Saturday, July 13, 2024: Join us Tomorrow July 14, 2024 for our Emmaus Liturgy:
We start at 3:45 with a welcoming
4:00: Liturgy
5:00: Yummy Potluck and massive sharing
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#
Emmaus Liturgy by Pat and Steve
Emmaus Liturgy July 14, 2024
Cultivating Foundations of Hope
WELCOME/INTRODUCTION: Steve:
Pat and I began brainstorming about today's liturgy the morning following the first Donald Trump/Joe Biden debate. Personally, I was stunned, frightened and sad about where we might be headed as a nation. Serendipitously, the day before, I received my bi-annual edition of Pierre Teilhard Studies essays published by the American Teilhard Association.
This one was written by Libby Osgood, CND. It was titled, More Than Optimism:
Teilhard’s Hope for a Unitive Future. Osgood draws a difference between Optimism and Hope. “Optimism itself is neither good nor bad. It’s temperament, and outlook, or a way of being.”
Osgood also explores three characteristics of Hope. Hope is not naive, it involves suffering, and requires action.” Regarding suffering Teilhard says, “Human suffering, the sum total of suffering poured out at each moment over the whole earth, is like an immeasurable ocean. But what makes up this immensity? Is it blackness; emptiness, barren wastes? No, indeed: it is potential energy. The whole question is how to liberate it and give it a consciousness of its significance and potentialities.”
In their book Active Hope, How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy written by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, they express similar ideas about hope. “It is what we do with hope that really makes the difference. Passive hope is about waiting for external agencies to bring about what we desire. Active Hope is about becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for. Active Hope is a practice.
Like Tai Chi or gardening, it is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps.
First, we take a clear view of reality;
second, we identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we’d like things to move in or the values we’d like to see expressed;
and third, we take steps to move ourselves or situation in that direction.
Since Active Hope doesn’t require optimism, we can apply it even in areas where we feel hopeless. The guiding impetus is intention; we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or express. Rather than weighing ours chances and proceeding only when we feel hopeful, we focus on our intention and let it be our guide.”
In 1986, Marian MacGillis, O.P. gave a talk at Resurrection Parish in Santa Rosa titled, The Fate of the Earth.” I was not in attendance but shortly thereafter obtained a cassette tape of the talk. I remember this talk was powerful and moved me greatly. A few weeks ago, out of the blue, Jacqueline sent me a hard copy transcript of this talk.
MacGillis also believes Hope requires action. She states, “It is no accident that we’ve been born in these times, that we find our lives unfolding now, with our particular histories and gifts, our brokenness, our experience, and our wisdom.” She calls for a rein-visioning of our origin story. She states that our images of the future are self-fulfilling. She encourages us not to be paralyzed by our pain. She cited a short poem by Wendell Berry.
In the dark of the moon,
In the flying snow, in the dead of winter
War spreading, families dying, the world in danger
I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.
MacGillis also cites a story of an old woman in the Mid-East who planted a date. When you plant a date you know you will never see it bear fruit because this process takes 80 years. She says, “We must live by the love of what we will never see. This is the secret of discipline. It is a refusal to let our creative act be dissolved away by our own need for immediate sense experience.
OPENING PRAYER: Pat:
Gracious and loving God, we join our hearts, our minds, and hands in this meeting place in expectation that you will meet us here. Enrich us with your grace in such a way that we experience again our connection with you, with each other, with all of life, and with ourselves. From this deep well of belonging may we then welcome all the dimensions of life and meet whatever comes with courage and grace. Grant us wisdom and inspiration in this day.
Holding Hands Ritual
OPENING SONG: CHRIST BE OUR LIGHT
FIRST READING: Mary Ellen:
This is the time to be slow
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart All sense of yourself And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind And blushed with beginning.
By John O’Donohue.
SECOND READING: Closing Remarks by Marian MacGillis “Fate of the Earth” Steve:
Let me end finally with a favorite reading that I have on hope. It comes from a Brazilian theologian by the name of Ruben Alvez, who wrote “Tomorrow’s Child.”
He said: What is hope?
It is the pre-sentiment that imagination is more real, and reality less real than it looks. It is the suspicion that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress us and repress us is not the last word. It is the hunch that reality is more complex than the realists want us to believe. That the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual.
And that in a miraculous and unexpected way, life is preparing the creative events which will open the way to freedom and to resurrection. But, the two, suffering and hope, must live from each other. Suffering without hope produces resentment and despair.
But hope without suffering creates illusions, naivety, and drunkenness.” So let us plant dates, even though we who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see.
This is the secret of discipline. It is a refusal to let our creative act be dissolved away by our own need for immediate sense experience. And it’s a stubborn commitment to the future for our grandchildren. Such disciplined love is what has given saints, revolutionaries, and martyrs the courage to die for the future they envisage. They make their own bodies the seed of their own highest hopes.”
All: Alleluia. Let us find the courage to answer a Call to Action.
SHARED HOMILY:
I recently listened to a book titled, Finding the Mother Tree, Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard. Simard through 40 years of forestry management and extensive experimentation and research in forest biology in the forests of British Columbia, Canada, uncovered and revealed a complex, underground communication and nurturing network between trees of the same species and tree of different species. She showed that forest communities are much more developed than we once thought and have a sophisticated method of nurturing one another and enhancing their survival. She concludes that forest practices are gradually changing for the better and finished with a hopeful conclusion. This prompted Pat and myself to think about what is happening below the surface.
1. What is percolating in your underground? Do you sense something is brewing beneath your surface? What inner work are you focused on now?
2. Do you have a story, either your own story or a story of a loved one or friend where suffering has been transformed into a positive outcome?
3. Was there anything in the readings that resonated with you?
Steve:
What do we bring to the table. What do you want to pray for?
John: Passing the basket.
OFFERTORY SONG:
Linda:
EUCHARISTIC PRAYER:Steve:
In the spirit of Teilhard de Chardin and with a summons to the Holy Spirit to gather all our gifts both physical and emotional we pray:
“We place upon our paten, O God, the harvest that will be won by today’s renewal of labor. Into our chalice we pour all the sap that will be pressed painfully from the earth’s fruits. Our paten and chalice are the depths of our soul laid widely open to all the forces that rise from the earth and converge upon the spirit.”
All: “Receive, O Lord, this all-embracing Host that your whole creation moved by your magnetism offers you this day. This wine, our pain, is no more than a drink that dissolves.
But in the depths of these formless masses you have implanted a desire, irresistible and allowing, which makes us cry out, believer and nonbeliever alike, “Lord make us one.” Amen
Paraphrased from Teilhard’s Mass on the World
BLESSING OF THE BREAD AND WINE:
Pat: On the night before He died, Jesus was at table with His friends, He took bread, He gave thanks to God, He blessed it, He broke it, and shared it with His friends and said,
All: “This is my body, shared with you.”
Steve: As supper was ending, Jesus took the cup of wine, He gave thanks, He gave it to His friends and said, This is the cup of my love for you and for all creation.
ALL: Go forth and be my hands and be my feet; carry my love into the world.
Pat: Let us proclaim the Mystery of Our Faith
All: For it is Through Christ, With Christ, and In Christ, in unity with the Holy Spirit that all honor and glory are yours, now and forever. All: Amen.
Steve: Now together, as one community, let us pray in the spirit of our brother Jesus.
All:
Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom are the heavens:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world! Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For You reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever.
Amen. (The Lord’s Prayer - The New Zealand Prayer Book)
THE KISS OF PEACE:
Pat: Greet one another with, “May you have peace beloved friend.”
Invitation to Eucharist:
Steve: So through this Eucharist, and in the spirit of our Beloved Emmaus Community, we extend the invitation of Jesus to each and everyone of you to take and eat this bread, and drink from this cup. Let us come to this table, this is the table of the Risen Christ, where all are welcome.
COMMUNION SONG:
POST COMMUNION REFLECTION:
Pat:
Guided Meditation and 2 minutes of Silence Pema Chodron
Enid:
BIRTHDAY BLESSINGS
CLOSING PRAYER: Victoria:
Blessing The Seed
I should tell you at the outset:
this blessing will require you to do some work.
First you must simply let this blessing fall from your hand, as if it were a small thing you could easily let slip through your fingers,
as if it were not most precious to you, as if your life did not depend on it.
Next you must trust that this blessing knows where it is going,
that it understands the way of the dark, that it is wise to seasons and to times.
Then—
and I know this blessing has already asked much of you—
it is to be hoped that you will rest and learn that something is at work
when all seems still, seems dormant, seems dead.
I promise you this blessing has not abandoned you.
I promise you this blessing is on its way back to you.
I promise you— when you are least expecting it,
when you have given up your last hope—
this blessing will rise green and whole and new.
Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace ALL:
And this Beloved Emmaus Community says: AMEN!
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
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