Five year old Christmas message from #Unitarian President still helpful today

In an archive of useful stuff, we found this today, dating from 2013 and written by our national President, Rev Bill Darlison:

What happened at the Blue Christmas #Unitarian service at Ringwood for those who have a heavy heart at Christmastide

The Blue Christmas service on 16 December was a departure for both Ringwood town and the Unitarians who meet in Ringwood.

Prior to the event the people we asked thought that holding a service for those for whom Christmas is a hard time was a very good idea.  And so it turned out.  People came to the service who had not been to one of the regular monthly services, and among them were people who - it turns out - are suffering under some considerable strain at present.

The service began with a quiet time in which, in general terms, we were reminded the sorts of reasons why Christmas can be a painful season.  And then the narrative of the Christmas story was unfolded, interspersed with musical interludes.

Each of the readings had been chosen to be an unconventional perspective on the stages of the nativity.  A poem Bethlehem by Frances Thompson gave the perspective of the innkeeper’s wife, focused on caring for the young mother in the face of a very male world.  T. S. Eliot’s speculative poem, from the view from one of the wise men (The Journey of the Magi) suggested that death as well as birth was intrinsic to Christmas.

Unitarians are not certain about Jesus in the way that other churches are, and so space was left for participants to consider their own view of Jesus.  But the message of hope for renewal, signified by the birth of this baby, and indeed every human baby, and the possibility that Christmas is about reconciliation of difficulties, were explored.

Having cleared our minds we were invited to some minutes of silence, in the trust that in the silence the messages we most needed to hear would be born in us.

In amongst the more unusual pieces of Christmas music that we heard, we did sing one traditional carol: It came upon the midnight clear whose lyrics were written by Edmund Sears in 1849, who was pastor to the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Massachusetts at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_Upon_the_Midnight_Clear

We closed with an unusual piece of music for a Christmas service, which was a song by Paul McCartney, which includes the hopeful lines:  “One of these days, when my feet are on the ground, I’m gonna look around and see, See what’s right, see what’s there, And breathe fresh air ever after.  It’s there, it’s round, it’s to be found, by you, by me: It’s all we ever wanted to be.”

Advent - NOT waiting for a Saviour - December gathering for reverence under the #Unitarian umbrella in Ringwood

The topic of the meeting was “Advent - NOT waiting for a Saviour".

Our president for the day took us through our usual gathering format, including our simple circle ritual, in which we each take hold of flame, bread, water and air, and introduced the topic of Advent with the traditional Advent carol of "O come, O come Emmanuel!"

Isaiah 9:2-7 reminded us that the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, and our second reading from Christina Georgina Rossetti spoke of the great age of the green yet cold Earth.

The president spoke of the great damage that the reading from Isaiah had caused in Jewish experience, as a result of which it was largely expunged from the Jewish canonical works.  It was proposed that we have to move on from expecting a saviour to emerge; and indeed to become our own saviours by being aware of our own shortcomings and possibilities for change.  After another hymn from our green hymn books the gathering closed with words from A Pagan Ritual Prayer Book by Ceisiwr Serith:

Each candle we light is a star

Let us light as many as we can, and spend time among the stars we've created on Earth.

Let us know that their twinkling is them smiling, because they know a secret:

The Sun will be coming back, and not only returning but strengthening,

From the (....) darkest of nights.

On Yule, let us laugh with the stars at our fear of eternal darkness,

Laugh with these earthly stars we've lit.