Growing Up (part two)

Sunday Service, 4 August 2024

Led by Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall

Musical Prelude: Mozart – Allegro from Sonata in G Major, K 283 (performed by George Ireland)

Opening Words: ‘The Paths of our Lives’ by Alex Brianson (adapted)

We gather this morning to share a particular kind of community –

a community of faith in which each of us is free to quest

for our own way of being religious and faithful.

We gather this morning to turn our attention to our spiritual journey;

the path we have travelled until now, and the road leading onward.

We are none of us the same as we were twenty years ago or even last week;

we are none of us the same as we shall be in five weeks or ten years.

As the paths of our lives cover new terrain,

may we find helpful new concepts, insights,

and understandings of Spirit, or of the highest good in life,

and new ways to interpret those ways we have loved long and hard.

And may we be open to the voice of wisdom, wherever – and however – we may find it. (pause)

Words of Welcome and Introduction:

These opening words by our own Alex Brianson welcome all who have gathered this morning for our Sunday service. Welcome to those of you who have gathered in-person at Essex Church, to all who are joining us via Zoom, and anyone watching on YouTube or listening to the podcast. For anyone who doesn’t know me, I’m Jane Blackall, and I’m minister with Kensington Unitarians.

This morning’s service is the second of a two-part exploration of ‘Growing Up’. Fear not – if you weren’t here last week – each of the services does stand alone. We’ve been considering what it means to ‘grow up’ – what it looks and feels like as a lived experience – and how our perspective on that might change over the course of our lives. The choice of topic was in part inspired by this book titled ‘When I Grow Up: Conversations with Adults in Search of Adulthood’ by Moya Sarner.

But the two quotes I’ve put on the front of our order of service today illustrate the angle we’re going to explore in this week’s instalment: firstly the famous line from St Paul (and we’ll hear the expanded version of this later in the service): ‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’ And secondly a response to this line from C.S. Lewis: ‘When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.’ So we’ll be considering what it could mean to ‘put away childish things’ and the paradoxical feelings we might have about this aspiration.

Chalice Lighting: ‘Fully Present’ by Laura Dobson

Let’s light our chalice flame now, as we do each week. It’s a moment for us to stop and take a breath, settle ourselves down, put aside any preoccupations we came in carrying. This simple ritual connects us in solidarity with Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists the world over, and reminds us of the proud and historic progressive religious tradition of which this gathering is part.

(light chalice)

The lighting of our chalice flame invites

Our full and simple presence, in this moment.

May we be fully and simply present to ourselves,

Fully and simply present to each other,

Fully and simply present to the world around us,

Grateful for the breath of life in our bodies

And the elements of life – we share.

Hymn (on sheet): ‘Children of a Bright Tomorrow’

Let’s sing together. Our first hymn is on your hymn sheet: ‘Children of a Bright Tomorrow’. For those joining via zoom the words will be up on screen (as they will for all our hymns today). Feel free to stand or sit as you prefer and let’s sing up as best we can.

Now we gather here to worship,

Each with but one life to live;

Each with gifts and each with failings,

Each with but one heart to give.

In our longing, here we gather,

With warm voices for a friend;

Two or three, or tens or thousands,

Heart and hand to all extend.

May our circle grow still wider;

May we see as others see:

Standing in the others’ sandals

Shows us they, too, would be free.

Children of a bright tomorrow,

Every race and every creed;

Men and women of all nations,

Each a glory, each in need.

Small are we, and small our planet,

Hidden here among the stars:

May we know our timeless mission –

Universal avatars.

Candles of Joy and Concern:

Each week when we gather together, we share a simple ritual of candles of joy and concern, an opportunity to light a candle and share something that is in our heart with the community. So we’ve an opportunity now, for anyone who would like to do so, to light a candle and say a few words about what it represents. We’ll go to the people in the building first, then to Zoom.

So I invite some of you here in person to come and light a candle and then if you wish to tell us briefly who or what you light your candle for. I’m going to ask you to come to the lectern to speak this time as I really want people to be able to hear you and I don’t want to keep nagging you about getting close to the handheld mic. And if you can’t get to the microphone give me a wave and I’ll bring a handheld mic over to you. Thank you.

(in person candles)

And if that’s everyone in the room we’ll go over to the people on Zoom next – you might like to switch to gallery view at this stage – just unmute yourselves when you are ready and speak out – and we should be able to hear you and see you up on the big screen here in the church.

(zoom candles)

And I’m going to light one more candle, as we often do, to represent all those joys and concerns that we hold in our hearts this day, but which we don’t feel able to speak out loud. (light candle)

Time of Prayer & Reflection: based on words by Simon John Barlow

Let’s take those joys and concerns into an extended time of prayer. This prayer is based on some words by my old friend Simon John Barlow. You might first want to adjust your position for comfort, close your eyes, or soften your gaze. There might be a posture that helps you feel more prayerful. Whatever works for you. Do whatever you need to do to get into the right state of body and mind for us to pray together – to be fully present here and now, in this sacred time and space – with ourselves, with each other, and with that which is both within us and beyond us. (pause)

Spirit of Life, God of All Love, in whom we live and move and have our being,

we turn our full attention to you, the light within and without,

as we tune in to the depths of this life, and the greater wisdom

to which – and through which – we are all intimately connected.

Be with us now as we allow ourselves to drop into the

silence and stillness at the very centre of our being. (pause)

Source of All that is Good and True and Beautiful,

day by day we are renewed by your blessings

as we seek your presence.

Help us to allow Your Spirit to flow freely through us,

with loving awareness of the present

and hope for all our futures.

Guide us, that we may renew ourselves daily:

opening to new beauties;

uncovering greater courage;

and seeking deeper truths.

Let our shrine be a compassionate heart and our temple a wakeful mind.

Grant us the wisdom to see beyond the limits we set in our lives

and to know that in God there is no boundary.

May we realise: the freedom to be ourselves,

the compassion to be true companions to our friends;

and the desire to live as the passionate hearts of God here on earth;

the embodiment of Love in this interconnected web of All-That-Is. (pause)

Let us take a few moments now to look back over the past week, sit quietly for a while,

and inwardly give thanks for those joys and pleasures we have felt along the way:

moments of love, friendship and camaraderie,

experiences of wonder and delight; reassurance and relief ,

bursts of playfulness, spontaneity and generosity,

feelings of achievement, creativity, and flow,

all those times when we felt most alive and awake. (pause – about 30s)

Let us also take some time to ask for the consolation, forgiveness,

and guidance we may need, as we acknowledge our sorrows and regrets:

times of loss, pain, anger, and fear,

periods of uncertainty and anxious waiting,

realisation of our own weaknesses, mistakes and failings,

awareness of missed opportunities, those things left unsaid or undone,

those moments when we struggled and felt like a mess. (pause – about 30s)

Expanding our circle of concern, let us bring to mind those people,

places and situations that are in need of prayer right now:

– maybe friends or loved ones, those closest to our heart.

– maybe those we find difficult, or where there’s a conflict going on.

– maybe those we don’t know so well, or who we’ve heard about in the news.

And let us take a few moments now to hold them in the light of love. (pause – about 30s)

Spirit of Life – God of all Love – as this time of prayer comes to a close, we offer up

our joys and concerns, our hopes and fears, our beauty and brokenness,

and we call on you for insight, healing, and renewal.

As we look forward now to the coming week,

help us to live well each day and be our best selves;

using our unique gifts in the service of love, justice and peace. Amen

In-Person Reading: 1 Corinthians 13 (New International Version) (read by Juliet)

We’ve got a bonus reading this morning (and a Bible reading, no less) – I’m going ask Juliet to read 1 Corinthians 13 for us – such a famous bit that’s often heard at church weddings. I thought it’d be good for us to hear that famous quote from St Paul about ‘childish things’ in its proper context. Thanks Juliet.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Hymn (on sheet): ‘Unfolding Life’

Thanks Juliet. Our next hymn is on the other side of your hymn sheet: ‘Unfolding Life’. I don’t think I’ve ever sung this one before and I was delighted to find something so on-topic for our theme; however I didn’t like the look of the tune it was set to, and had to find an alternate tune to sing it to, so I hope you won’t be too confused that we’re singing a Christmas tune in August. It does mostly fit but you have to squeeze the words into the first line! After that it fits very nicely.

When I was a child I spoke as a child,

I sang my childlike themes;

I understood as children do

And dreamed my children’s dreams.

But when in all good time I grew

And called myself mature,

I put away my childish ways

For they could not endure.

As life unfolds from stage to stage,

I play in many roles.

The object is to find myself

Amid these tight controls.

O, have you ever been a son,

A parent, daughter, wife:

O, have you ever wondered when

You might live your own life?

I’ll try to make some time each day

For liberating me.

I’ll build a bridge or write a song,

And that will set me free.

For when I’ve made some goal my own,

I’ll take the rest in stride,

Adjusting and adapting to

The changes that abide.

In-Person Reading: ‘When I Grow Up’ by Moya Sarner (excerpts, adapted) (read by Hannah)

I needed to write this book because I did not feel like a grown up. To outside observers, I was an adult. And there were times, such as at work as a journalist or cooking dinner for friends, when I did feel like a mature, capable, responsible grown-up woman in her 30s. But at apparently random moments, my non-adultness would pop out – like the time I opened my kitchen bin to find the underside of the lid thick with squiggly maggots – and immediately texted my mother to ask what to do. It was as if I had no mind of my own, Google had never been invented, and I had no capacity or nous to rely on. Most often though, this feeling was nebulous, not so pin-downable. I carried around this weight of something delayed, something under-developed, something I needed but did not have.

So what to make of this hybrid, both-and-neither, not-quite-grown-up state? The traditional milestones that we have relied upon to define adulthood are under pressure as never before. People in Western nations seem to be growing up later and later, as the accepted social landmarks of adulthood like home-buying, marriage, and children, drift – or are pulled – further and further from our grasp.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a grown-up. And when I began writing this book, I did seem to be living an adult life. I had achieved most of the expected milestones – except for the baby – which still felt far too grown up for me. I had a career, a home, and a husband; an accountant, a pension, and a tax return; I had deliberated over and purchased a dishwasher, a washing machine, and a fridge. Judge me by my white goods, and I ticked almost all the boxes – I had the paperwork to prove I was the competent, confident adult I should be. But the more boxes I ticked, the more I realised how shaky, how tenuous, my own feeling of being-an-adult was. I was a grown-up on paper, yes, but my adult skin felt paper-thin, and I experienced myself as a flattened version of the fleshed-out adult I was supposed to be. But if a house and a spouse do not make a grown-up, then what does?

Something crucial I have learnt through psychoanalysis is that we don’t just grow up once; we have to keep growing up – or attempting to – over and over again. As I see it, at every stage we encounter challenges that require us to make a psychological leap, whether that is accepting as a child that your possessions must be shared, or losing your parents in your 50s and feeling like an orphan, or realising as a 30-something-year-old, that you are far from the adult you expected yourself to be. If we avoid or bypass these leaps, we remain stuck in one place, unable to develop – unable to grow. It is only by facing up to them, meeting them squarely, and surviving them that we can hope to find some movement, even if we encounter that challenge again in the future, and are required to survive it again. My name for this kind of leap is a ‘grow-up’. It is only by making our way through countless grow-ups, some big and some small, and by making it through the same grow-ups over and over again, that we can hope to come closer to a truer sense of who we are, a kind of freedom of adulthood, and a way of living that feels real.

Meditation: ‘A Way of Living that Feels Real’

Thanks Hannah. We’re moving into a time of meditation. To take us into a time of silence, I’m just going to echo the closing sentence of that piece from Moya Sarner, as something for us to ponder more deeply in our hearts. Then we’ll hold three minutes of silence which will end with the sound of a bell. Then we’ll hear some music for our continued reflection. Let’s do what we need to do to get comfortable – maybe adjust your position – put your feet flat on the floor to ground yourself – as we always say, the words are an offering, use this time to meditate in your own way. Moya Sarner writes:

‘It is only by making our way through countless grow-ups, some big and some small,

and by making it through the same grow-ups over and over again,

that we can hope to come closer to a truer sense of who we are,

a kind of freedom of adulthood, and a way of living that feels real.’

Period of Silence and Stillness (~3 minutes) – end with a bell

Interlude: Vaughan Williams – Slow Air (performed by George Ireland)

In-Person Reading: ‘Spare Me, Please, from Growing Up’ by Brian Bilston

Spare me, please, from growing up,

from tax returns, from self-help books,

from laundry piles, from lawns to mow,

from how to choose the right merlot.

Save me, please, from adulthood,

from not doing things I want but should,

from dieting, from aching joints,

from Question Time, from PowerPoint.

Deliver me from refuse sacks,

from dinner sets, from overdrafts,

from bus stop chats about the weather,

from B&Q, from knowing better.

Pardon me from pension plans,

from mingling, from shaking hands,

from duty, sense and all that stuff –

spare me, please, from growing up.

In-Person Reflection: ‘Growing Up?’ by Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall

Thanks John. I wanted to include that poem from Brian Bilston this morning because, to me, it speaks of that ambivalence that many of us seem to feel – whatever our age – about the prospect of ‘growing up’. It echoes the tension between those two quotes I shared at the start of the service – St Paul lifting up this image of spiritual maturity as ‘putting away childish things’ – and C.S. Lewis’ splendid response that when he became a man he ‘put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.’ There’s something paradoxical going on here. There is something important about ‘putting away childish things’ – but we need to unpack that a bit, I reckon – and there might be some childish things we would do well not to put away entirely…

As Moya Sarner said, in the piece Hannah read for us earlier, a lot of the traditional markers of ‘growing up’, those external life events that can be recorded by the Office for National Statistics, are increasingly out of reach, or pushed back to later in life, for the younger generations (and indeed the currently middle-aged, as I can attest). The economic and social realities of life under late-capitalism mean that it’s much harder to tick off those markers of homeowning, marriage, kids. Or perhaps it’s that more of us have broken free of those default expectations, that conveyor belt of adult life, and no longer feel it’s desirable to follow that traditional script? Maybe it’s a bit of both.

In some cultures the transition from childhood to adulthood is more formally acknowledged. There is a time, typically in the teenage years, when some kind of ritual takes place to collectively affirm this significant milestone. I was interested to read this take from the psychoanalyst James Hollis who writes: ‘each civilization evolved rites of passage designed to ensure the transition from the naïveté and dependency of childhood to adult sensibilities that sacrifice comfort and sloth in service to the common interest. When we examine contemporary culture, we find these rites of passage missing. Aging alone does not do it …. Sooner or later, we are each called to face what we fear, respond to our summons to show up, and overcome the vast lethargic powers within us. This is what is asked of us, to show up as the person we really are, as best we can manage, under circumstances over which we may have no control. This showing up as best we can is growing up. That is all that life really asks of us: to show up as best we can.’ Words from James Hollis.

But as we heard from Moya Sarner in the reading that Hannah gave earlier on: Growing up is not really a one-time thing – as powerful as such ritual moments and rites of passage might be (and they are very important in crystallising a shift in consciousness for both the child at the centre of the ritual and the community around them) – we don’t just switch from child to adult overnight. We each experience many ‘grow-ups’ through the course of our life – it never ends really – and that process of ‘growing up’ involves a number of internal shifts. I’m just going to highlight a few dimensions in which these shifts take place, those which seem particularly significant to me: around practical wisdom, responsibility, complexity, and acceptance of some of life’s limits.

First up, practical wisdom – this goes by many different names – it was singled out as the greatest of the cardinal virtues by no less than Saint Thomas Aquinas and in that context it can be defined as ‘the ability to discern the appropriate course of action to be taken in a given situation at the appropriate time, with consideration of potential consequences’. In other words: knowhow. It’s something that we accumulate over time, with a bit of luck, once we’ve been around the block a bit. But actually – it takes more than luck – in order to learn, to develop good judgement, to know and do better next time around, we need to pay attention, be reflective, integrate our experiences. When Moya Sarner rings her mum to ask what to do about a bin full of maggots – she’s calling on her practical wisdom – she knows that her mum will have already ‘been there and got the T-shirt’.

Another dimension of growing up is taking on responsibility. The bits of adulthood that Brian Bilston described as ‘duty, sense and all that stuff’. This one is quite prominent in my mind lately. Most of you know that I never left home – I’ve lived with my dad my whole life and he died just a couple of months ago – and he always dealt with most of the household affairs. So, at the age of 49, I’ve just started getting to grips with Council Tax and water meters and contents insurance for the first time. More generally though, I think of this as the aspect of growing up that’s all about realising that ‘somebody else isn’t going to sort this out’ and ‘it’s up to me now’. Also, I suppose, it’s about taking on board that our actions (or inaction) have consequences for ourselves and those around us, and we need to be reflective and aware about our likely impact on others (for good or ill). This is about much more than domestic arrangements – it’s about being a citizen – being engaged in our community – realising that there is not some separate class of people who run the world and get things done. If we want to create a better world – if we want good things to exist – we need to roll up our sleeves and get stuck in. When I was just 25 or 26, and I’d only been at this church for a year, there was a big kerfuffle (I’ll spare you the historic details of church politics) which meant we had nobody to stand as chair of the congregation. And I remember thinking ‘I love this church, and I want it to thrive, and if I don’t step up who will?’ It seemed quite preposterous that I should take on such a responsible role at such a young age. But I did it, even though I felt out of my depth, and that was a big step in my own growing-up.

Another dimension of growing up – one that seems increasingly important to me – is around acknowledging the complexity of life (particularly of living on a planet alongside over 8 billion other humans). So many issues that we have to deal with are not straightforward – instead of seeing things in black and white, we become aware of all those murky shades of grey in-between – we realise that there are often multiple valid ways of looking at a situation and it can be hard to arbitrate between them. Truths can be paradoxical. And the practical business of organising society and running the world – it’s just very complex – there are so many competing goods and valid interests to be balanced. It seems to me that the troubling wave of populism that we’re currently seeing around the world is, in part, rooted in an inability to face this great complexity and grapple with it honestly. Populist appeals to ‘common sense’ pretend that the answers are simple (but their so-called answers often revolve around flat-out denial of reality, misinformation, dehumanising, scapegoating and blame). You could also think of this aspect of ‘adulting’ as having the courage to face the fact that we live in an imperfect world – that there is a ‘tragic gap’, in the words of Parker J. Palmer – or as the philosopher Susan Neiman puts it: ‘courage is required to live with the rift that will run through our lives, however good they may be: ideals of reason tell us how the world should be; experience tells us that it rarely is. Growing up requires confronting the gap between the two – without giving up on either one.’

One final aspect of growing up I want to mention is around the acceptance of life’s limits. Perhaps this also connects with making commitments, rather than trying to keep all your options open; having a life that is narrow and deep rather than broad and shallow; putting down roots rather than endlessly drifting. Psychologist Klaus Rothermund is quoted in Sarner’s book, saying ‘It’s different when you’re young, when you can still try out everything. You can do things just because you want to do them, because you can do the important things later. But when you’re old, doing the unimportant things first means you might never face the important things.’ And Sarmer reflects further: ‘This honing process, this sieving and sifting of what matters most – this is a key grow-up of old-old-age – although perhaps it has roots much earlier in life. It rests on another grow-up: understanding the fact that your life will come to an end.’

Through the book ‘When I Grow Up’, Moya Sarner interviews people throughout life’s ages and stages, getting older as she gets towards the end, and in the final chapter she interviews a 90-year-old woman who goes by the nickname of Pog. Pog says: ‘I truly do not consider that I have grown up. And I’m 90. But one thing that really pleases me, to the extent of being a bit smug about it, is the really childish pleasures. You know, where you sort of clap your hands and say, “Oh! Look at that!” And somehow I’ve still got that, and I love it. It can be completely trivial things.’

Pog’s excellent example brings us back to the paradox: one of the childish things we probably need to put away is this fixation on being entirely grown-up. Yes, it is important to grow up. To keep growing up throughout our lives. To develop in practical wisdom, to embrace responsibility, to wrestle with complexity, to accept life’s limits, and all the other aspects of growing up that we haven’t even mentioned today. But as C.S Lewis hinted: there is something to be said for retaining a bit of childishness too. Being free-spirited, idealistic, maybe even unrealistic, dreaming big, in touch with simple joys. We don’t have to put away these ‘childish things’. Sarmer endorses this view, she says: ‘whatever life stage you find yourself in, the question of being more or less grown up, of being able to continue growing up or stalling somewhere along the road, has something important to do with how we relate to the younger versions of ourselves that we hold inside us – the concentric circles in our tree trunk. Whether we can hold on to them, find a way to live with them and look after them, to keep them alive in us, so that they can keep us alive.’

And I want to close with one last excerpt from the conclusion of Moya Sarner’s book.

She says: ‘I started writing this book because I wanted to know what it meant to be an adult and to find out why I wasn’t one yet… Now that I can hear that I was asking the wrong question – or rather, that question has changed. Now the question has become not why haven’t I finished growing up, but how can I keep growing up, throughout my life? I wanted to find a definition of what an adult is, what it means to grow up. Now I understand that this definition will be different for every individual, and it will change from moment to moment for each of us, depending on the grow-up we are facing. I do now know, through this writing, through my analysis, through my patients, through speaking to so many fascinating people, that the work of growing up never stops – not if you’re lucky. Not until the very end.’ Amen.

Hymn 193 (purple): ‘We Laugh, We Cry’

Time for our last hymn now, it’s number 193 in your purple books, always a popular choice (if a rather long one): ‘We Laugh, We Cry’.

We laugh, we cry, we live, we die; we dance, we sing our song.

We need to feel there’s something here to which we all belong.

We need to feel the freedom just to have some time alone.

But most of all we need close friends we can call our very own.

And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;

and we have found a need to be together.

We have our hearts to give

we have our thoughts to receive;

and we believe that sharing is an answer.

A child is born among us and we feel a special glow.

We see time’s endless journey as we watch the baby grow.

We thrill to hear imagination freely running wild.

We dedicate our minds and hearts to the spirit of this child.

And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;

and we have found a time to be together.

And with the grace of age,

we share the wonder of youth,

and we believe that growing is an answer.

Our lives are full of wonder and our time is very brief.

The death of one among us fills us all with pain and grief.

But as we live, so shall we die, and when our lives are done

the memories we shared with friends, they will linger on and on.

And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;

and we have found a place to be together.

We have the right to grow, we have the gift to believe

that peace within our living is an answer.

We seek elusive answers to the questions of this life.

We seek to put an end to all the waste of human strife.

We search for truth, equality, and blessed peace of mind.

And then we come together here, to make sense of what we find.

And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;

and we have found a joy to be together.

And in our search for peace, maybe we’ll finally see:

even to question truly is an answer.

Announcements:

Thanks to Ramona for tech-hosting. Thanks to Jeannene for co-hosting. If you’re joining on Zoom please do hang on after the service for a chat with Jeannene, and if you’re a regular online attender who might be able to help out with co-hosting once in a while do let Jeannene know. Thanks to Juliet, Hannah, and John for reading. Thanks to George for playing for us today. Thanks to Hannah for greeting and Juliet for making coffee. For those of you who are here in-person – please do stay for a cuppa and some carrot cake – that’ll be served in the hall next door.

Hannah is offering Community Yoga after the service today – that’s free and suitable for all – if you don’t mind I would love to take a few photos today as we’ve got a designer in to make a brand new website for the church and I need to put together a bunch of photos of us in action. And the poetry group with Brian is back this Wednesday, let him know if you’re planning to come along to that.

We’ve got an in-person ‘Heart & Soul’ Contemplative Spiritual Gathering online tonight and Friday at 7pm and our theme this week is ‘Identity’. We gather for sharing and prayer and it is a great way to get to know others on a deeper level. Sign up with me if you’d like the link.

The next meeting of the ‘Better World Book Club’ will be on ‘Rest is Resistance’ by Trisha Hersey. If you want to borrow one of our library copies I’ve got three up for grabs. The next meeting is on an irregular date, we’ll meet on Bank Holiday Monday, 26th August at 7.30pm. I’ve just released the list of titles for the next six months so I encourage you to join us.

I’ve just heard that our Community Singing group is taking a break for August but our leader assures me that he’s keen to restart in September so please do put the 11th Sept in your diary.

Looking even further ahead a few dates for your diary: Lots going on in September: we’ve got Many Voices back here to sing on 1st September, another tea dance coming up on 8th September, and our ‘Gathering of the Waters’ service on 15th which will be followed by a bring-and-share lunch coordinated by Juliet. Let her know what you plan to bring. And if you go anywhere interesting over the summer please do collect some water for the ceremony.

Next Sunday we’ll be back at 11am when we’ll continue our exploration ‘Growing Up’.

Details of all our various activities are printed on the back of the order of service, for you to take away, and also in the Friday email. Please do sign up for the mailing list if you haven’t already. The congregation very much has a life beyond Sunday mornings; we encourage you to keep in touch, look out for each other, and do what you can to nurture supportive connections.

I think that’s everything. Just time for our closing words and closing music now.

Benediction: based on words by Tim Haley

We walk this earth but a brief moment in time.

Amid our struggles and uncertainties, however great or small,

let us continue to learn how to celebrate life in all its variety and contradiction.

Let us continue to grow in our capacity to love ourselves and each other.

And let us continue to move toward the goal of a better world,

a global community of peace, justice, joy and liberation for all.

Go forth this day in a renewed spirit of courage and hope

and with the wisdom to greet the week to come. Amen.

Closing Music: Bach – Gigue from French Suite in G Major, BWV 816 (performed by George Ireland)

Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall

Sunday 4th August 2024