Wheel of Life Service
Lay Ministers
February 25, 2007

PRELUDE Medley of fiddle tunes and guitar instrumentals Rod Thomas and Chris Welles

PROCESSIONAL “Gather the Spirit” Hymnal # 347

LIGHTING OF THE CHALICE & RESPONSIVE READING (in Order of Service)
We light this chalice in celebration of the cycles of life.

OPENING PRAYER:
Prayer for Those Gathered in Worship, from Morning Watch, by Barbara Pescan
In this familiar place, listen:
to the sounds of breathing, creaking chairs,
shuffling feet, clearing throats, and sighing all around
Know that each breath, movement, the glance
meant for you or intercepted holds a life within it.

These are signs
that we choose to be in this company
have things to say to each other
things not yet said but in each other's presence still
trembling behind our hearts' doors
these doors closed but unlocked
each silent thing waiting
on the threshold between unknowing and knowing,
between being hidden and being known.

Find the silence among these people
and listen to it all - breathing, sighs,
movement, holding back -

hear the tears that have not yet reached their eyes
perhaps they are your own
hear also the laughter building deep where joy abides
despite everything.
Listen: rejoice. And say Amen.

OPENING WORDS
It is no accident that we who are here this morning are here and not elsewhere. We choose to be here, all of us together, because we share a common sense of the reality of things, a common sense of what is good and important and necessary in our human living. We are, if you please, a community of believers... or even of unbelievers.

At any rate... a community. Bound by shared visions and common goals, we have a stake in this place. We have a stake in one another. We are one family, joined by shared love, shared concern, common good will. Through our membership in this community, we know our membership in the world-circling human community. This morning, we celebrate this community of ours, and the community of the world. "I celebrate myself, and sing myself," said Walt Whitman. Ours is a wider celebration. We celebrate ourselves, all 500 of us. We celebrate and sing ourselves, all six billion of us.

Earth Mother, Star Mother by Starhawk
Earth mother, star mother,
You who are called by a thousand names,
May all remember we are cells in your body and dance together.
You are grain and the loaf that sustains us each day,
And as you are patient with our struggles to learn
So shall we be patient with ourselves and each other.
We are radiant light and sacred dark -- the balance --
You are the embrace that heartens
And the freedom beyond fear.
Within you we are born, we grow, live, and die --
You bring us around the circle to rebirth,
Within us you dance Forever

CYCLES OF LIFE

BIRTH:
This is a poem by Cathy Morocco called First Photos, inspired by the birth of Cathy’s granddaughter.
The 1st photo is of the mother at birth, and the 2nd photo is of the infant.

You at Five Minutes

Your moon bare thigh is bent in final push,
gauze floats above your pelvis like moth’s wings.
Damp hair strung around your ears,
you lift your head to see the infant, ruddy,
crying on your flowered smock.
Wet hair etches the baby’s scalp in bronze,
and lashes feather bronze out of clenched lids.
You see a rose mouth gulp, you see grey fingers
cup the mouth as if they beg for air.
I see your pale hand, taped and trailing tubes,
hover above your daughter’s radiant head.
I see you purse your rose lips, crooning.

And You at Fifteen Minutes

Just you, flail within clear plastic walls
as numbers lilt in chromium dials.
You, all new skin and fuzz gold hair,
no wrapping or a bracelet with a name.
One knee and foot curl up the way they were
before the crush folded you tighter than a cricket,
cranked you down. The other knee and foot
kick wide, your toes spreading to press a wall.
Above the rose gold of your chest, your arms
arc, fingers point away, some strain to touch,
as if to hold your arms from flapping.
Eyelids squeeze away raw light.
Apricot girl, your mouth keens empty air.
A towel presses on your cut umbilicus,
blood dries there.

"We are members, one of another." Each child among us is at once the child and the parent of every man and woman. Each woman, each man, carries the remembrance of the child past and promise of the child to come.
Children have been born to us, or have joined our families, during the year past. Blood of our blood, bone of our bone, life of our life.

We honor and welcome these children: New babies are named.

GROWING:
Our children grow. It is not only that they grow taller and stronger, not only that they learn to swim or play tennis or thread a needle. Their growing is also a becoming... a growing into the human persons that they are to be. In each single child, in every child in all the world, all sweetness of possibility, all good hopes, gather to a focus of expectation.

The following lines are from Walt Whitman

There was a child that went forth every day
And the first object she looked upon, that object she became,
And that object became part of her for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass and red and white morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the
song of the phoebe-bird. And all the changes of city and country wherever she went.

Her own parents, he that had father'd her and she that had conceiv'd her in her
womb and birth'd her,
They gave this child more of themselves than that.
They gave her afterward every day; they became part of her...
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and
swelling heart...
The streets themselves and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows...
The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud,

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

Our children grow. Infancy into childhood; childhood to adolescence; and adolescence to adulthood. The children become. Dare to become! We honor this morning all those who in this year have set foot to the planking of the bridge, those who have taken the long step of becoming, from childhood to adolescence to responsible adulthood. Our congratulations and our love to our Coming of Age graduates and to our high school and college graduates.

We honor our 2006 Coming of Age graduates:
COA graduates are named.

We honor our 2006 high school graduates:
High School graduates are named.

We honor those who are obtaining higher education:
Those who have graduated from college are named.

MEDITATION:
We will now have a time for meditation, first, spoken words, then silent contemplation. The following words are from FUSN member, Peter Smith:
Molecules & Mystery
Take a deep breath . . . .
Hold it for a few seconds . . . .
Release that air back into the space you are in . . . .
Science tells us that life is a closed system.
The molecules in air you are breathing are the same ones
that have been on the planet for millions of years.
They were here long before humankind appeared as a species.
Some of those molecules have been in every part of the planet.
Therefore the air you are breathing has been inhaled by
dinosaurs and pharaohs.
It has mixed with the smells of the garbage in Bombay and the
perfume of flowers in Australia.
We are all part of the living system that has provided the air
with an adequate amount of oxygen for us to survive. A system
that absorbed the carbon dioxide that we exhale as a nutrient.

Let us celebrate this magnificent living system and the ever
expanding universe that contains it.
Let us celebrate the web of life every day by living as a part of it.
With its ebb and flow, we can revel in its interconnectedness and
diversity.
We are relatives of granite and cousins to the butterfly.
We can share the web’s meaning with time past and
time to come.

All is one . . . .

RELATIONSHIPS:
We are members, members one of another. We live in the universal bond of all children and all women and all men. The bond is our nature. Within that planetary bond -- all who say brother, all who say sister -- we reach out to the dear and near ones, the friends and lovers. We turn face to face. Eyes meet eyes. Without words we speak our bond, speak our love.
Relationships begin so simply. Two people are easy with each another, yet curiously and happily excited. They share a mischance or two, a remembered pleasure, a private joke. And then, over time, the music grows richer and fuller. The love deepens, grows serious, embraces in its moment the world. Yet that first simple pleasure persists, mingles into strong, lasting love, lightens and illuminates the relationship.

The Sun Never Says (a poem by Hafiz)
Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole Sky.

May This Union
by Evan Sicuranza, written January 6, 2001, as a wedding present for his father, Leo, and Deborah Donovan

There is a sea around us
And often it is said this sea is love.
Then I say,
May this union be a boat for you
To carry you upon this sea
To steer you from all rocks
To weather out all storms
To make the passage joyful through all the years
And may you always find safe harbor
In each other’s hearts.

There is a sky above us
And it holds both night and day
And they say the night is darkness
And the day is full of light.
Then I say,
May this union be a better sky to you
An arch above you both
Shielding you from darkness
Filling the night with stars and the days with sun
So that all your life together is full of light
May the only rain that falls be a replenishing rain
And may you always find sweet shelter
In each other’s hearts.

There are gardens around us
And fields and forests and rivers
And it is said this makes a world.
Then I say,
May this union be a flower in the garden
Blossoming in beauty forever new
And may it be a fruitful field to nourish your love
And a thriving forest from which you build your life together
And may it be a river flowing through the years
As bright as fresh water, its course clear and steady
Returning always to be refreshed by the sea that is love
May it fill you both with happiness and peace
And may you always find the world in each other’s hearts.

We offer today our congratulations and our recognition to those who have this past year taken the step from single becoming to mutual becoming, who have committed themselves to a shared love and a shared trust.

Those FUSN members & friends who have become engaged or married are named.

CHANGES:
The path of relationships is neither straight nor smooth. Two people yearn to be together, yet not in each other's shadow. To give one's self and yet to hold on to one's self -- this is the challenge. Trusting that we can surrender and yet remain whole, learning to survive the many small deaths that true relationships bring, we realize what it is to be fully alive.

Today we lend our strength, our love, and our best hopes to those who are working to meet the challenge of their relationships, those who are striving together toward wholeness.

But we do not always realize our hopes. Partners find that they are not partners, that they do not advance one another's lives but frustrate each other. They come to a point where they choose to end the relationship. It is not an easy choice. Separation and divorce are hard crossings in the human journey, not only for the couple involved but also for their wider families and especially for their children. .

SEPARATION:
Reluctance: (a poem by Robert Frost)
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Let us hold in our hearts for a moment those people who have experienced separation and divorce during the past year. [30 second pause]

OFFERTORY Our morning offering will now be taken. Chris Welles and Rod Thomas will perform Psalm of Life. Will the ushers please come forward?

THE COURSE OF LIVING:
There are things to be done in the world. Our lives swing to the rhythms of the world's work. There are meals to be cooked, books to be written, products to be made, ditches to be dug, houses to be built, cartoons to be drawn, windows to be washed. We are caught up into the beat of what we do.
Almost, but not quite, we are what we do. At the still center of all doing stand the doers, we who feel and think, affirm and deny, we who choose.
We are moved, sometimes, to choose change. We break the rhythm of what we do, enter in mid-course upon new careers, change life-styles and living patterns

And as the good Dr. Seuss says,
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose”

We honor today:
Those who have had changes in the past year are named.

TIME OF REMEMBRANCE AND SILENT MEDITATION
Jay: At the end of every month we light candles of remembrance. Here we offer ourselves the opportunity to recall that great cloud of witnesses which always surrounds us. Here we recall those who may be departed in one sense, but in another are always with us. We invite you to come forward, to light a candle and to remember.

“Spirit of Life” Hymn # 123

DEATH:
This is a poem by Doris Lewis, written upon the death of her mother:

I stand in my garden today
and it is a shambles.
I remember the day a month ago
when I looked at my roses and thought-
this is the weekend they should be pruned.
And I went to visit my mother instead.
Today my roses are ragged
And my mother is in the ground
I am grateful for clarity
and for the sure knowledge
that today, as always,
all is as it should be.

The life of each sets its mark on the world, puts its print on the lives of others. The mark of Homer, three thousand years dead, is upon you and me. Our mark will be upon lives yet unborn. Each life is, indeed, "a momentary incandescence lasting a long time." We honor today those whose lives have ended. May our days and deeds be their fitting immortality. May their lives continue, worthily and nobly, in ours.
We pay them our tribute of memory and love:

FUSN members who died recently: Name FUSN members who died in the past year.

Our relatives and friends who died in the past year: Name relatives & friends who have died in the past year.

This is a poem written by Susan Avishai after her father’s death this past year

In life he was designed for a job--
utilitarian, noisy, dented in odd spots.

Best gear was first. Second jerked at times.
And he was difficult to shift into reverse.
Just one station heard clear on the AM
or maybe it was the tuning dial bust.
But he covered a lotta road on a tank of low-grade
and if you changed the oil when you remembered,
that's all he needed.

In the end he lay, tiny light in a dim room
where time is measured by breaths.
The wax turned liquid, the oval flame shortened,
until just past midnight, as we held his cool arms,
a whitish wisp of smoke shot upward
and the wick drowned.
Without a sound.

Although my father lived like a truck,
he died like a candle.

Granny (a poem by Sally Moore)
We spoke of weather, cats,
The state of the daffodils,
While eggshell feelings hovered in the kitchen
Amid the smell of bacon.
Your inner ear could not decipher sound
The way it once did.
Words blurred like watercolors,
And I became the loud translator of jokes
Usually not worth the telling.

When your hearing aid needed adjusting,
Your ear would whistle like a teapot
Amusing at first, then piercing,
Like a small siren of discontent.

I pretended to be asleep while
You crossed through my room in the morning
To reach the sit-down shower.
I heard your heavy breath,
Felt your long and silent stare
Before you descended the step.
I was always afraid
One pink slippered foot
Would catch on the fringe,
I would reach for you too late,
Your bones snapping like twigs.
I admired you then,
Though I lived in darkness
And mostly kept to myself.

I knew your wit,
Your great talent for art and poetry
Your generous good nature.
But in many ways we missed each other
Like two ships in the night,
Me, just going out to sea
You, coming into shore.

I have a photo I took of you on my wall.
I can tell you more about my life now
Than I could then though you’re no longer here.
We lived in a wilderness of furniture and feeling.
Edges blurred like watercolors.

After you died, I had a dream
That we were on a bus and
When it stopped,
I straightened your collar,
Cupped your face in my hands,
And watched you get off.
I almost got off behind you.
It was a clear spring day in a green suburb.
But I stayed on,
Took my seat for the long ride ahead.

CLOSING WORDS (from Henry Vaughn)

I saw eternity the other night
Like a great ring --
Like a great ring of pure and endless light.
I saw eternity

Turning of the infinite
Wheeling of the stars
The circling, returning moon
Rolling earth in its orbit
The turning wheel of life
Birth to death to birth
Like a great ring of pure and endless light!

The Larger Circle by Wendall Berry

We clasp the hand of those that go before us
And the hands of those who come after us
We enter the little circle of each other's arms
And the larger circle of lovers, whose hands are joined in a dance
And the larger circle of all creatures,
Passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance
To a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it
Except in fragments.

Several hundred of us, children and adults, in this First Unitarian Society. Six billion of us, women and children and men, in the society of the world. Each of us, each of the six billion, a single, separate, never-to-be-repeated person. Single, separate persons, yet persons bound each to each by need and love, love and need.
Would all those here today who, this past year, have had a birth in their family, immediate or extended, please stand and remain standing?… Now those who have had a marriage in their family... And those who have been affected by death... And now, among the rest, those who would like to acknowledge an important event, or rite of passage, in your cycle of life. Finally, this is the time for the entire community to stand together. Thank you. Please remain standing.

Here, in our Unitarian Universalist Society, there is a brother- and-sisterhood of hundreds. Here, on this fragile and lovely planet, there is a sister- and brotherhood of billions. Single, separate persons, linked into community by need and love, love and need. What touches one of us touches us all. We live by our shared concern, our gathered love.

RECESSIONAL
Please join in singing our closing song, “I’ll Fly Away” (See insert in Order of Service)
(We all stay in front of the sanctuary to sing “I’ll Fly Away”—James will go the back to greet people)

BENEDICTION
Closing Words by Barbara Pescan
Because of those who came before, we are.
In spite of their failings, we believe.

Because of, and in spite of the horizons of their visions, we, too, dream.
Let us go remembering to praise,
to live in the moment,
to love mightily,
to bow to the mystery.

POSTLUDE “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Chris Welles & Rod Thomas