19 November 2017

Nov 2017 - how Truth is like love #unitarians


Our gathering was, of course, on Remembrance Sunday.  We opened lighting our chalice candle to the words of Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen, followed by a moment of silence.   Later, while we lit our candles of concern and intent, we would recall those individuals in our own lives who had served during such difficult times.

Our silent ritual of sharing led into our theme of the day.  The president for the day had chosen the theme “The Journey of Truth”.  We heard a reading from John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent, a seminal work on the philosophy of faith, and William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.  The president drew out reflective thoughts from all present on how Truth is like Love.   And the summing up was that we can grow closer together or grow further apart. But staying still is not an option.


SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 


http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/116.html

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