Sunday Service, 26 May 2024
Led by Rev. Stephanie Bisby
Musical Prelude: B. G. Marcello – Allegro from Sonata in E minor (performed by Abby Lorimier and Andrew Robinson)
Opening Words: by Vernon Marshall from In Praise of the Mystic Dancer
Our lives begin again today.
As the world around us constantly renews itself,
so we come here to this place to renew our spiritual lives.
May we learn to re-enliven our faith,
faith in our God incarnated within all we know as life.
May we learn to rekindle our sense of hope,
hope in all human possibilities for the betterment of the world in which we live.
May we learn to re-invigorate our capacity for love,
the love that animates our souls and makes life worth living.
Let this be our aspiration for today. (pause)
Words of Welcome and Introduction:
With these opening words by the Rev Vernon Marshall, I welcome you to this Sunday’s service at Kensington Unitarian Church. Welcome to those here in the room, and to those who join us online from other parts of the country. For those who don’t know me, I’m Stephanie Bisby, I suppose I should say Reverend Stephanie Bisby, though I’m not really one for formalities. It’s a great pleasure to be here in person with you today, and to have my husband Steve with me.
I first visited Kensington online during lockdown and have been very much inspired by the wonderful work you and Jane have done to create such successful hybrid services. I’ve had the privilege of ‘co-leading’ services with Patricia and Jeannene, remotely in both time and space. I first visited you in person for Jane’s induction service, but this is the first time I’ve stood here as a worship leader, so I hope you’ll bear with me if anything differs from your usual pattern.
The theme I have chosen for today picks up on something which has been much on my mind this month. The 13th to 19th of May was Mental Health Awareness Week, an event which I know you’ve already marked. And the theme the organisers chose this year was ‘Movement: Moving More for our Mental Health.’ As someone who loves to dance, and doesn’t do nearly enough of it, I found myself pondering why dance might be as important to our spiritual health as our mental health and reflecting on the ways in which dance acts as a metaphor for life, and I thought I’d bring you some of those reflections today.
This feels doubly appropriate since dance has been a big part of my connection with your minister, Jane. We’ve swapped commentary on Strictly Come Dancing on Facebook over the years and demonstrated various dances together at summer school. To my sadness, I’ve never managed to join one of your inclusive tea dances, but I know there is one coming up, so for very many reasons this seems a perfect time to reflect on the spiritual significance of movement.
Chalice Lighting: Life’s Sacred Dance, inspired by Wendell Berry and Sara Moores Campbell
As Unitarians, our worship can be more static than some denominations, but there is one small-but-important action which unites most of our churches and chapels the world over, and that is lighting the chalice flame, the symbol of our free religious faith. So today we light our chalice with words inspired by Wendell Berry and Sara Moores Campbell.
(light chalice)
We light this chalice in honour of Life’s sacred dance of living and dying.
May its flame remind us of those who have passed to us fragments of holiness.
May it remind us that we too are participants in the dance.
Hymn 148 (purple): ‘Spirit of Life’
I now invite you to join in singing our first hymn – please stand or sit as you feel most comfortable.
Spirit of Life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart
all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea;
move in the hand,
giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close; wings set me free;
Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.
Candles of Joy and Concern:
Many of our chapels share, in some form, 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. For simplicity, we’re going to go to the people in the building first, and take all of those in one go, and then I’ll call on the people on Zoom to come forward.
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.
(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)
I will light one final candle now for those concerns which remain unspoken but are known to the heart and mind of the Universe. (light candle)
Time of Prayer & Reflection: Oh, Divine Spirit by Tess Baumberger
Let’s take those joys and concerns into an extended time of prayer now.
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, whether that is hands folded, or head bowed, or something entirely different, 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.
And together we join in reflection, with words by Tess Baumberger,
Oh Divine Spirit,
healer of my hurts,
consoler of my sorrows,
vibrant light of happiness,
birther of all life
and gentle way of death,
hear my prayer.
I raise my heart to you
as do the ancient redwoods,
rooted in the ground,
swaying in the wind.
I praise and thank you for my life,
gifts of body and essence,
strength to bear life’s burdens,
grace to dance life’s joys.
I praise and thank you for my life,
gifts of eyes and heart
that fill with beauty smiling,
or with pain and sadness weeping.
I praise and thank you for my life,
gifts of ears to hear
words of grace and wisdom,
to listen to and lighten
the burdens of others.
I praise and thank you for my life,
my voice to sing out praises,
to speak my truths and visions,
to share my self with others.
I praise and thank you for my life.
gifts of all my senses,
rhythm of my heartbeat,
rise and fall of my breathing,
the will to live with passion, serenity, joy.
Spirit, guide me to a deeper knowing
of your presence in the world.
Show me the deeper meanings
of the patterns of my years.
Help me regard myself and others
with eyes of calm compassion.
Teach me to learn patience
with their failings and my own.
Help me accept the mold and fashion
of my life through marching years.
In the names of all who perceive
your transcendent presence
in trees and brooks and mountains,
in work and play and resting,
in all moments and places between,
Amen and blessed be.
Hymn 26 (purple): ‘Dancing Sweet Heart’
Dancing sweet heart, may your kindness
be to one another shown;
and when human hearts are aching
may true human love be known.
Sweet heart calm us. Sweet heart heal us.
Sweet heart let your love be grown.
Beating small heart in the bodies
of all living things on earth,
pumping life blood through their systems
until death, from day of birth.
Small heart cleanse us. Small heart feed us.
Small heart give us joy and mirth.
Pulsing great heart of the cosmos
beating in the depths of space,
keeping suns and planets turning
placing earth in rightful place.
Great heart warm us. Great heart keep us.
Great heart hold us in your grace.
In-Person Reading: ‘The Divine Dance’ by Richard Rohr (read by Sonya Leite)
In the pages that follow, I’m going to simply circle around this most paradoxical idea about the nature of God. And in truth, circling around is actually an apt metaphor for this mystery that we’re trying to apprehend. There is no other way to appreciate mystery.
Remember, mystery isn’t something that you cannot understand – it is something that you can endlessly understand! There is no point at which you can say, ‘I’ve got it.’ Always and forever, mystery gets you!
“Circling around” is all we can do. Our speaking of God is a search for similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve. We can say, “it’s like – it’s similar to” but we can never say, “It is…” because we are in the realm of beyond, of transcendence, of mystery. And we must – absolutely must – maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations and never God.
The very mystical Cappadocian Fathers of fourth-century eastern Turkey eventually developed some highly sophisticated thinking on what we soon called the Trinity. It took three centuries of reflection on the Gospels to have the courage to say it, but they of this land – which included Paul of Tarsus before them and Mevlana Rumi of Konya afterward – circled around to the best metaphor they could find:
Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three – a circle dance of love.
And God is not just a dancer; God is the dance itself.
In-Person Reading: ‘Bigger than Alone’, by Stuart Coupe (read by Brian Ellis)
You dance in circles I dance in squares
You keep rhythm I go here, I go there,
You dance alone I have community
You dance with grace I rise and fall awkwardly
Though we dance a different dance
Directions are both home
We chant a different chorus
And the words may be unknown
But together
We are bigger
Bigger than alone.
You sing like choirs I sing a dirge
Your words are poetry I mumble the absurd
Your harmony uplifts I complain and moan
You hold an audience I barely hold my own
Though we dance a different dance
Directions are both home
We chant a different chorus
And the words may be unknown
But together
We are bigger
Bigger than alone.
And your religion Doesn’t look too much like mine
At least on the face of it But given more time
To strip away the chaff And get down to the bone
Travelling together
We are bigger than alone.
Meditation: ‘Time for Serenity, Anyone?’ by William Stafford
We’re moving into a time of meditation now. I’m going to share a poem by William Stafford, called ‘Time for Serenity, Anyone?’ which describes a meditative moment as the poet is drawn into an awareness of his own vitality by the sound of water and the feel of the fresh air in his lungs. The poem will take us into a few minutes of shared silence which will end with the sound of a bell. Then we’ll hear some music for meditation. So once again let’s each do what we need to do to get comfortable – adjust your position if you need to – perhaps put your feet flat on the floor to ground and steady yourself – maybe close your eyes. The words and music are of course just an offering, feel free to use this time to meditate in your own way.
I like to live in the sound of water,
in the feel of mountain air. A sharp
reminder hits me: this world still is alive;
it stretches out there shivering toward its own
creation, and I’m part of it. Even my breathing
enters into the elaborate give-and-take,
this bowing to sun and moon, day or night,
winter, summer, storm, still—this tranquil
chaos that seems to be going somewhere.
This wilderness with a great peacefulness in it.
This motionless turmoil, this everything dance.
Period of Silence and Stillness (~3 minutes) – end with a bell
Interlude: Antonín Dvořák – Humoresque (performed by Abby Lorimier and Andrew Robinson)
Address: ‘Moving and Being Moved’ by Rev. Stephanie Bisby
I must confess, when it came to choosing my first reading today, I had a few doubts about the wisdom of picking a piece of writing by a Franciscan priest, no matter how widely loved Father Richard Rohr is. And just to make it worse, I wasn’t picking any old piece of his writing either, but part of the core thesis of his most determinedly Trinitarian work. Here I was, preparing to preach for the first time in this most Unitarian of settings, the home of Unitarian legend Theophilus Lindsay, and my main reading was going to be the heart of a defence of the Trinity… ooops!
So, I was very glad, watching one of your recent services on YouTube, to hear Jane say, “I suspect most of us gathered here today are not nearly as worried about the differences between Unitarian and Trinitarian theology as our forebears were, or at least it’s not such a burning and prominent question in most of our minds.” Thanks Jane. That made me feel much better! Maybe it doesn’t matter if I’m being a bit accidentally Trinitarian, because I agree that, “it’s more about the approach we have to Life’s big questions, and our commitment to an ongoing ever unfolding process of religious discovery, an honest search for truth and meaning and a sincere quest to live good and virtuous lives, to help bring about justice, peace and a better world for all.”
The aspect of Father Rohr’s work I wanted to bring out isn’t so much his view of the Trinity itself, as it is the idea of ‘unfolding process.’
A very brief, and not terribly good, summary of Rohr’s excellent book, The Divine Dance, would be: “God isn’t a person, God is a relationship, and the three parts of the Trinity represent the changing patterns of relatedness at the heart of God.” Of course, neither Trinity nor dance really represents God fully, because the whole idea of God, whatever he she or it might be, is something too big to be fully captured by human consciousness or human language.
That’s why metaphor is vital to religious understanding, and I suppose that’s also why poetry has always been such an important part of my faith. From the Song of Songs to Rumi and Gerard Manley Hopkins, poets have said the things that are hard to express in any other way, in words that speak directly to the heart, bypassing the intellect almost entirely. Richard Rohr, speaking of the metaphors of the dove or the wind representing the holy spirit, reminds us that “all religious language is metaphor” and points to the Greek origins of the word, meaning “to carry across” a meaning – to get it from one place to another, from the writer’s head to the reader’s, or the speaker’s to the listener’s. How delightful, that the word metaphor is itself a metaphor, and one with its roots in physical movement, just like the Divine Dance.
So, metaphors are vital to religious understanding, but more than that. The metaphors we choose can affect our whole understanding of the world. If your life is a battlefield, you’re going to spend a lot of time living on the defensive. If it’s a lawcourt, you may be less violent, but just as oppositional. If it’s a chess game, you might have fun with your opponent, but they’re still not on your side. Which is quite different to ‘life is a symphony’ and you’re one of many performers working to create harmony. And if life is a dance? What would that mean? Perhaps it says that we have to be willing to participate in the dance of life, to step onto the floor, to take the role of leader or follower. Maybe it means that life is meant to be joyful, more often than not, or that we are meant to express ourselves as we move through life, to advance and retreat in time with an inner rhythm to interact with the people around us in accordance with a complex set of rules.
But perhaps the most important thing it means to me is that life is full of complex patterns, that our days are shaped by a complex choreography we don’t always fully understand. The intricate interplay between part and whole is captured brilliantly by the Irish poet, WB Yeats, in the final stanza of his poem ‘Among School Children’:
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Yeats dances between two metaphors here: that of a person moving to music and that of a plant growing or flourishing. The interplay between two images – the dance of imagery, if you like – brings a depth and complexity that either image alone could not have done. Labour is blossoming – like a flower – or dancing – expressing itself in joyful physical movement – where the body is not bruised to pleasure soul, where physicality is used as positive expression and not a painful struggle. Those who read one of your recent book group choices, Devon Price’s Laziness Does Not Exist, might find the last line of the first quartet particularly resonant, condemning as it does the need to burn the midnight oil to extract ‘blear-eyed wisdom’ – I can practically feel the grit under my eyelids as I read that line. And I can just as much feel the tension drifting away with the final couplet as my body remembers the feeling of swaying gently to music, and sure enough, with that memory my view on life, my glance if you like, brightens.
But it’s probably the last line which fascinates me most. How can we know the dancer from the dance? Like most good poetry it’s been read in a myriad of different ways. Many critics see it as reflecting the intricate relationship between the artist and their art. But others, including Santosh Pall writing in Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, think it relates to a much wider concept. Yeats, endlessly fascinated with folklore and mysticism, sees the dance as “the rhythmic process of the universe, cosmic and microcosmic both.” The dancer and the dance are inseparable as the person and their soul are inseparable, as God and God’s creation are inseparable, as we cannot exist without the Universe we inhabit, and the Universe is meaningless without our consciousness observing it.
For many years I have read the words of Stuart Coupe’s poem, found in the Unitarian publication Waiting to be Discovered, as a metaphor for the workings of Unitarian community: “together / We are bigger / Bigger than alone.” It’s about synergy, of course it is. Each of our congregations is more than the sum of its individuals, and our movement is more than the sum of its congregations. But it turns out I was only picking up a small portion of the weight Stuart’s metaphor carries. Reading the poem again in the light of Rohr and Yeats, I realise I was missing the fact that the dance metaphor goes much further. Yes, one congregation is bigger than a person. But step that up a notch. The world is much more than the sum of all its communities and congregations. Step up again, and the universe is much more than the sum of all its worlds, suns, moons and stars.
Like William Stafford’s “everything dance” and Richard Rohr’s “circle dance of love,” Coupe’s dancers, and Yeats’s, are a metaphor for the processes at the heart of life: breath and growth and response to stimulus. To live fully, we must be willing not just to move but to be moved, to let the energy at the heart of things tug us forward, out of ourselves and into a wider community of people and things. We travel in each other’s company, and in the company of all living things. As William Stafford wrote, “This world still is alive; / it stretches out there shivering toward its own /creation, and I’m part of it.” And, as Stuart Coupe reminded us, “Travelling together / We are bigger than alone.”
Hymn 88 (purple): ‘Let it Be a Dance’
Let it be a dance we do.
May I have this dance with you?
Through the good times and the bad times, too,
let it be a dance.
Let a dancing song be heard.
Play the music, say the words,
and fill the sky with sailing birds.
Let it be a dance.
Let it be a dance.
Let it be a dance.
Learn to follow, learn to lead,
feel the rhythm, fill the need
to reap the harvest, plant the seed.
Let it be a dance.
Everybody turn and spin,
let your body learn to bend,
and, like a willow in the wind,
let it be a dance.
Let it be a dance.
Let it be a dance.
A child is born, the old must die;
a time for joy, a time to cry.
Take it as it passes by.
Let it be a dance.
Morning star comes out at night,
without the dark there is no light.
If nothing’s wrong, then nothing’s right.
Let it be a dance.
Let it be a dance.
Let it be a dance.
Let the sun shine, let it rain;
share the laughter, bear the pain,
and round and round we go again.
Let it be a dance.
Announcements (Brian)
Thanks to Stephanie for leading our service this morning (and coming all the way from Yorkshire). Thanks to Ramona for tech-hosting. Thanks to Jeannene for co-hosting and welcoming everyone online. Thanks to Abby, Andrew and Benjie for lovely music this morning. Thanks to Sonya for reading. Thanks to Pat and John for greeting and making coffee. For those of you who are here in-person – please do stay for a cuppa after the service – that’ll be served in the hall next door. If you’re joining on Zoom please do hang on after for a chat.
If you’ve read the book for this month’s ‘Better World Book Club’ – that’s meeting on Zoom at 7.30pm TONIGHT – contact Jane for the link if you haven’t already received it. And please do pick up a flyer if you’re here in-person as we’ve lined up all our books until August – next month the group will be reading ‘The Book of Forgiving’ by Desmond and Mpho Tutu.
We also have our regular online ‘Heart & Soul’ Contemplative Spiritual Gathering on Friday at 7pm, this week’s session is titled ‘Help!’. We gather for sharing and prayer and it is a great way to get to know others on a deeper level. Sign up with Jane to book your place for that.
Next Sunday we’re hoping that Jane will be back with us when our service is titled ‘Out of Our Hands’. And next Sunday we’ve got all sorts of activities lined up. After the service we’ll have the Many Voices singing group with Gaynor and Tati, followed by the return of our tea dance, led by Rachel Sparks. Do come along and support these events – tell your friends – if you can.
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. I’ll hand back to Stephanie for our closing words and music now.
Closing Words: Dance on the Edge’ by Jan Berry
Dance on the edge, for that is where God calls us
to understand what wonders faith can bring;
searching and learning, risking what befalls us,
we make our lives a joyful offering.
Dance in your dreams, for that is where God leads us,
revealing wisdom, weaving hopes and plans;
playing with patterns, shaping what redeems us,
she brings to birth new life caught in her hands.
Dance through your tears, for that is where God holds us,
in all our frailty, weeping and despair;
we cling in terror, yet her love enfolds us,
till through our pain we find new strength to share.
Dance in your heart, for that is where God meets us,
place of belonging, laughing in the light;
speaking our names, in love she gently greets us,
bringing us home to live in love’s delight.
Benediction
In the week ahead
May you dance on the edge,
For that is unavoidable in these uncertain times.
May you dance in your dreams,
For that is what makes us human and brings us life.
May you dance through your tears,
For that is inevitable in this precious, fragile world of ours.
May you dance in your heart,
Hand in hand with God,
Or whoever or whatever Spirit is for you,
And through the dance,
May you be brought home to live in love’s delight. Amen.
Closing Music: P. I. Tchaikovsky – Waltz from Sleeping Beauty (performed by Abby Lorimier and Andrew Robinson)
Rev. Stephanie Bisby
Sunday 26th May 2024
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