Return, Reconnect, Reimagine

Yet even now, return with all your hearts

WELCOME – Rev. Bromleigh McCleneghan

PRELUDE MUSIC – Phillip Herr-Klepacki

CALL TO WORSHIP – led by Tim Martin

One: Our return is not the one we first imagined.

Many: We are not all here. We have lost too many. Things are different now.

One: We long to reconnect: with one another, with our truest selves, with the Sacred

Many: This time of disconnect has not really ended. How will we go forward?

One:  Let us reimagine: turn again, connect again, find new ways to live as God’s people.

Many: In our work and in our rest, on our own and in community, may the Spirit of Love and Life be present, filling us with the hope of imagination.

HYMN – “O Grant Us, God, a Little Space”   

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE – Rev. Talia Raymond 

READING –  excerpts from “Exile of Memory,” by Joy Harjo
Do not return,
We were warned by one who knows things
You will only upset the dead.
They will emerge from the spiral of little houses
Lined up in the furrows of marrow
And walk the land.
There will be no place in memory
For what they see
The highways, the houses, the stores of interlopers
Perched over the blood fields
Where the dead last stood.
And then what, you with your words
In the enemy’s language,
Do you know how to make a peaceful road
Through human memory?
And what of angry ghosts of history?
Then what?

Don’t look back.
In Sunday school we were told Lot’s wife Looked back and turned
To salt.
But her family wasn’t leaving Paradise.
We loved our trees and waters
And the creatures and earths and skies
In that beloved place.
Those beings were our companions
Even as they fed us, cared for us.
If I turn to salt
It will be of petrified tears
From the footsteps of my relatives
As they walked west.

I did not know what I would find
The first night we set up our bed in the empty room
Of our condo above the Tennessee River
They’d heard we were coming
Those who continued to keep the land
Despite the imposition of newcomers
And the forced exile of our relatives.
All night, they welcomed us All night, the stomp dancers
All night, the shell shakers
All night circle after circle made a spiral
To the Milky Way
…
Grief is killing us. Anger tormenting us. Sadness eating us with disease.
Our young women are stolen, raped and murdered.
Our young men are killed by the police, or killing themselves and each other.
…
In the complex here there is a singing tree.
It sings of the history of the trees here.
It sings of Monahwee who stood with his warrior friends
On the overlook staring into the new town erected
By illegal residents.
It sings of the Civil War camp, the bloodied
The self-righteous, and the forsaken.
It sings of atomic power and the rise
Of banks whose spires mark
The worship places.
The final verse is always the trees.
They will remain.

When it is time to leave this place of return,
What will we say that we found here?
From out of the mist, a form wrestles to come forth—
It is many-legged, of many arms, and sent forth thoughts of many colors.
There are deer standing near us under the parted, misted sky
As we watch, they smell for water
Green light enters their bodies
From all leaved things they eat—

The old Mvskoke laws outlawed the Christian religion
Because it divided the people.
We who are relatives of Panther, Raccoon, Deer, and the other animals and winds were soon divided.
But Mvskoke ways are to make relatives.
We made a relative of Jesus, gave him a Mvskoke name.
…
I sing my leaving song.
I sing it to the guardian trees, this beloved earth,
To those who stay here to care for memory.
I will sing it until the day I die.

SPECIAL MUSIC – “Turn, Turn, Turn,” by Pete Seeger (adapted from Ecclesiastes). Offered by Phillip Herr-Klepacki

SCRIPTURE –  Joel 2: 12-13, 15-16 – read by Tim Martin  

SERMON – “On Returning” – Rev. Bromleigh McCleneghan

CLOSING HYMN –  “If I Had a Hammer”  
If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning
I’d hammer in the evening, all over this land.
I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out warning,
I’d hammer out love between my brothers and
my sisters, all over this land.

If I had a bell, I’d ring it in the morning,
I’d ring it in the evening, all over this land.
I’d ring out danger, I’d ring out warning,
I’d ring out love between my brothers and
my sisters, all over this land.

If I had a song, I’d sing it in the morning,
I’d sing it in the evening, all over this land.
I’d sing out danger, I’d sing out warning,
I’d sing out love between my brothers and
my sisters, all over this land.

Well, I got a hammer and I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing all over this land.
It’s the hammer of justice, It’s the bell of freedom,
It’s the song about love between my brothers and
my sisters, all over this land.

BENEDICTION

ALLELUIA