge from the intrusively demanding yet vacant formulas of his Jewish upbringing. He had only recently begun to re-explore Jewish practice, he said, but it wasn't until dinner began that I learned why. We sat at the table and when the food was served, everybody looked at me: I was, after all, a rabbi, and, well, wasn't I supposed to say something?Everyone waited. I looked around, absorbing the goodness of the people gathered at the table. With a deep breath I reached toward the basket of warm dinner rolls and lifted it up, closing my eyes to be alone with the sensations. Steamy-hot, just-baked bread. I inhaled its warm sweetness. For just a moment it seemed that I held the fertile earth sprouting ripening wheat and saw the dough rising in an extravagant explosion of yeast. My fingertips touched the hot loaves. I sang: (sung) "Barukh Ata Adonay, Eloheynu Melekh Ha'Olam, ha'motzi lechem min ha'aretz. A Fountain of Blessings are You, Source of Life of all the Worlds, Source of the nourishment that is this bread, which You bring forth from the earth." We shared the bread around the table, and then Stan spoke.
"I grew up so angry!" he said. "All these blessings, these brakhas and prayers that I had to memorize. Always some rote formula to recite, another phrase to mumble. When I finally discovered Buddhism, it was such a relief. I embraced meditation and cultivated a practice of insight and mindfulness. It was only because of my deepening relationship with Judy that I began to be anywhere near practicing Jews again. But there was the same obsessive-compulsive stuff that I hated before. Every time they used something or saw something or ate something, there was another interruption and another mumble. It was so annoying. I was so grateful to be past that.
"One day, I don't remember what I was doing, it hit me! I was with someone and he stopped what he was doing to make a brakha. Like you just did. Suddenly I got it! All those years cultivating mindfulness and I didn't see. Making a brakha, the act of blessing, it IS a mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is what blessing IS."
Homily: Thanksgiving Blessings [Next][back to top]
Mindfulness is what blessing is.
Paying attention to what is right before us.
Not walking past.
Not going around.
Pausing.
Stopping.
Noticing.
Using the senses we have fully.
Tasting the bread,
not merely saying, "Oh, another ritual,"
a phrase which I am beginning to believe
only helps us to exit reality
and enter the too safe abstract world of rarified thoughts about peace and
justice
and theological argument.
After all, what does peace look like? Taste like?
Feel like? Is it only the sound of silence after the bombing stops, or is it, perhaps something more…bread in the belly, freedom for the spirit, safety, the capacity to dare to dream again …. without fear? What does it resemble?
And justice? Show it to me. Embody it for me. Make it flesh, not some lofty idea that makes you feel better about yourself because you think it. Does it only involve courts and gavels? Shaking fingers and scales? Or might it, too, not involve food piled on a plate…and not on just one plate out of ten, but on all ten plates?
As for this arguing about theology business, I always thought Mahatma Gandhi had it right when he said, "In a hungry world, the only shape God can possibly take is bread." Where do all the stellar arguments about an old man in the sky go after Gandhi statement makes its nest in our heart?
This is why I like the reading this morning so much. The man in the story finally gets past his own resentment about, and abstraction of, the rituals, and returned home to the nourishment of them…he finally figured out that they had not been designed just to personally annoy him. He finally figured out that they were never about doing them just to do them, or because someone said so. He finally figured out they are all about mindfulness, the same mindfulness his new Buddhist tradition was teaching him. He finally figured out that they are all about stopping for a moment…stopping in the middle of the rat-race, stopping in the middle of the worry-course, stopping even when the raft is tossing you on the flood, to just say, "Ah, look! The sky! What a color! Blest are you, sky, so vast and beautiful you remind me how small I am. And blest are you, first star of the night…you are the promise that I too might blossom in the dark! Blest are you, morning star, last star of the night…you remind me of my own mortality. Blest are you, lovely eye in the face of my friend, how dark you are, as comely as night is! You remind me of how deep our friendship is. Blest are you, lovely tree bark, so rough and shapely, you remind me that I too am rough, but have my own beauty. Blest are you, flawless curled leaf on the sidewalk, you remind me of how fragile I am. Blest are you, splendid thigh on that runner over there, you remind me of my own strength to keep on going. That baby's head…what a perfect curve…blest are you, perfect curve, that reminds me of the wonder of my own beginnings. Blest are you, trembling shape of a tear! Look how you reflect light from the window over there…you remind me that tears are beautiful. Blest are you , fresh baked bread, so sour and sweet, rich and precise; you remind me that I become you as you become me. Blest are you, coldness of a glass of tap-water, you distract me by quenching my thirst when I can't sleep. Blest are you, ache of longing, reminding me of the reality of my loneliness. Blest are you, fire in my mind that blazes when the world does not appear fair and just…you remind me that I can respond to injustice with my frustration."
Do you have to say a brukha, a Barukh Atah Adonai Eloheynu, following the complex formula as ancient as Caesar? No, of course not. But you can if you want. It's not silly, or outmoded or stupid. You could even learn to pronounce the Hebrew correctly. You could quote a sutta too, and stop to chant in a dialect of Pali, or you could stop in your tracks and speak the Gospel of Matthew, "Consider the wild flowers of the field, how they bloom in beauty. Not even King Solomon in all his royal splendor could compare with one of these, which today glows red against the grass, but tomorrow withers as if it never had been."
Or, if you just don't go for ancient sources, yes, yes, you could pause to say "Wow!" or "Whoa!" Or even "whew!" which I did a thousand times last night at 5 AM on my roof top as the greatest meteor shower in a hundred years flashed its green streaks over me a hundred times a minute, flares and falls, whew! Whew! Whew! Blest are you meteors trailing green in the sky, for you are the reminder of the power of the universe to do as it must regardless of my own will.
Doesn't matter what you say. It's only important that you bless, day in and day out. It's all mindfulness. It's all paying attention. It's all taking the gift of life seriously, and never, but never, for granted.
Does Thanksgiving have something to do with those Pilgrims and all those famous, feathered Naragansetts?
Sure. I suppose. Fine. But that's not the center of it any more for me. For me, Thanksgiving is nothing less than this: it's about living a life of blessing, day in, day out. It's about giving up being angry about things all the time for a change. It's about stopping in the middle of it all to notice the taste of bread melting in my mouth till it becomes me and I become it, and all the lines between me and bread are seen for what they are, fictions.
And, yes, it's about knowing in my heart that these fictions are the fictions of someone who too often trades in life for mere security, and love for control, and grief for rage, and an over-stuffed belly for the pure and sacramental taste of a morsel of fresh baked bread.
Thanksgiving is blessing. And blessing is mindfulness.
And so, blest are each of you, you are precisely who you are and no one else.
Blest are you, wood above our heads, and you carpet beneath our feet, and, you, flowers before our eyes, which together display the diversity of color which brings pleasure to the soul.
Blest are you Eternal, source of all wonders, whose Name we have yet to know.
And blest are you, final word in this homily, for you are the threshold between this moment and the next, the very heaven and haven of our present and totally precious lives.
Table Prayer for Communion [back to top]
1. Minister
Blest is the dark earth beneath us, which shelters and nourishes the seed that grows into bread. And saying again the words of the great Stephen Hawking, by this act of breaking and blessing bread, we "remember the future," enacting in this sign the promise of peace for the world. Blest is this act and all the acts of courage it anticipates.
2. Person at Eastern edge of table breaks the rice cracker, and places pieces in the central basket.
Be blest, bread from the East, bread woven of rice, grown in paddies green in the spring, a mirror for the blue sky and white clouds. Inspire us to share all that is our lives with others.
3. Person at Southern edge of table breaks tortilla, and places pieces in the central basket.
Be blest, bread from the south, bread made from corn, pure gold, slow-motion fire blazing in the fields of Mexico and Central and South America, the earth and sun joined for our nourishment. Inspire us to share in all that is our lives with others.
4. Person at Western Edge of Table breaks pita bread and places pieces in the central basket.
Be blest, bread from Western plains of Central Asia, woven from wheat glowing white under the light of the moon, bread baked in the shape and look of the moon, bread made for hungry pilgrims on the streets of Istanbul, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo. Inspire us to share all that is our lives with others.
5. Person at Northern Edge of Table breaks bread, and places pieces in the central basket.
Be blest, bread from the North, made from tall rye grasses growing at the edge of the Baltic, bread as dark as night, and sour as an autumn apple, bread as beautiful as a loving grandmother's shadow falling on the face of a child. Inspire us to share all that is our lives with others.
6. Coordinator
Blest are You, Love, who reminds us day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment, that only bread is for the breaking. Bodies and hearts and spirits are not for the breaking. Let the world remain whole, not broken and let it nourish all within its embrace.
7. Minister
Blest is the community that knows that the gifts of the earth are for all the people of earth. As these breads were once but grain and grasses spread across the earth, then brought together and baked by human hands for our nourishment, so may the peoples of the earth one day come together to nourish each other with peace. May we take these breads from round the world as a sign of our thanksgiving that we are alive, and our mindfulness that we all share one world, and that our promises and visions are worthy of the keeping. So be it.
(here, already prepared baskets are passed, beginning with the one in the center of the table. the rest will be under the table)
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