Saturday, August 10, 2024: Join us Tomorrow August 11, 2024 for our Emmaus community celebration: We start at 3:45 with a welcoming: 4:00 Liturgy: 5:00 Yummy Potluck and massive sharing
Emmaus Liturgical Order of Service for Sunday, August, 2024:
“How big is my We” by Ed and Mary FitzGerald
In-Person at Knox Presbyterian and Thanksgiving Lutheran (a facility we share with both congregations)
1650 West Third Street
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
or Join Zoom Meeting with this link:
Passcode: 1234
Or Use the Meeting ID: 519 315 8573
Passcode: 1234
Or by Phone: +16699006833,,5193158573# US (San Jose) +16694449171,,5193158573#
Ed: A few weeks ago I encountered Beatrice Brutea’s saying: You can tell where you are on the spiritual journey by asking yourself – How big is my 'We'? I thought of all the divisiveness around us, especially with Trump and Christian Nationalism, and felt Beatrice’s question to be a good one for our liturgy. It’s been a long circumambulation pursuing this question, with many offshoots that seem to fit, so forgive me for too many thoughts that may seem to be scattered.
R1: Merriam-Webster defines We as
I and the rest of a group that includes me
you and I
you and I and another or others
I and another or others not including you.
Beatrice might define We as
All of creation.
R2: How big is my We? We are so surrounded by dualism: red/blue, us/them, Trump/Harris. And labeling: DEI, black, Indian, Christian. The Alito’s incident with their “neighbor” and the flag brought home a warped sense of We as the social media alignments drew up. It seems We means whatever side I’m on. Are we encumbered by old assumptions, burdened by memories that limit our horizons, and, therefore, unfree to see God coming to us from the future? Perhaps the Democrats' idea of the big tent as a party with members covering a broad spectrum of beliefs is not it; it is still us and them. What if there was no tent? What if we remembered that labels are for cans, not people? What if the body of Christ meant the entire cosmos, every single particle? This is both a spiritual and a political question. How we answer it will likely determine our future.
R3:
Alpha
Love of the three in One.
Let there be light!
Love so powerful, beyond all comprehension, energy bursting forth in a new creation
Christ incarnate as matter, relationally evolving,
Subatomic particles unite as atoms, atoms as molecules
molecules as cells, cells as organisms
plants, animals, us
Emergence.
Greater complexity, something new, more complex, more conscious,
by the union of the less complex, less conscious.
Omega – a final point of divine union
all We, all Christ, all love in One.
R1: Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. – Fyodor Dostoevsky
R2: Kinship
Don’t you feel it some mornings
before the words of news stories
and headlines take over the mind—
this kinship with all things
humming in the quieter air
around chipmunk and vole, around
crocus bloom and old fence post
whose rusted barbed wire
has buried itself in tree trunks,
and can no longer harm?
R3: Even the tiny newts you move
out of the road and the wooly bear
caterpillar using its whole body
to inch toward the other side.
R1: Don’t you feel it especially
with your neighbor, whose
bumper sticker and yard signs
suggest he believes things
bewildering to you, whose face
still fills with light when he
sees you passing by, and shakes
your hand, his bare palm
so warm against your own? – James Crews
R2: If we cannot love our neighbor as ourself, it is because we do not perceive our neighbor as ourself. We perceive the neighbor as precisely not ourself, but as a potential threat (or potential aid) to ourself. This perception is based on assumptions and ways of ordering the world that have to do with how reality is differentiated into separate objects and events, and how these are organized into groups or unities. It is not a matter of the exhortation being an ideal that is difficult to attain; it is a contradiction of our culture that is strictly impossible to realize, so long as we see the world the way we do. – Beatrice Brutea
R3: from The Prophet
Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.
Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self.
You are the way and the wayfarers.
And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone.
Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone. – Kahlil Gibran
Our Conversation: Shared Homily Questions
Mary
Somewhere deep down we are all filled with a mystical longing, with a longing for ultimate meaningfulness, and therefore we need to see all of our world in that context. A genuine revolution must be a gestalt shift in the whole way of seeing our relations to one another so that our behavior patterns are reformed from the inside out.
Ed
We cannot wait for the world to turn, for times to change that we might change with them, for the revolution to come and carry us around in its new course. We are the future. We are the revolution. If and when the next revolution comes, it will come as we turn and as the world turns with us. – Beatrice Brutea
· Who is included in my We – and who is not?
· What do we do about injustice once we recognize it? And where do we turn for the strength to act?
· How do we reach out to our neighbors whose bumper stickers and yard signs suggest they believe things that are bewildering to us?
· Body of Christ. What are we affirming? That the bread is Christ? Or that I affirm I am in union with all things, all creation, the Cosmos.
David: Reflection Song/ Hymn: Open My Eyes Lord
John Poole: explains our Emmaus tithing and offers the Collection/Offering Basket
Mary: Invites us all to consider: What Do We Bring to the Table tonight?
(Using our hand motions)
Liturgy of the Eucharistic:
Ed: The primary lesson to learn in life is to love. Love is so strong that it is unbreakable, and yet it is intangible. You can know it; you can feel it; and yet you cannot hold onto it; for as soon as you try, it will slip away like quicksilver.
Mary: Love cannot be possessed; it is as free as the wind and moves where it will. Move with it. Love is unity and wholeness. Love knows no limitation, no barriers. With love comes freedom. It is fear that binds and limits a soul; it is love that frees and cuts away all bonds.
Ed: Love opens all doors, changes lives and melts the hardest of hearts. Love is creative, it builds up, creating beauty, harmony and oneness. It works for, not against, anything. Love brings such joy that it cannot be repressed. It dances and sings through life. Is there love in your heart? Love for each other? It starts in you and works out and out.
Mary: There is a basic urgency in life to grow, to expand, to become new and renewed. We might even say that the very meaning of being alive is to be constantly in the process of becoming a new creation. We, by our concerted intention, can make something that hasn’t existed before.
Ed: Deep reality is that place in the center of our being where we experience our existence in an unlimited way. The deep self is not defined, not described by any of the qualities of our bodies or personalities, by our histories or social positions, our jobs, or our religions. This is fairly hard to realize. We tend to think of ourselves, introduce ourselves to others, believe others are seeing us in terms of these qualities. In meditation and its associated practices, we try to center ourselves in our sense of existing without identifying with these descriptors. To the extent that we become accustomed to this, we may spontaneously behave in a new way.
Mary: You can see from this how our energy is affected. When we define ourselves in terms of our qualities, we have to devote energy to protecting them and trying to gain more valuable ones – more beauty, personality, wealth, power, social status. But if we liberate ourselves from such identity, then all that energy becomes available for the radiation of goodwill to others. We have realized ourselves as the Self that says only I AM, with no predicate following, not “I am a this” or “I have that quality.” Only unlimited, absolute I AM.
Ed: And the interesting thing is that as soon as you experience yourself this way, you at once find that you also are saying toward the whole world, “May you be!” It seems to be the nature of that which is I AM to say, “May you be.”
(As Ed holds up the bread and Mary holds up the wine, everyone says:)
This is the love that is called “agape”, the love that seeks the being, well-being, full being, ever-fuller being, of the beloved. It is a love that is a first action, an action beginning in us, coming out from the center of our being because of the nature of our being. This energy of love is inexhaustible; it is plentiful, bountiful, enormous. It’s constantly in motion and radiant, like a star is radiant. The True Self in us is constantly radiating this willed goodness.
Ed: Let us now offer one another a sign of peace and blessings.
Mary: Leads us in The Lord’s Prayer: (by Parker Palmer)
Our Mother, Our Father, Holy and blessed is your true name.
We pray for your reign of peace to come.
We pray that your good will be done.
Let heaven and earth become one.
Give us this day the bread we need.
Give it to those who have none.
Let forgiveness flow like a river between us, from each one to each one.
Lead us to holy innocence beyond the evil of our days.
Come swiftly Mother, Father, come.
For yours is the power, and the glory, and the mercy:
Forever your name is All in One.
Mary: Everyone is welcome at this table. The Spirit, whom the universe cannot contain Is present to us in this bread. God’s Sacred Presence, that redeems us and calls us by name, now meets us in this cup. So, come, take this bread, Drink this wine, In them, The Spirit comes to us
So that we become one with Spirit.
Distribution of Communion for all
Ed: Offers our Closing Blessing:
Outwitted
They drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took them in! – Edwin Markham
And the people of this beloved Emmaus Community say: Amen!
David: Closing Song: In the Day of the Lord
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