Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words by Andy Pakula
Come into this circle of community. Come into this sacred space.
Be not tentative. Bring your whole self!
Bring the joy that makes your heart sing.
Bring your kindness and your compassion.
Bring also your sorrow, your pain.
Bring your brokenness and your disappointments.
Spirit of love and mystery; help us to recognize the spark of the divine that resides within each of us.
May we know the joy of wholeness.
May we know the joy of being together.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). (words by Jane Blackall)
The lighting of this chalice calls us to attention –
as we focus on its flickering light for a moment
let us recall the shared intention that it represents –
to make this a safe and sacred space for prayer and sharing
in which we can re-connect with life’s depths and our highest aspirations –
a community of solidarity and trust to nurture and strengthen us for the days of our lives.
May this little candle be a beacon that lights the way,
guiding us through these still-uncertain times,
and inspiring each of us to paths
of peace, justice, and love.
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.
Help us to be grateful for the freedoms we have
and to 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 Goal of World Community with Peace, Liberty, and Justice for All by Sean Parker Dennison, in The Seven Principles in World and Worship edited by Ellen Brandenburg
The sixth Principle seems extravagant in its hopefulness and improbable in its prospects. So much has happened since the Principles were adopted in 1961 and revised in 1985. Can we continue to say we want “world community”? “Peace, liberty, and justice for all”? The world is full of genocide, abuse, terror, and war. What have we gotten ourselves into?
As naïve or impossible as the sixth Principle may seem, I’m not willing to give up on it. In the face of our culture’s apathy and fear, I want to imagine and help create a powerful vision of peace by peaceful means, liberty by liberatory means, justice by just means. I want us to believe – and to live as if we believe – that a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all is possible. There is no guarantee that we will succeed, but I can assure you that we will improve ourselves and improve the world by trying….
Working for world community with peace, justice, and liberty for all is a gift to the world, but also to ourselves as we become liberated from the boxes that keep us from being whole. We are all on a “Journey Toward Wholeness” as people and as a religious community…. The goal of world community with peace, freedom, and justice for all may not be attainable. And yet, if we give up without trying, we lose the opportunity to do what we know is right. We lose the chance to put our Principles to work to create more peace, more freedom and more justice in the world.
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 from the Book of Amos in The Hebrew Bible, Chapter 8, verses 4-7, followed by Scales of Justice by Sophie Stanes from the One World Week website
Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying “When will the new moon be over, so that we may sell grain; and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the bushel small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
Our choice could tip the balance in favour of the poor and lighten the load
of those weighed down
We could level inequality and distribute warehouse mountains; share out the wealth that was never ours to hoard
Turn the tables on those who play the markets, we could stockpile generosity
and speculate in hope; sell up our shares in selfishness and settle for the dividends of solidarity
For added value, build portfolios of justice or an ISA in the growth of the kingdom of God, buy shares in trust and act in faith, risk our securities to find a richer life
May the percentage of our interest in people rise, and may we be the prophets.
Prayer by Sophie Stanes from the One World Week website (adapted)
Grant us a spirit of concern for the future of our environment;
Bring an end to the exploitation of the earth’s scarce resources;
Encourage us to be responsible stewards of your creation.
Grant us a spirit of respect, recognising the value and integrity of each person; Encourage us to be accepting of ourselves and of others.
Help us become advocates of peace, bringing an end to conflict and division;
Renew our commitment to challenging the causes of injustice.
Grant us a spirit of openness to see God within and around us;
Help us rejoice in the good we have experienced as we move forward to the future;
Help us use our senses to celebrate beauty and creativity in the world.
Grant us a spirit of truth to recognise failings, which have hurt us, others and the world;
Give us the humility to ask forgiveness for our part in any wrongdoing;
Grant us a spirit of generosity to reach out in trust to those we encounter;
Help us to embody God’s love in our relationships with one another.
May it be so. Amen
Reading Getting Along by Cliff Reed
Why can’t we all just get along, God?
You don’t care a hoot about our conflicting creeds, dogmas and theologies,
So why do we argue and fight about them?
Why can’t we just be a bit more loving to each other?
Is it really so hard?
Why can’t we give each other a bit more respect?
Why can’t we be kinder and more forgiving?
Why can’t we all live by a few simple rules
about honesty, consideration for others, and treating them
as we’d like to be treated ourselves?
Why can’t we accept that it’s enough to part of the one human family,
regardless of the labels we stick on ourselves?
Why can’t we live together peacefully on this beautiful earth
without wrecking it?
Why can’t we be content to have enough, and only be
discontent when other people don’t?
Why do we persist in judging other people
instead of paying attention to our own mistakes?
Why do we have to be rude, nasty, and violent to each other
when it’s so much better – and easier – to be nice?
God, why can’t we all just get along?
Show us the right path.
Time of Stillness and Reflection by Jenny Jacobs (adapted)
Here we are amongst our fellows, in a place where we feel safe, a place we know and where we are known, in a loving community.
With all the problems and challenging situations in our lives, nevertheless, we have the safe still point of this community, on this Sunday, in this place.
Let us give thanks for the stability we enjoy in our lives amidst our friends and families.
Let us pray for all of our brothers and sisters whose lives are not so blessed; whose lives and communities are devastated by war, by terrorism, by famine, by drought, by sickness, by climate change.
Let us open our hearts so that we can empathise with our fellows and feel their pain.
Let us remember and hold in our hearts those who have had to leave their communities, hoping to build new relationships and new lives in foreign lands.
Let us recognise all those things we have in common with them and with people everywhere; our shared hopes and aspirations, for a settled home, a safe haven, rewarding work, a bright future for our children.
Let us help build our society into a place which extends the hand of welcome to all those who need it both without and within.
Let us work towards a safer, fairer world for all, wherever they may be.
[silence]
Let us live our lives in such a way that we always behave towards others with the same care and compassion we would hope to receive ourselves.
Amen
Musical Interlude Melodia Africana II by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Sixth Principle: World Community
One World Week begins tomorrow. It is an annual reminder that we need to work towards world community, to make an effort to help those worse off than ourselves (which is most of the world, to be honest). And so this is a particularly good time to reflect on the Sixth Principle of the Unitarian Universalists, which reads, in full: “We affirm and promote the goal of world community, with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” As Sean Parker Dennison said in our first reading, it seems an almost impossible goal. Yet, I agree with him that the attempt must be made, if we are to live with ourselves.
We’re all incredibly lucky here, you know. We live in an affluent society; most of us have enough to eat, a roof over our heads, people who care for us. It takes something like One World Week, to jolt us out of our complacency, and to realise that the same isn’t true for the majority of the world’s population. A few years ago, the late Rev. Austin Fitzpatrick circulated an e-mail entitled Something on Which To Ponder. I’d like to share it with you:
If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male,
70 would be non-white, 30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual, 11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth, and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death;
1 would be near birth
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for peace, liberty, and justice for all becomes glaringly apparent.
The following is also something to ponder:
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness…you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a religious meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death…you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep…you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace … you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.
Makes you think doesn’t it? In comparison to the majority of the Earth’s population, we have such lots, and the rest of the world is in such dire need. It doesn’t seem fair to me. So what can we do about it? Giving to charities such as Oxfam is only one small part of the story. What I hadn’t appreciated until a couple of decades ago is the direct impact that our affluent lifestyles have on the rest of the world.
And then I read Enough by Brighton Unitarian John Naish. Published in 2009, it was a book which has changed my life. His argument is that not only do we have everything we could possibly need, but also that by always chasing after more, we are wrecking the planet for everyone else (not to mention future generations), AND not being any happier and fulfilled ourselves. One particular passage really hit home:
“We have some evolving to do. And quickly. We need to develop a sense of enough. … We have created a culture that has one over-riding message – we do not yet have all we need to be satisfied. The answer, we are told, is to have, see, be and do even more. Always more. But this is bearing strange fruit: levels of stress, depression and burnout are all rising fast, even though we live amid unprecedented abundance. Our planet doesn’t look so happy either. … In the Western world we now effectively have everything we could possibly need. There is no ‘more’. We have to learn to live ‘post-more’. This isn’t about turning the clocks back or having less. It’s about realising that we’ve arrived (hurrah times three). Enoughness is a path to contentment. It’s about personal ecology, about each of us finding our own sustainable balance as individuals.” He warns that if we don’t do this, the cycle of manufacturing and consuming ever ‘more’ of everything “will continue until the planet is only fit for cockroaches.”
So what can we, as concerned individuals, do? It isn’t enough just to put the papers and bottles into a recycling box once a week, or to buy organic vegetables. To really make a difference, enough of us need to make fundamental changes to our lifestyles.
The imbalances in the world are not only due to climate change. The food we eat and the clothes we wear will often as not have been produced in developing world countries, by people who are being paid peanuts for their work. The Western demand for all kinds of everything all the year round has had far-reaching effects all over the world. Farmers in developing countries now grow “cash crops” such as coffee and bananas, instead of food to feed themselves and their families. Then it is flown in to this country, thereby contributing more to global warming. At the very same time, our crazy government is planning to plough up more and more prime agricultural land to put housing on it. If another war came, we in Britain could no longer feed ourselves. Sensible? I don’t think so.
The same craziness applies to clothing: sweat shops in the Indian sub-continent and the Far East produce “cheap” clothes with bonded labour. Cheap for us maybe. While the UK textiles trade has all but disappeared. So we carry on buying £5 tee-shirts, made in China, Malaysia, Bangladesh or India, and suppress our unease about doing so, because the alternative – ethical shopping – is less convenient, more difficult and more expensive.
But I think the time is drawing near when we can no longer put our heads in the sand. Not if we want to live with ourselves. Not if we want a healthy planet for our children and grandchildren to live on. Not if we truly believe that exploitation and slavery are wrong. Perhaps it is time for us to take responsibility for the choices we make, and to buy only fair-traded food, and ethically produced clothing. If enough of us “voted with our feet” by no longer buying goods that are the results of exploitation, maybe things would change. Maybe.
All the things I’ve mentioned just now are fine and practical. But I agree with John Naish when he says that the changes we need to make are more fundamental. We really do need to adopt his doctrine of enoughism and realise that we already have everything we need. We need to educate ourselves out of the consumerist treadmill that our primitive brains have hot-wired us into, and realise that we actually don’t need to buy the latest gadget, the newest fashion item, the fastest car, in order to be contented and fulfilled in our lives. We need to wean ourselves off the dependency on material goods to provide happiness, because he’s right – they don’t. We need to examine our lives with enoughism in mind, and ask ourselves some important questions, like:
- What optimum level of information do I need to thrive?
- How many technological gadgets do I actually need, as opposed to desire?
- Do I really savour the food I eat? Or do I gollop it down quickly without tasting it?
- Do I truly need this new outfit / mobile phone / slow cooker, rather than just want it?
- Has my desire for this thing been implanted by marketing techniques?
- Is there anything I already own that I could substitute for it?
- If I’m replacing something I’ve already got, what’s really wrong with the old one?
- Have I got my work/life balance right?
- Do I spend my leisure time doing the things I love?
- What do I truly value?
To sum up in the words of Keith Helmuth: “Faith in God, solidarity with the suffering poor and all other forms of life demands that we take a stand and say, ‘This destruction must stop’. We must be perfectly clear about the implications of undertaking this responsibility. It is more than just setting up household recycling bins, growing organic vegetables, or riding a bike to work. It is a renovation which will change everything: the way we do business, the way we eat, the way we travel, the houses we build, the products and services we can expect and the prices we pay for them, the way we feel about trees, and the way we worship God.” May it be so.
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we make the effort to do what is right,
And work for peace, liberty, and justice for all,
The world over.
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