Choose Love

The Sweetest Song is Peace:

A worship service of song and meditation to turn us toward peace

Sunday, October 3, 2004

Featuring “Another Octave Women’s Choir”

Meditation:

On Turning [adapted]

‘Gates of Repentance’, printed in 9/02 bulletin from UU Community Church, NYC

Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the south. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter.

For leaves, birds and animals, turning comes instinctively. But for us turning does not come so easily. It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking with old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong; and this is never easy. It means losing face; it means starting all over again; and this is always painful.

It means saying: I am sorry. It means recognizing that we have the ability to change. These things are terribly hard to do. But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways. God help us, we must turn – from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith.

We should pray to all that is holy: bring us back toward you. Revive our lives, as at the beginning. And turn us toward each other, for in isolation there is no life.

First Readings: Poem by William Stafford

This is the field where the battle did not happen,

where the unknown soldier did not die.

This is the field where grass joined hands,

where no monument stands,

and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,

unfolding their wings across the open.

No people killed – or were killed – on this ground

hallowed by neglect and an air so tame

that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

“Choose Love”, by Yael Lachman, from Yes!, Winter, 2002

I was up in the mountains on [9/11, 2001. A few days later I ran into a ranger] whose job was to whisper the news from New York and Washington, DC…The ranger went off to find more campers. I stood there staring at a tree.....[and struggled with the question]: What is required of me, right now, by everything that is holy?

That’s the question, and we must find an answer, fast….Standing by the river, I thought: We are doomed. They know how to fight. All I know how to do is love this world. Panicked, I scrambled around in my mind for inspiration, for an image of someone wise who had lived through a war and who could tell me who I was supposed to become in these desperate days.

I was expecting a freedom fighter, maybe – someone with a gun. But the person who sprang to mind was Chiura Obata, the Japanese-American painter who fell in love with Yosemite and the High Sierra. He appeared to me looking exactly as he does in a photograph from 1942, taken at the Tanforan detention center. In the photograph, Obata is calm and smiling, teaching a bunch of children how to paint.

Of all the things to do. There’s a war on, your people have been rounded up like cattle, and there you are playing with a paintbrush. I blinked, hoping to conjure a more martial role model this time, but Obata stubbornly remained. He sat before me, out on a rock in the middle of the river, watching impatiently as I struggled to comprehend.

Then all of a sudden I got it. Obata wasn’t teaching those kids how to paint; he was teaching them how to love. Day after day, right through the barbed wire fence, Obata taught those children how to see beauty, how to keep their hearts open. He knew that when evil and destruction arrive, we must refuse to stop loving the world. Then – and this is the crucial thing – we must act on behalf of that enormous love.

SONG: This Ancient Love

Long before the night was born from darkness

Long before the dawn rolled unsteady from fire.

Long before She wrapped scarlet arm around the hills

There was a love, this ancient love was born.

Long before the grass spotted green the bare hillside.

Long before the wing unfolded to wind.

Long before She wrapped her long blue arm around the sea

There was a love, this ancient love was born.

Long before a chain was forged from the hillside.

Long before a voice uttered freedom’s cry.

Long before She wrapped her bleeding arms around a child

There was a love, an ancient love was born.

Long before the name of God was spoken.

Long before a cross was nailed from a tree.

Long before She laid her arm of colors ‘cross the sky,

There was a love, this ancient love was born.

Wakeful our night, Slumber morning.

Stubborn the grass sowing green wounded hills.

As we wrap our healing arms to hold what her arms held,

This ancient love, this aching love rolls on…..

Second Reading: “Testimony” (for my daughters), by Rebecca Bagget

I want to tell you that the world

is still beautiful.

I tell you that despite

children raped on city streets,

shot down in school rooms,

despite the slow poinsons seeping

from old and hidden sins

into our air, soil, water,

despite the thinning film

that encloses our aching world.

Despite my own terror and despair.

I want you to know that spring

is no small thing, that

the tender grasses curling

like a baby’s fine hairs around

your fingers are a recurring

miracle. I want to tell you

that the river rocks shine

like God, that the crisp

voices of the orange and gold

October leaves are laughing at death,

I want to remind you to look

beneath the grass, to note

the fragile hieroglyphs

of ant, snail, beetle. I want

you to understand that you

are no more and no less necessary

than the brown recluse, the ruby-

throated hummingbird, the humpback

whale, the profligate mimosa.

I want to say, like Neruda,

that I am waiting for

“a great and common tenderness”,

that I still believe

we are capable of attention,

that anyone who notices the world

must want to save it.

Song: “Prayer of the Children”, by Kurt Bestor

Can you hear the prayer of the children, on bended knee, in the shadow of an unknown room?

Empty eyes with no more tears to cry, turning heavenward toward the light.

Crying Jesus help me to see the morning light of one more day.

But if I should die before I wake, I pray my soul to take.

Can you feel the hearts of the children, aching for home, for something of their very own?

Reaching hands with nothing to hold on to, but hope for a better day, a better day.

Crying who will help me to feel the love again in my own land,

But if unknown roads lead away from home, give me loving arms, away from harm.

Can you hear the voice of the children, softly pleading for silence in their shattered world?

Angry guns preach a gospel full of hate, blood of the innocent on their hands.

Crying Jesus help me to feel the sun again upon my face.

For when darkness clears I know you’re near, bringing peace again.

Dali čǔje te sve dje čje molitve?

Can you hear the prayer of the children?

Third Reading: From “The Cure at Troy”, by Seamus Heaney

Human beings suffer,

They torture one another,

They get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song

Can fully right a wrong

Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols

Beat on their bars together.

A hunger-strikers father

Stands in the graveyard dumb.

The police widow in veils

Faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that a further shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:

The utter, self-revealing

Double-take of feeling.

If there’s fire on the mountain

Or lightning and storm

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

The outcry and the birth-cry

Of new life at its term.

Song: “I Ain’t Afraid”, by Holly Near

I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh, I ain’t afraid of your Allah, I ain’t afraid of your Jesus,

I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god.

I ain’t afraid of your churches, I ain’t afraid of your temples, I ain’t afraid of your prayin’

I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god.

Rise up to your higher power

Free up from fear, it will devour you

Watch out for the ego of the hour

The ones who say they know it are the ones who will impose it on you.

I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh, I ain’t afraid of your Allah, I ain’t afraid of your Jesus,

I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god.

I ain’t afraid of your churches, I ain’t afraid of your temples, I ain’t afraid of your prayin’

I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god.

Rise up, and find a higher story

Free up from the gods of war and glory

Watch out for the threats of Purgatory the spirit of the wind will make a killing off of sin and Satan

I ain’t afraid of your Bible, I ain’t afraid of your Torah, I ain’t afraid of your Koran

Don’t let the letter of the law obscure the spirit of your love (it’s killing us.)

I ain’t afraid

Rise up to your higher power

Free up from fear, it will devour you

Watch out for the ego of the hour

The ones who say they know it are the ones who will impose it on you.

I ain’t afraid of your money, I ain’t afraid of your culture, I ain’t afraid of your choices,

I’m afraid of you.

I ain’t afraid of your Sabbath, I ain’t afraid of your borders, I ain’t afraid of your dances,

I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god.

I ain’t afraid pf your children, I ain’t afraid of your music, I ain’t afraid of your stories

I’m afraid of you

I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh, I ain’t afraid of your Allah, I ain’t afraid of your Jesus,

I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god.

Afraid of what you do in the name of your god.

Fourth Reading: “The Only Sermon”, by Andrea Ayvazian

if we dug a huge grave miles wide, miles deep

and buried every rifle, pistol, knife, bullet, bomb, bayonet

if we jumped upon fleets of tanks and fighter jets

with tool boxes, torches

unwelded them dismantled them turned them into scrap metal

if every light-skinned man in a silk tie said

to every dark-skinned man in a turban

I vow not to kill your children

and heard the same vow in return

if every elected leader agreed to stop lying

if every child was fed as well as racehorses bred to win derbies

if every person with a second home gave it to a person with no home

if every mother buried her parents not her sons and daughters

if every person who has enough said out loud I have enough

if every person violent in the name of God were to find God

we would grow silent, still for a moment, a lifetime

we would hear infants nursing at the breast

hummingbirds hovering in flight

we would touch a canyon wall and feel the earth vibrate

we would hear two lovers sigh across the ocean

we would watch old wounds grow new flesh and jagged scars disappear

as time was layered upon time we would slowly be ready

to begin

Song: Let Peace Fill the Earth/ Vine and Fig Tree, by Rabbi Nachman/Traditional

Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea.

Let love and justice flow like a mighty rushing stream.

And may we see the day when war and bloodshed ceace,

And throughout all the world there will be peace.

Let peace fill the earth as the mountains fill the sky.

Let love and justice flow like the winged birds that fly.

And may we see the day when war and bloodshed cease.

And throughout all the world there will be peace.

Let peace fill the earth as the hopes that fill our song.

Let love and justice flow like the voices singing along.

And may we see the day when war and bloodshed cease.

And throughout all the world there will be peace.

Lo yi sa goi el hoi che rev.

Lo yil me du od mil cha ma.

And everyone ‘neath the fine and fig tree shall live in peace and be unfraid.

And into plowshares beat their swords, nations shall learn war no more.

Lo yi sa goi el hoi che rev.

Lo yil me du od mil cha ma.

Prayer for Peace - Kathleen McTigue

May we open our eyes.

May we keep our eyes open

Even in the face of the suffering

Our enemies inflict on us,

Even in the face of the suffering we inflict.

May we see deeply with our open eyes

To the common wind that fills our lungs,

That fills our enemies’ lungs.

With our open eyes, may we see the pathways to peace.

May we open our hearts.

May we keep our hearts open despite the pain of the world.

May we keep our open hearts ready,

Leaning toward forgiveness, leaning

Toward the sound of a strange new harmony that blends

The discord of our troubled race into something

Rich and resonant, rising.

May our open hearts keep us brave.

May we open our spirits.

May our open spirits guide us

In the ways of hope.

May our spirits, flung open to the light of hope

Despite all the shadows that float between

Show us the way to come home to ourselves at last

And live on this sweet earth

In peace.

Benediction, “Shaking the Tree”, by Jeanne Lohmann

Vine and branch we’re connected in this world

of sound and echo, figure and shadow, the leaves

contingent, roots pushing against earth. An apple

belongs to itself, to stem and tree, to air

that claims it, then ground. Connections

balance, each motion changes another. Precarious,

hanging together, we don’t know what our lives

support, and we touch in the least shift of breathing.

Each holy thing is borrowed. Everything depends.