We started our meeting by holding silence,
so that we could each do the equivalent of (silently) reciting our personal creed.
And we followed that with our usual ritual
of passing fire, bread, water, and – a new tool for us in the form of a fan of ravens’
and pigeons’ feathers – air, around our circle of fellowship. After partaking, these four signifiers are placed
on the table between us.
The theme of meeting
for reverence was “wholeness”, and it pivoted around some words by the American
author Oriah Mountain Dreamer: “When we surrender, when we do not fight with
life when she calls upon us, we are lifted, and the strength to do what needs
to be done finds us, because
we have remembered that we can choose to serve the only cause that matters:
life herself.”
We had some prayers
and meditations including a meditation by Richard S. Gilbert on our chalice of being,
and we heard readings from Taoism (from the Tao
Teh Ching) and Christianity (a story from the Desert Fathers and Mothers). We heard that the Buddha’s original message seems
to have been cast in positive form – as common sense would expect, his teaching was a call to the
“more” of life, not to the ending of it, and not to the running away from an
imperfect world.
We sang two hymns from
our green hymn books, which focused on the Life that makes all things new and the
“human becoming” in oneness and sharing. We also heard a contemporary take on revivalist
music – very uplifting after our candles of joys and concerns which turned out to be focused
on the darker side of living.
