Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words from the Sanskrit
Look to this day –
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
And realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action, the splendour of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). Words by Yvonne Aburrow
The flame of the chalice consumes the candle
The flame of life consumes time
The flame of the spirit feeds on love,
Love that renews itself for ever.
May we give ourselves generously to love,
And open our hearts to receive it.
Opening Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love,
be with us as we gather for worship,
each in our own place.
Help us to feel a sense of community,
even though we are physically apart.
Help us to care for each other,
in this world in which the clouds
of war, poverty, and climate change hover,
and help us to make a difference,
starting where we are, with what we have.
May we keep in touch however we can,
and help each other, however we may.
May we be grateful for the freedoms we have
and respect the wishes of others.
May we hold in our hearts all those
who are grieving, lost, alone,
victims of violence and war,
suffering in any way,
Amen
Reading from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
And an astronomer said, Master, what of Time?
And he answered:
You would measure time, the measureless and immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.
Alternative Lord’s Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love, here and everywhere,
may we be aware of your presence in our lives.
May our world be blessed.
May our daily needs be met,
and may our shortcomings be forgiven,
as we forgive those of others.
Give us the strength to resist wrong-doing,
the inspiration and guidance to do right,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
We are your hands in the world; help us to grow.
May we have compassion for all living beings,
and receive whatever life brings,
with courage and trust. Amen
Reading Maybe you have other plans by Bob Wightman from With Heart and Mind 2
I woke up early today, excited over all I get to do before the clock strikes midnight. I have responsibilities to fulfil today. I am important. My job is to choose what kind of day I am going to have.
Today I can complain because the weather is rainy, or I can be thankful that the grass is getting watered for free. Today I can feel sad that I don’t have more money, or I can be glad that my finances encourage me to plan my purchases wisely and guide me away from waste. Today I can grumble about my health, or I can rejoice that I am alive.
Today I can lament over all that my parents didn’t give me when I was growing up, or I can feel grateful that they allowed me to be born. Today I can cry because roses have thorns, or today I can celebrate that thorns have roses. Today I can mourn my lack of friends, or I can excitedly embark upon a quest to discover new relationships.
Today I can whine because I have to go to work, or I can shout for joy because I have a job to go to. Today I can complain because I have to go to school, or eagerly open my mind and fill it with new knowledge and understanding. Today I can murmur dejectedly because I have to do housework, or I can feel honoured because God has provided shelter for my mind, body and soul.
Today stretches ahead of me, waiting to be shaped. And here I am, the sculptor who gets to do the shaping. What today will be like is up to me. I get to choose what kind of day I will have!
Have a great day, my friend; or maybe you have other plans.
Prayer by Laura Dobson (adapted)
Eternal One,
Grace us with serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
Courage to change the things we can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
May we live one day at a time,
Being present, one moment at a time,
Taking the world as it is, not as we would have it,
Trusting that all will be well,
Surrendering to the heart’s desire,
And knowing Heaven as Earth,
here and now.
Amen
Reading Time and Eternity by David Monk from With Heart and Mind (adapted)
‘What time is it? At this point in my existence it is 8.25 pm on Sunday the 25th of June 2006. ‘What is time?’ – no answer. Time is something we formulate in our minds and measure with clocks, diaries and calendars.
Time is relative to the speed of light, it is not a universal constant, as Albert Einstein said. Looking at the sun, we see where it was about 8 minutes ago. There are visible stars in the night sky which no longer exist. Looking at Europe through a powerful telescope 65 light years out in space, I would be watching the Second World War – now! If I travelled out into space at thousands of miles a second for a few months and then returned to earth, everyone on earth would be several years older, and if I travelled at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) time would stand still. So, what is time?
It is something with meaning only in relation to our finite / temporal existence, whereas Ultimate Reality, or Being Itself (what we refer to as God) is beyond time, and when we are in union with God, so are we. ‘Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. (2 Peter 3, verse 8). In other words, there is no time with God – there is only the eternal NOW. Eternal does not mean ‘everlasting’ – an endless stretch of time – it is beyond time. God is not thousands of millions of years old. God is NOW…
To be in union with God is to be in the NOW. When we surrender our attachment to whom we ‘think’ we are, to whom we have been in the past and who we want to be, or who we fear we will be in the future, with all the anxiety-producing ‘if onlys’ and ‘what ifs’, we enter the NOW, a state of true spiritual freedom which opens the door to unconditional Love for ourselves and all beings.
Time of Stillness and Reflection by Jo James (adapted)
We pray for those who are not with us yet:
those who are making their way here.
And those who do not yet know about us yet,
but who are also making their way here,
even though they do not know it,
yet.
Let’s pray for those in the future –
who will pray,
one day,
with us.
Let us take a breath here.
Let us breathe in community with the past
and breathe out community with the future,
just as the in breath pre-supposes an out breath,
so does the past pre-suppose the future,
and so let us breathe here a while
and consider the present,
as that instant between in breath and out.
That instant is the living moment,
and it is within the vastness of this moment
that we experience eternity.
We pray for those not with us
For those beloved and departed
who we honour
By using the gifts which they taught us
In the pursuit of the true life which we seek.
We pray for those not with us yet, those still on their way here,
And we pray for those who maybe
will watch this in a recording,
at a later date,
and if this is you –
I invite you to enter in to this moment with us as we pray –
I invite you, as you watch, to pray with us;
yes, even if you feel foolish doing that,
Time traveller,
pray with us;
You are in our thoughts now,
so let our thoughts be in your prayer
in the future,
as we pray for unity
across the uneven spaces of time.
[silence]
A prayer we speak with voices of the future and voices from the past,
voices perhaps of those who,
seated in these pews
prayed for us;
although they didn’t know us
they nonetheless prayed for us,
the congregation of the future,
that they knew would be needed to carry this work of wonder and of worship forward;
we pray in person and online
in response to them,
in reassurance and in response,
we pray now with voices from the past
from prayer to prayer
and breath to breath
we pray with voices in the future
and say together words
that have united us over centuries and millennia
and which begin:
Our father…
Musical Interlude I Due Fiumi by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Living in Time
Last Sunday morning, I woke up feeling very well-rested, in spite of having read late the night before. I checked my fitness tracker, which told me it was 10 to 7. It wasn’t until I was getting dressed after my morning shower, and strapped on my analogue watch, that the penny dropped. It read 10 past 8. Of course, the clocks had changed, so I had benefited from a “free” extra hour of sleep. And at the end of next March, I will doubtless wake up feeling tired, having had an hour “stolen” from me.
Who are we, to dictate what time it is? Before the coming of the railways, time was perceived by the passage of the sun through the sky, and people lived in closer harmony with the natural world. These days, it seems, every moment of the day is hemmed in by appointments in our diaries and calendars It feels a little off to me.
“Time” is an extraordinary concept, when you really start to think about it. The Prophet sums it up beautifully. “You would measure time, the measureless and immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons… Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness and knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream. And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.”
We cannot touch time, feel it, sense its passing, except by using human-made devices such as clocks, diaries and calendars. And yet time is central to our lives. Most of us get up at a regular time each morning, do our “morning tasks”, stop for lunch, do different tasks after lunch, then eat our evening meal and wind down before it is time (that word again!) to sleep.
When we interact with other people, it is very often at pre-appointed times – our congregations gather to worship at a particular time each Sunday and get together in between for other-than-Sunday groups or committee meetings. Even if we are at home, Zoom meetings, for worship and other purposes, are scheduled for particular times. I would be lost without my watch, and my faithful Filofax, in which I keep track of where I need to be, when, and what I need to get done on any particular day.
Which is why holidays, time away from the tyranny of the diary, are so important. Usually the time flies by – Maz and I love visiting new cities, walking the streets, admiring the architecture, and visiting churches and museums. We walk all day, but take breaks by sitting in outdoor cafés, enjoying the chance to people watch. But the time seems to go so fast. When we arrive, we have a “whole week” ahead of us, but in no time at all, it is the final evening, and we are packing our suitcases in preparation for travelling back home. I usually feel in need of an extra week off to recover!
But sometimes, just sometimes, we have a more relaxing break. One of the best holidays I ever had was in June 2019 when Maz and I, together with my daughter and her fiancé, spent a week in our favourite part of Wales. Becky and Arran were both suffering from overwork, so we decided to get up when we awoke, go where we felt like, according to the weather, and just blob if we didn’t feel like going anywhere. Meals were eaten when we felt hungry. It was fabulous. Both of the young people regressed to being “children” with no responsibilities and felt so much better for their rest by the end of the week. As did I.
When I want to get away from being ruled by the passing of time, I have a special watch, whose face is divided into the normal twelve hours. But it has only one hand, and that hand takes an hour to move from one hour marking to the next. So when I look at it, I can only judge roughly what the time is “somewhere between nine and ten in the morning.” It is very liberating.
Without time, we would have no sense of ourselves as moving through the universe, growing older, at a rate of 24 hours every day. And even that measure varies from person to person. I can remember being five and wanting desperately to be five and a half, because that was so much older than just five. When we are children, I think that time tends to pass much more slowly (except for the hour just before bedtime, which always rushes by). A school year seems to last “forever” and the months leading up to Christmas or our birthdays simply crawl by. I wonder whether that is why we have such clear memories of our childhoods – because we lived at a much slower pace?
Once we become adults, and start to do all the things that being an adult means – working for a living, moving into our own property, shopping and cooking for ourselves, travelling, doing housework – time starts to race by. Most adults greet Friday evening with joy, because they have a whole weekend without working ahead of them. But then it goes by in a flash and it is Monday morning again. Looking at the longer picture, our twenties go fast, but then each succeeding decade seems to speed up. I cannot believe I am nearing retirement – how did that happen? And yet, when I think back to who I was, what I was doing, a decade or so ago, I can see how much my life has changed.
Without our memories of the past, and our imagination, to see the future, we would be poorer, I think. Yet it can be wonderful to live in the eternal NOW which David Monk talks about in our third reading. As he describes so beautifully, “To be in union with God is to be in the NOW. When we surrender our attachment to whom we ‘think’ we are, to whom we have been in the past and who we want to be, or who we fear we will be in the future, with all the anxiety-producing ‘if onlys’ and ‘what ifs’, we enter the NOW, a state of true spiritual freedom which opens the door to unconditional Love for ourselves and all beings.”
I was blessed to experience this eternal NOW this morning, during my regular constitutional in Salcey Forest. It was a beautiful blue-sky day (if chilly). I walk the same path each day, but this morning, I saw it with new eyes. It was as though the lenses of my eyes had been wiped clean. I saw a rainbow of wonderful Autumn colours – every shade of green, yellow, gold, copper, bronze, burgundy, red and brown. I walked along the sunlit path into the Forest and was reminded of a genius line by David Bowie, from Eight Line Poem, “the sun that pins the branches to the sky.” And of Galadriel’s beautiful song in The Lord of the Rings, “I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew; I sang of wind, a wind there came and in the branches blew.” That wind was blowing the leaves from the trees into my path in a fine, golden drizzle. I felt at one with God’s creation, and stopped several times, just to breathe and give thanks.
I think we spend too little time living in the Now. Too much of our time is spent either regretting or feeling nostalgic for an imperfectly-remembered past, or planning or feeling anxious about what the future may hold for us. We find it hard to get away from the “what ifs” and “if onlys” that David Monk talks about. But as Bob Wightman wrote in our second reading, how we spend our days is, to a great extent, our choice. I really enjoyed his either / or choices. As he said, each “Today stretches ahead of me, waiting to be shaped. And here I am, the sculptor who gets to do the shaping. What today will be like is up to me. I get to choose what kind of day I will have!”
Obviously, this is not entirely true. To a large extent, our circumstances will dictate the shape of our days. BUT it is our choice how we react to what happens to us. Unless, of course, we are suffering from depression or some other debilitating mental illness. For those of us in those situations, on a bad day, even getting out of bed and getting dressed can be a major achievement.
I would like to finish by repeating the beautiful opening words I shared at the beginning of our service:
Look to this day –
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
And realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action, the splendour of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
May it be so, for all of us. Amen
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we appreciate the Eternal Now,
and learn to take time out from our everyday lives,
and appreciate the world around us.
May we return to our everyday world refreshed,
may we share the love we feel,
may we look out for each other,
and may we keep up our hearts,
now and in the days to come.
Amen
Postlude Stella del Mattino by Ludovico Einaudi