Light your candle and join me in this Call to Worship:
We arrive at this time and place, together and separate,
jostled and distracted.
We trail clouds of many days of grief and worry.
We come to center ourselves once more;
To touch again that place inside
Where we are most at home with who we have become;
Even now - especially now - to find once more that place of calm
Where we're not isolated from each other.
This week has been hard and full of fear and grief. It’s hard to mourn - even harder to mourn from a safe distance. We do our best to hold space for each other anyway.
We come to re-weave the unraveling fabric of community;
To re-connect once more with the larger human family;
To remind ourselves that we belong to one another and to God.
And this belonging isn’t just warm fuzzy feelings- it’s standing up, standing strong, pairing our kindness with courage.
And so we come —
To center ourselves, To open ourselves, To remember ourselves,
And to celebrate the life we share together.
Praying with Our Bodies
Opening Prayer
We pause in stillness.
We believe in a Spirit
That holds together all that exists,
That sustains connectedness and relationships within us and indeed in all things!
In our sacred imaginations, we see that this Spirit emerged into visibility here on Earth
In diversity beyond our imagining
In flowers and plants
In animals
In the ocean’s inhabitants
Long, long before human life emerged.
With determined hearts, we gather this day…
Grateful for the Spirit within us
To strengthen us when we feel weak,
To warm us when we are cold-hearted,
To bend us when we are stubborn,
To guide us in the way of love.
Amen.
The Prayer of Jesus
