Reflections

Lighter air of our affinity, awaken thine true love within us,Root us, and bind us, banish false masks, and all apparitions of deceit. Let us venture together, standing as one upon the verge of the wooded thicket, As we seek together groves of refuge, awakened selves, and closer harmony.

Let us delight in these warrens of insight, these illuminated paths of curiosity,For alike, we intuit after religious truth, we unfold the mysteries of the self.Self in harmony with the body: body of our physicality, body of our shared unity,As one gathered people, where souls silently commune in mystic labour.

Where the tides of the spirit flow over us, attending our pains and sorrows, Guide our hearts upon this trail; help us to notice the bluebells growing,To find joy in simply, simply. To be deeply alive to all, for God who is in everything, As we find our conscience, our good, our kind words, our non-conformity.

Raising our gaze: spattering of light through the canopy above, green on green.For the sake of larger things, dreams worth having, and mighty grand visions,Take up this work of love, to be hands of compassion, and instruments of peace. Eternal Kin-dom draw near, may we breathe you into our midst.

May it be so, Amen.

In taste, in smell, in sight, we catch glimpses of our past;Recollections we didn’t know we had, which teleport us back,Back to memories all but gone. Dreams within dreams.Precious fragments, essences of pasts forgotten.The illusory sense; how we long for dawn's breaking,For simply clarity, to see the truths behind senses' web,To feel in love, and connected, and presentIn the moment, connected to a thousand moments,And there be uplifted, and awakened, and alive.Lemon tea and Madeleines, delicate sweet aromas.Precious memories, fleeting glimpses, wordless abstraction.Intaking breath from spaces, in the depths of our knowing.Being fed from wells unseen, renewed from places within.For our voyages ahead, enlivened with these new eyes. In taste, in smell, in sight, we catch glimpses of our past.

What we choose to believe is no mundane task;it shapes and illuminates our world.

Such freedom is the greatest gift,and as we unwrap it and savour the riches therein,

do we not uncover the numinous,commune with the sacred, and reach upon the illusive?

Here we prize that most weighty responsibility,upholding one another in this most hallowed task,

around this chalice, enjoining hearts of compassionfor a people trapped in the concrete mundane.

We strive anew with lofty dreamsfor the triumph of compassion, love and justice.

Amen.

Unitarianism is where we proudly own the heresy label. Boldly disavow the centre-ground, and the respectable.Brazenly stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow misfits and rebels.Unitarianism is a place to grow, to unfold, to stretch out.Fearlessly and joyfully ferreting and shuffling our way down new paths.Wilfully declaring our unified oneness, in spite of our spacious uniqueness.Unitarianism does not dream of imagined pasts, or wallow in the mire of lifeless custom. Foolishly we will play the jester to point the way towards a world of unshackled souls.Profusely striving as dreamers do, towards a world of liberty and happiness.For in this space beyond assumption, beyond the centre, we live, we strive, we have our being.Amen.

God of mystery and wonderWho encompasses the breadth of our warring selves – bring us into peace and harmony with all around us, and this world – in all its wonders and its vast diversity. Help us to be a force for good on this planet, advocates of peace and love, and visionaries of a world where there is neither hunger nor segregation.God of mystery and wonder – bring us together into a tapestry so beautiful and fascinating: that in its diversity and depths we might hold and embrace the lost, and the dispossessed. Amen

To be led to green pastures, and not be a sheepTo follow the way of love, and not follow blindlyTo make allowances for doubt, and not fall into cynicismWhat is this Spiritual Path…To be true to yourself, and to never live enoughTo search, to seek, to ever wonderTo be ready always to risk it all, for love, for dreamsWhat is this Spiritual Path…To be thankful for this new day, thankful for the beauty we seeTo rejoice with the rejoicing, and weep with the weepingTo be ever free, to ever treasure our libertyWhat is this Spiritual Path…