PRELUDE – Phillip Herr-Klepacki, piano
CALL TO WORSHIP – adapted from enfleshed
One: Reaching out, patient and inviting. “Come and rest,” you beckon,
again and again.
ALL: To trust in You is to remember limitations, release control, and let our earnest offerings be enough.
One: You do not ask any one person to lift the burdens from the world.
ALL: The Sacred labors of life belong to all of us and none of us.
One: For everything that doesn’t get done . . .
ALL: For all that we desire to protect but cannot . . .
One: For every hurt we cannot ten . . .
ALL: Fill us with a deep assurance, of your presence that abides in all things,
Through all things.
One: You abandon no one in their struggle.
ALL: Let your Sabbath be our renewal of body, of mind, of spirit.
OPENING SONG – “Down to the River to Pray”
As I went down to the river to pray,
studyin’ about that good old way
and who shall wear the starry crown,
Good Lord, show me the way.
Oh sisters, let’s go down, let’s go down,
come on down. Oh sisters,
let’s go down, down to the river to pray.
As I went down to the river to pray,
studyin’ about that good old way
and who shall wear the robe and crown,
Good Lord, show me the way.
Oh brothers, let’s go down . . .
As I went down to the river to pray . . .
who shall wear the starry crown
Oh, mothers, let’s go down . . .
As I went down to the river to pray . . .
who shall wear the robe and crown
Oh fathers, let’s go down . .
As I went down to the river to pray . . .
who shall wear the starry crown
Oh neighbors, let’s go down . . .
TIME WITH CHILDREN AND BIRTHDAYS – “A Kids Book About Belonging” by Kevin Carroll – Offered by Meaghan Bonnaghan
INTERLUDE
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE – Rev. Bromleigh McCleneghan
PRAYER RESPONSE – “Invocation” by Christopher Grundy
READING – “When people say, we have made it through worse before” by Clint Smith, read by Stephen Pennypacker
all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones
of those who did not make it, those who did not
survive to see the confetti fall from the sky, those who
did not live to watch the parade roll down the street.
I have grown accustomed to a lifetime of aphorisms
meant to assuage my fears, pithy sayings meant to
convey that everything ends up fine in the end. There is no
solace in rearranging language to make a different word
tell the same lie. Sometimes the moral arc of the universe
does not bend in a direction that will comfort us.
Sometimes it bends in ways we don’t expect & there are
people who fall off in the process. Please, dear reader,
do not say I am hopeless, I believe there is a better future
to fight for, I simply accept the possibility that I may not
live to see it. I have grown weary of telling myself lies
that I might one day begin to believe. We are not all left
standing after the war has ended. Some of us have
become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.
SPECIAL MUSIC AND OFFERING – “Finale B (No Day but Today)” from the Broadway musical Rent, by Jonathan Larson – UCG Choir with Arwynn Collins, solo; Phillip Herr-Klepacki, piano
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“I am highly suspicious of attempts to brightside human suffering, especially suffering that—as in the case of almost all infectious diseases—is unjustly distributed. I’m not here to criticize other people’s hope, but personally, whenever I hear someone waxing poetic about the silver linings to all these clouds, I think about a wonderful poem by Clint Smith called “When people say, ‘we have made it through worse before.’” The poem begins, “all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones / of those who did not make it.” As in Ibn Battuta’s Damascus, the only path forward is true solidarity—not only in hope, but also in lamentation.”
