Hybrid Worship

26 June 2023

Sunday Morning Spiritual Formation

Adult Spiritual Formation is on hiatus this week!

When we return in August, look for spiritual formation opportunities beginning August 13. The adult theme will be Practices for Spiritual Resilience. To get involved, to offer ideas, or for questions and wonderings, please email Karen.

GATHERING IN THE SPIRIT’S PRESENCE

Opening Meditation: The ability to ask beautiful questions, often in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it as it does by having it answered. You just have to keep asking. And before you know it, you will find yourself actually shaping a different life, meeting different people, finding conversations that are leading you in those directions that you wouldn’t even have seen before. 

 - David Whyte

Welcome and Announcements

Lighting of the Community Candle

One: We gather this morning with questions in our hearts and minds. Are these questions beautiful? That remains to be seen.

All: We gather this morning asking the questions that shape our identity. When we ask these questions in community, we are shaped by the asking.

One: Perhaps our questions become beautiful when we talk through them in community with one another.

All: What is next for us? We ask this beautiful question in the midst of our often unbeautiful human lives. May we be led in new directions by our questions.

Singing Our Faith ~ "This Joy"

This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me.

This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me.

This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me.

The world didn’t give it; the world can’t take it away.

This love that I have...

This pride that I have...

This peace that I have...

Sharing Peace

One: May a heart of peace rest with you.

All: And also with you.

You are invited to share the peace with your neighbors.

STILLING OURSELVES

Pastoral Prayer and Silence  "Quiet Place"

In this quiet place

In this quiet place

Help me be still and know

How I can give, and how to forgive

In this quiet place

In this quiet place

Help me be still and know

You

Like Jesus in the garden

Let me be in this quiet place

Let me see your path for me

Let me trust in your grace

In this quiet place

In this quiet place

Help me be still and know

How to be true in all I do

In this quiet place

In this quiet place

Help me be still and know

You

LISTENING TO GOD AND TO ONE ANOTHER

Celebrations

I have become more and more interested in making sure acts of goodness and kindness (however casual or deliberate or misapplied) produce language… Allowing goodness its own speech does not annihilate evil, but it does allow me to signify my own understanding of goodness: 

the acquisition of self-knowledge. 

~Toni Morrison

Celebration Song

Celebrate your heart and your spirit.

Celebrate your life while you live it.

Even when it’s hard to do, celebrate the best of you!

Celebrate your dreams and your visions.

Celebrate the love you’ve been given.

Cherish all that you’ve been through.

Celebrate the best of you!

Invitation to Give

One: We give thanks for our life and the courage we are given to live it.

All: Let our gratitude be full and gracious: despite questions and uncertainty, despite grief, despite everything.

One: Let our gratitude for life be expressed in our generosity.

All: Grace, courage, gratitude, trust. Let our faith in the future be expressed in generosity.

Offering and Offertory 

ATTEND TO MYSTERY

Word About Life - “In This I Have Faith”

In 2007 in the midst of our community’s search for a senior 

minister, members and friends of Shadow Rock recorded “In This I Have Faith,” personal reflections on faith. This morning, many years later, we re-visit these essays as a way of framing our Sabbath question, what’s next for me.

Word About Life for Today

Shared by Rev. Kenneth Heintzelman

Sending Forth

One: The peace of this ancient earth to you.

All: The peace of the starlit summer sky to you.

One: The peace of the desert wind to you.

All: Until we gather again, may the peace of the God of Peace dwell in us all.

(Candle is extinguished)

One: Rest well, Beloveds! These are the times!

All: We are the people!

One: All of Creation is blessed!

All: May we love all and serve all!

One: May God be with you.

All: And also with you.

One: Amen.

All: Amen.

Sending Forth Song ~ "Blessed Be the Tie That Binds"

Blessed be the tie that binds our hearts in spiritual love;

The sharing of a common life is like to that above.

We share each other’s woes, each other’s burdens bear,

And often for each other flows a sympathizing tear.

When we are called to part, it gives us inward pain.

But we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again.

Our Sabbath Send-Off Potluck begins immediately following worship. Are you visiting today?

No worries! Everyone is welcome.