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Service - Carol Agate and Tom Owen-Towle
A Celebration and Feast for Earth Day
MINISTER
Spring! Just as the winter solstice is a time to celebrate the lengthening of the days, so the spring equinox celebrates the results of the lengthening.
SONG – “De Colores” #305 Singing the Living Tradition (UUA, 1993)
All the colors, Yes, the colors we see in the springtime with all of its
flowers,
All the colors, When the sunlight shines out through a rift in the cloud and
it showers,
All the colors, As a rainbow appears when a storm cloud is touched by the
sun,
All the colors abound for the whole world a round and for everyone under the
sun.
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores, me gustan a mi.
All the colors, Yes, the colors of people parading on by with their banners,
All the colors, Yes, the colors of pennants and streamers and plumes and bandanas,
All the colors, Yes, the colors of people now taking their place in the sun,
All the colors abound for the whole world a round and for everyone under the
sun.
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores, me gustan a mi.
All the colors, Yes, the black and the white and the red and the brown and
the yellow,
All the colors, All the colors of people who smile and shake hands and say
hello!
All the colors, Yes, the colors of people now taking their place in the sun,
All the colors abound for the whole world a round and for everyone under the
sun.
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores, me gustan a mi.
De colores, De colores se visten los campos en la primavera.
De colores, De colores son las parajillos que vienen de afuera.
De colores, De colores es el arco iris que vemos lucir.
Y por eso las grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mi.
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores, me gustan a mi.
Canta el gallo, Canta el gallo, con el kiri kiri kiri kiri kiri_
La gallina, La gallina, con el kara kara kara kara kara_
Los polluelos, Los polluelos, con el pio pio pio pio pi_
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores, me gustan a mi.
READER #1
One of the things religion does best is to celebrate the seasons. The Jews celebrate with Passover--the exodus from Egypt marking a new beginning. Christians celebrate with Easter. The rebirth of Jesus was at the same time as the rebirth of the earth.
MINISTER
We need our own celebrations, celebrations based on our proud history and beautiful traditions. And to celebrate spring what could be more fitting than the seventh of our Unitarian Universalist Principles: We covenant to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
READER #2
In our Principles we covenant to one another. Covenanting means that we promise loyalty to one another by staying in close intellectual and spiritual touch as we engage our Principles. As covenanters we confess that we cannot shape or articulate our Unitarian Universalist faith alone but must do so within the caring critique and support of community.
READER #3
The romantic myth of rugged individualism and the separateness of things is being systematically debunked by contemporary thinkers. Interdependence is the chief and inescapable insight of our century.
READER #4
There is no single form of life that exists alone and independent. The universe bespeaks bedrock kinship. We humans share the chemistry of all the nonhumans among which we live. Everything that lives on earth is made of the same stuff.
The era of interdependence is being ushered in by the evidence of both science and religion. The role of biology, physics, and chemistry is striking and persuasive in all this. So is that of religion.
MINISTER [calling on chalice lighter]:
This flame affirms the light of truth, the warmth of community, the fire of commitment.
ALL
May the light we now kindle
Inspire us to use our powers
To heal and not to harm,
To help and not to hinder,
To bless and not curse,
To serve you, spirit of freedom.
MINISTER
Religion has always declared that we are born through partnership and nourished by relationships from our early to our final days. Rampant individualism forgets and corrupts this original bond and produces isolated, lonely people. The dawning truth is that we are not self-sufficient creatures. We are built for intimacy, for linking and love. We avoid such partnership at great peril to ourselves and our globe.
Let's celebrate our community by breaking bread together and
drinking wine or grape juice.
MINISTER [After bread and wine]
We are celebrating as a community of Unitarian Universalists.
HALF OF THE ROOM NEAR THE STREET READS IN UNISON
Unitarianism began as an affirmation of the oneness of God, in opposition to complicated trinitarian formulations. Unitarian now stands for the unitary view of all life, the merging of the sacred and secular into a single substance, every particle of which is sacred. . . . It celebrates the unitary character of the human family, rejoicing that no matter what our race or faith or condition, we are all one people, belonging to the single family of humanity.
OTHER HALF OF THE ROOM READS IN UNISON
Universalism is an ancient belief that nothing which emanates from the divine can ever be lost. In more recent times it was a Christian heresy that no soul could finally be separated from the love of God. "Universalism" has grown beyond the idea of universal salvation to embrace the concept of the universality of truth. . . . It also desires the one universal spirit of compassionate and all-redeeming love, which has the power to inspire, judge, encourage and ultimately to gather our separated and warring nations into one world fellowship of the free.
ALL
Thus have the Unitarian and Universalist theological heresies grown up and been transformed into the affirmative philosophical foundation for Unitarian Universalism, a New World faith which is inclusive in spirit, comprehensive in character, and uniting in influence.
MINISTER
As Unitarian Universalists we honor a spiritual and social, physical and moral reality which is interdependent, indivisible, one. Our sixteenth-century forebear Francis David put it tersely: "God is One." Later, Unitarian William Ellery Channing described it as our commitment to "the sense of vast connections." However, describing the huge, mystifying, and wondrous ecosystem in communal terms carries little relevance unless we shape our daily lives in earthly communities and partnerships. Let's learn from the creatures around us.
SONG -- "Bridges" by Bill Staines
Chorus:
All God's critters got a place in the choir.
Some sing low, some sing higher,
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire,
And some just clap their hands,
Or paws,
Or anything they got now.
Listen to the bass, it’s the one on the bottom
Where the bullfrog croaks and the hippopotamus
Moans and groans with a big t'do,
And the old cow just goes moo.
The dogs and the cats they take up the middle,
While the honeybee hums and the cricket fiddles,
The donkey brays and the pony neighs
And the old coyote howl.
Chorus
Listen to the top where the little birds sing,
On the melodies with the high notes ringing,
The hoot owl hollers over everything
And the jaybird disagrees.
Singing in the night time, singing in the day,
The little duck quacks, then he's on his way,
The 'possum ain't got much to say,
And the porcupine talks to himself.
Chorus
It's a simple song of living sung everywhere
By the ox and the fox and the grizzly bear,
The grumpy alligator and the hawk above,
The sly raccoon and the turtle dove.
Chorus
READER #5
Canada geese go honking their way south and always fly in a V. Why? Aerodynamic engineers wondered the same thing for years, until they learned from experiments in a wind tunnel: each goose, in flapping its wings, creates an upward lift for the goose that follows. So when all the geese do their part in the V formation, the whole flock has a 70 percent greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.
READER #6
Something else: when a goose begins to lag behind, the others 'honk' it back into place. Those geese embody one of the main reasons we come to the Unitarian Universalist fold. We hunger for a clan of honkers who can honk us out of self-pity, despair, or laziness and who honk their hearts out when our cup spills over with joy. We even need in our presence those whose honking unnerves us sometimes.
MINISTER
Our interdependence can also mean eating the abundance earth's creatures have provided for us. To remind us of our interdependence, let us partake of the eggs.
MINISTER [after eggs are eaten]
The adoption of our Unitarian Universalist Principles represents an historic shift from emphasis on individual belief to corporate covenant. It includes yet transcends our tendency toward radical autonomy, thus enabling us to forge a more cooperative, vigorous religious presence. In sum, we Unitarian Universalists have too long attempted to do individually that which we must now do communally. It demonstrates what earlier in this century our Unitarian forebear Frederick May Eliot meant by “unity in diversity. “
Our Principles, if used faithfully and rigorously, can help to clarify, unify, and extend our disparate and theologically shy movement. They herald our coming of age as a vital religious force in a splintered, alienating world in need of genuine interdependence.
SONG BY CHILDREN
READER #7
Let us try now, quietly and deeply, to realize that nobody is an island, that every one of us is a piece of the continent, a part of the mainland of humanity and of nature.
READER #8
Let us remember that we are made of the same substances that make up all other living beings, all other human beings, the material world, and the sun, moon, and stars.
READER #9
Let us reflect upon our connectedness with earth: We stand on its thin surface, eat of its richness, wonder at its variety and beauty, share in its fragile yet enduring power. We are made of dust and shall return to dust and shall be, from before the beginning to beyond the end, still part of earth. Let us have reverence for ourselves and, therefore, for earth.
READER #10
Let us reflect upon our connectedness with air: In and out, waking and sleeping, we depend upon the lifegiving vapors that sustain all forms of life. To poison air is to poison ourselves and destroy life itself. Let us have reverence for ourselves and for air.
READER #11
Let us reflect upon our connectedness with water: No living thing exists without water, and our bodies are more than half liquid. Food we may for a time forego, but without water we soon wither and die. Water is cleanness; water is flowing like life itself; water is life. Let us have reverence for ourselves and for water.
READER #12
Let us reflect upon our connectedness with nonhuman life: Animals, birds, fish die that we may live; plants give their fruits for us; flowers and trees bring beauty and shade, color and form to our eyes. Being animals, too, let us have reverence for ourselves and for all life.
READER #13
Let us reflect upon our connectedness with the universe and with space: the spinning world, the orbiting planets, the sun that gives us warmth and energy, and infinite spaces and universes beyond our power to imagine or describe. Remembering how small we are, let us have reverence for ourselves, because we are part of all this; and let us have reverence also for a cosmos greater than our minds can comprehend.
READER #14
Let us reflect upon the connectedness with all things human: All men and women are members of a family, different in appearances, endowments, and with the accidents of birth and geography, but alike in the common human gifts of laughter, of cooperativeness, and of love. Let us have reverence for ourselves and for the humanity we share with all people.
READER #15
What is the vast connectedness, as far-reaching as the most distant star, as intimate as breathing and the pulsing of the blood? What shall we name it: Nature, Spirit, Cosmos, Matter, Meaning, God? It matters little, but whoever pauses and learns to feel it knows that it is there and it is real.
MINISTER
Let's enjoy the rest of our meal. But save the dessert.
SONG [after dinner] – “The Windmills of Your Mind” by Michel Legrand
Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel,
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel.
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon,
Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon.
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face,
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space,
Like the circles that you find in The Windmills of Your Mind!
Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head,
Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said?
Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand.
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song,
Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
Men: When you knew that it was over Women: When you knew that it was over
You were suddenly aware In the autumn of goodbyes
That the autumn leaves were turning For a moment you could not recall
To the color of her hair. The color of his eyes.
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel,
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel,
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In The Windmills of Your Mind!
MINISTER
Notice how our Principles widen circles of concern. They start with the “worth and dignity of every person” and close with “the interdependent web of all existence.” This implies that our actions for peace, justice, equity, liberty, and compassion are insufficient if only targeted either locally or globally. Our Unitarian Universalist religious imperative is to be creators and sustainers of relational virtues at all levels of existence.
This final Principle is committed to stewardship and caretaking of our fragile spacecraft. The operative verb is “respect.” To respect “the interdependent web” is to hold it with high and special regard; to esteem, to honor; also, to refrain from interference.
READER #16
When the New Testament states, “Behold the lilies of the field” [Matthew 6:28], one is not saying simply, “Look at those lilies over there,” in some detached, analytical, even smug fashion. The word “behold” means showing profound regard, perceiving with a deep caring and gentleness, which suggests that things in themselves have their own dignity apart from us, apart from our viewing them.
READER #17
This is the meaning of “respect.” The native Americans aspired to it; we must cultivate it. For the native American, the supernatural permeated animate and inanimate existence. Everything was a potential carrier of wanka—mysterious force. Everything was equally important and noble and to be handled with profound respect, even affection.
READER #18
Most native Americans share a traditional oneness with the universe of nature, not fighting it, exploiting it, driving it, but living in a relationship of harmony and joyous collaboration with it. They honor a kinship with plants, rocks, animals, and the sun—forces which they call “nature persons.”
READER #19
The cosmos, the biosphere, the ecosystem, the “great living system,” “the interdependent web of all existence” is the ultimate focus and apex of our affirmation and adoration, our concluding Principle. Note that it salutes the “web . . . of which we are a part.” We humans are not seen as the final accomplishment, but as an integral part. This places our humanity in perspective and relationship.
READER #20
Each individual act of compassion for the natural world, each individual measure of conservation, each decision against dirtying the air, land, or water—these are gifts of the highest order, gifts of the spirit, gifts back to the love which brought us into being and will not let us go.
MINISTER
These are the things “we covenant to affirm and promote.” What does that mean?
In a world where fundamentalism is burgeoning, it behooves religious liberals to engage in vigorous outreach. It is precarious and ineffective to “affirm and promote” merely as individuals.
We need the power and witness of a continental movement “affirming and promoting.” We covenant not primarily to discuss and debate but to “affirm and promote”: affirm, as in state with fervor and clarity; and promote, as in publicize regularly and rigorously. Affirm and promote are not passive terms; they connote “evangelize” but in a low-key manner. They entail action.
SONG—“For the Earth Forever Turning” #163 Singing the Living Tradition (UUA, 1993)
For the earth forever turning, For all life, for all of nature
For the skies, for ev'ry sea, Sing we our joyful song of peace
For our lives for all we cherish,
Sing we a joyful song of peace. For the world we raise our voices
For the hope that gives us birth
For the mountains, hills and pastures In our joy we sing
returning
In their silent majesty; Home to our blue green hills of earth.
MINISTER
Yes, let's affirm and promote our covenant. But first, dessert.
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