Remembrance Sunday – 13/11/22
Musical Prelude: ‘Dona nobis pacem’ (join in if you wish)
Chalice Lighting and Opening Words of Welcome: ‘Out of the fires of war, let us kindle the chalice of peace’ by Cliff Reed
‘Out of the fires of war
let us kindle the chalice of peace.
Out of the fury of battle
let us create a passion for peace.
Out of the turmoil of conscience
let us weave the calm of peace.
In the one Spirit that we share,
let us celebrate the vision of a
world made just and free – and
find the strength to build it,
a little at a time.’
This simple chalice flame, symbol of our worldwide Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist faith, is both an ancient and a relatively modern symbol. In the 2nd World War it was the symbol used by the Unitarian Services Committee working with refugees trying to escape from Europe. It brought a message of welcome and support to all people, whoever they were, where ever they had come from and whatever their faith.
This morning it shines out a welcome to all of us gathered here at Essex Church where Kensington Unitarians are holding our annual Remembrance Sunday service – and a warm welcome also to all of you joining us online. It’s good to have you with us.
May this living flame, burn brightly today to commemorate all those people whose lives have been taken or blighted by warfare the world over, not least of whom are the civilians. So as well as those who fight and are wounded or killed in wars we remember the old, the young, the animals and the earth itself, all those caught up in warfare – be they participants or shocked and frightened bystanders. May this, our flame, shine brightly today as we remember and reflect.
Hymn 191 (HFL): ‘To Worship Rightly’
As Unitarians we do not have one message to proclaim on Remembrance Sunday. Some of us here today are pacifists and view war as a crime against our very humanity, some of us may consider war a sometimes terrible necessity. Today we’re holding peace as a central focus and we invite you to join in singing our first hymn today – it’s hymn 191 in the green hymnbook, it’s called ‘to worship rightly’ and it ends with these powerful lines:
Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangour
Of wild war-music o’er the earth shall cease;
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
And in its ashes plant the tree of peace.
Those of you at home will have the words up on your screens and you’ll be safely muted so do join in if you wish – let’s sit, stand, sing or simply listen to – hymn number 191.
Now let us sing in loving celebration;
The holier worship, which our God may bless,
Restores the lost, binds up the spirit broken,
And feeds the widow and the parentless.
Fold to thy heart thy sister and thy brother;
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other;
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. (change slide)
Follow with reverent steps the great example
Of those whose holy work was doing good:
So shall the wide earth seem our daily temple,
Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.
Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangour
Of wild war-music o’er the earth shall cease;
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
And in its ashes plant the tree of peace.
Candles of Joy and Concern:
Each week when we gather together, we share a simple ritual of candles of joy and concern, an opportunity to light a candle and share something that is in our heart with the community. So we’ve an opportunity now, for anyone who would like to do so, to light a candle and say a few words about what it represents. This time we’re going to go to the people in the building first, and take all of those in one go, and then I’ll call on the people on Zoom to come forward.
So I invite some of you here in person to come and light a candle and then if you wish to tell us briefly who or what you light your candle for. We’re asking people to keep their masks on for this candle lighting – please keep your masks on – if you use the hand-held microphone, get it really close to your mask, and SPEAK UP, people should be able to hear what you’re saying.
(in person candles)
And if that’s everyone in the room we’ll go over to the people on Zoom next – you might like to switch to gallery view at this stage – just unmute yourselves when you are ready and speak out – and we should be able to hear you and see you up on the big screen here in the church.
(zoom candles)
And I’m going to light one more candle, as we often do, to represent all those joys and concerns that we hold in our hearts this day, but which we don’t feel able to speak out loud. (light candle)
Time of Prayer & Reflection: with words and hand movements adapted from a prayer for peace by Joyce Rupp
Our prayer today is based on words from a prayer for peace by Joyce Rupp from the Servite community. It has simple hand movements that you might like to join in with – placing our hands over our hearts and then opening our hands and extending them outwards, palms facing upwards.
Sending Peace to our loved ones
Place your hands over your heart. Move your attention toward your inner being. Slowly move further inward until you reach that place deep inside of you where abiding Peace dwells.
Now allow your attention to move toward your loved ones. Recall their presence in your life. Then open your hands and extend them outward, palms up. Send forth Peace from your heart to those you love, especially those who might not be at peace with themselves or others on this day.
Sending Peace to the Suffering Ones of the World
Place your hands again over your heart. Move your attention toward your inner being. Slowly move further inward until you reach that place deep inside of you where abiding Peace dwells. Bring to mind the suffering ones of our world, especially those who live in fear of being harmed in any way. Open your hands and extend them outward, palms up. Send forth the deep Peace in the centre of your being to these suffering ones.
Sending Peace to Those Who Consider You Their Enemy
Place your hands again over your heart. Move your attention toward your inner being. Slowly move further inward until you reach that place deep inside of you where abiding Peace dwells. Bring to mind those known or unknown who might consider you an enemy. Feel free to include anyone who you yourself feel enmity towards, be those feelings small or great. Open your hands and extend them outward, palms up. With as much true intention as will arise within you, send forth the deep Peace in the centre of your being to those who consider you their enemy and those who you feel enmity towards.
Concluding prayer (adapted with thanks from Fragments of Your Ancient Name by Joyce Rupp)
Peace Bringer, come to all hearts at war.
Move them to lay down their weapons,
To cast aside bitterness and resentment.
Bring your peace to hard-hearted ones.
Lessen the grip of those who desire revenge.
May your peace release whatever binds
And free all those held captive by hostility,
All those trapped in fearful situations.
May they know peace. So may it be, amen
In-Person Reading: Adaptation of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 – A season for all things by Rev. M Jade Kaiser (read by Harold)
‘For everything, there is a season.
Very little is as simple as “good” or “bad.”
It is more often a question
of who and of when,
a why or a how.
There are times for the birth of something new.
There are times to welcome death.
There are times to plant seeds for those to come
and times for harvesting the long labour of others.
There are times when destruction is necessary, or at least unavoidable,
and there are times when healing is possible.
There are times to create art and times to tear it down.
There are days where only weeping will do; others for laughing.
Some days we can only mourn, others we dance. We ebb and flow our way in community.
Sometimes we long to be in the arms of another,
other times we need the intimacy of solitude.
There are times for seeking a way through the impossible,
and other times for accepting our losses.
There is a time to hold on and a time to let go.
There are times when some of us need to be silent
and times when the rest of us must speak.
Love has its time and hate has its place.
Conflict must be accepted;
and peace welcomed in due time.
May we listen our way into and out of each season,
with Wisdom as our guide,
forcing nothing outside of its time,
receiving everything for what it is,
trusting Love’s companionship,
labouring toward liberation together.’
Hymn 226 (HFL): ‘Song of Peace’
This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine;
This is my home, the country where my heart is,
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine. (change slide)
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine;
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.
Responsive Prayer for the World: by Amy Petrie Shaw
For all who die in war
We lift up our hearts
For all who live in suffering in the aftermath of violence
We lift up our hearts
For all who give their lives in smoke and flame
We lift up our hearts
For all who go on in honour of the dead
We lift up our hearts
For all who have served
We lift up our hearts
For our country and our world
We lift up our hearts
For a planet that will find peace
We lift up our hearts
For the young and the innocent
We lift up our hearts
For the weary and war torn
We lift up our hearts
For those who would pray
We lift up our hearts
For those too angry, or fearful, to cry
We lift up our hearts
For all of us, for the many names of God
We lift up our hearts
We lift up our hearts
Shanti, shalom, peace, sa laam.
Amen.
Two Minutes of Silence
And as the clock moves towards 11am, the traditional time to stand in silent tribute to all those who have died or suffered in warfare, I invite you to stand now if you so wish – our silence will end unannounced with our choir singing Libera Me from Faure’s Requiem.
Musical Interlude: ‘Lacrymosa’ by Howard Goodall followed by a further short time of silence
Online Reading: ‘For the Children’ by Gary Snyder (read by Charlotte)
Gary Snyder is an American writer. He’s been described as the Poet Laureate of Deep Ecology, because of his passionate concern for environmental issues. This short poem expresses both this concern and also a sense of hope for future peaceful living on our planet earth home. It’s only a short poem so I’ll read it twice – and remember, you can always find our service scripts to have a read of on our Kensington Unitarians website.
For The Children by Gary Snyder
The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light.
Reflection: ‘on ‘us and them’ thinking and the symbolism of white poppies’ by Rev. Sarah Tinker
I’ve been wearing one of these white peace poppies this week but by mid-week I’d added the more traditional red poppy next to it, for fear of offending anyone for whom a red poppy has real significance. Symbols can be complicated. And symbols connected with warfare I guess are likely to signify the complexities of war and peace for we humans are complex creatures and our living together here on earth is marked by conflict, scarred by conflict. We’re deeply social creatures and yet we struggle to live amicably together. And that reality has been brought into sharp focus this year when one of the greatest powers in the world chose to invade a neighbouring state. I still remember a teenager asking me back in February – ‘they won’t let this happen will they?’ and the difficulty of explaining that ‘they’, meaning all the other interested parties, would find it very difficult to stop a determined invader. This violence continues and horrifies us as onlookers.
Anyone who studies both individual and collective human behaviour knows that meeting violence with violence tends towards escalation. Yet non-violence is the most difficult of paths to take. I’ve included some quotations I’ve been thinking about this week on our order of service insert, and we’ve copied them into the chat box for people joining us online. There’s a quote from George Bernard Shaw, who reminds us that ‘Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous’.
In response to the despair many of us feel in the face of our world’s sharpness and turbulence, all I can offer today are small personal practices of peace seeking. These are the simple yet often remarkably demanding spiritual practices that we can choose to explore within our own hearts and minds and maybe talk about with people close to us. Let’s start by telling the truth to ourselves about our judging minds, about all the times we distance ourselves from the ‘others’ – by emphasising our differences, by reacting fiercely to views not in accord with our own, by making other people ‘bad and wrong’ because they’ve annoyed us or threatened us or jolted us out of some cosy complacency that imagines we can all agree on anything. To judge and separate is completely normal – but our task as peace seekers is to recognise what our minds are doing and then take the next step.
That next step is the opportunity to shake up our ‘us and them’ thinking and replace it with something far more radical – the spiritual truth that we are all one, with all our differences and divisions. Each time we think of someone as ‘other’ – as somehow distant and divided from us – each time we separate ourselves from certain groups or individuals – we are stoking fires of division. Yet we could instead be applying a soothing balm of peace to our world. This does not mean that we roll over and simply let the world’s bullies and tyrants hold sway. But it does mean that we pay close attention to our own bullying and tyrannical natures, pay close attention to the wars fought within our own minds.
We might also seek inspiration from those who live their pacifism – their belief in non-violence as way for humanity to move forwards. Symon Hill, who is an author and journalist, is also a social campaigner and manager of the Peace Pledge Union – that produces these white poppies of peace – as well as many useful materials on pacificism. Their website is well worth a visit. Symon Hill is a Quaker and in this piece, written for the New Statesman in 2008, he explains why the Quaker belief in pacifism leads him to wear a white poppy.
“To be Quaker is to choose a religion fundamentally at odds with the dominant values around us. For me, this is both exciting and challenging.
Quakers often enjoy publicity at this time of year, because – like other pacifists – we wear white poppies. Like most Quaker commitments, this is often misunderstood. White poppies are not about insulting the dead, but about honouring them by working for an end to war. …..
The starting-point of Quakerism is that the inward light of God is available to everyone. …… and Quakerism at its best is shocking in its radicalism. If God’s light is present in all people, then to hurt another person is to hurt God, to refuse to learn from others is to set ourselves above God and to treat anyone as my inferior or superior is simply blasphemy.
Far from fluffy idealism, this involves a hard struggle to reorient our lives and to improve the world. I cannot believe in the universal availability of God without rejecting the lie that there is no alternative to war and poverty.
While I wear a white poppy as a memorial and a campaigning tool, it is also a sign of a belief in a different world. When protesting outside the London Arms Fair last year, I experienced a moment of powerful clarity when I was struck by the flimsiness and transience of the arms dealers’ power compared to the everlasting light of God, accessible in all our hearts if we will turn to it.”
Symon visited our congregation some years ago and I thanked him then and I thank him now for his pacifist work. I wish I was brave enough to stand outside the London Arms Fair each year and be arrested. I think too of those brave conscientious objectors during the First World War who were shouted at and abused for their refusal to fight other human beings, handed white feathers and called cowards. Let us, if we so wish, wear our small white poppies and may each of us find the bravery required to work for peace in our own lives as well as in the life of our world. Amen.
Hymn 198 (HFL): ‘For the Healing of the Nations’
And let’s take that yearning for peace into singing our closing hymn today, the inspiring words of this hymn – for the healing of the nations, for redemption from hatred and warfare. Let’s sing together.
For the healing of the nations,
God, we pray with one accord;
For a just and equal sharing
Of the things that earth affords.
To a life of love in action
Help us rise and pledge our word,
Help us rise and pledge our word.
Lead us ever into freedom,
From despair your world release;
That, redeemed from war and hatred,
All may come and go in peace.
Show us how through care and goodness
Fear will die and hope increase;
Fear will die and hope increase.
All that kills abundant living,
Let it from the earth depart;
Pride of status, race or schooling,
Dogmas keeping us apart.
May our common quest for justice
Be our brief life’s hallowed art,
Be our brief life’s hallowed art.
Announcements:
With thanks to our musicians today for their beautiful musical offerings that sooth the most troubled of hearts – Peter Crockford on piano, Lucy Elston, Margaret, Benjie Del Rosario and Trevor Alexander. Thank you to Harold and Charlotte for reading today and biggest thanks to our tech team Ramona Cristea and to Jane Blackall who has made things work smoothly from afar, despite this being a Sunday off. Thank you everyone.
Volunteers Needed for Greeting and Coffee-Making: hope you can stay and have a chat – both online and here in person, after the service. Can you help with greeting or coffee on Sunday mornings? Now our hybrid services are weekly we are seeking more helping hands to take on these regular tasks. Please speak to Liz or Marianne if you can assist with these welcoming roles.
‘Heart and Soul’ Contemplative Spiritual Gathering, Sunday 13th and Friday 18th Nov at 7pm: There are spaces available to join Jane on Sunday and Friday at 7pm on Zoom for this week’s gathering on the theme of ‘Practice’. We spend about 90 minutes exploring our theme and praying together in a gently structured way. Email jane@kensington-unitarians.org.uk to book.
Coffee Morning on Zoom, Wednesday 16th November, 10.30-11.30am: All are welcome to join us for a midweek catch-up on Zoom. You can find the link in Friday’s email.
Nia Classes with Sonya Leite, Fridays from 12.30-1.30pm, in-person here at Essex Church: Join our very own Sonya on Fridays for Nia Dance, holistic movement for body and soul. Cost is £10 per drop-in session or £40 for a block of 5. There are also online classes each Wednesday lunchtime at 12.30pm. Contact Sonya on 0207 371 1674 or email sleite@hotmail.co.uk for details.
Sunday Service In-Person and on Zoom, Sunday 20th November 2022, 10.30-11.30am: ‘Simple Pleasures’ led by Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall and Members of the Congregation. And do contact Jane if you could record a short video of you taking about your own simple pleasures in life. Just contact Jane first so you know what’s needed.
And let’s ready ourselves for our closing words now which will be followed by a lovely choral piece. You may recognise the words – attributed to Quaker Elizabeth Fry and a source of comfort in many a funeral.
Benediction:
May the blessing of peace rest in our hearts, in our quiet times and in our times of unrest.
May the blessing of our companionship be with us in the days ahead and ripple outwards into our world, which so yearns for connection, for love and for inspiration.
And may the blessings of life itself be forever with us, whatever the autumn winds may blow our way.
Amen, go well all of you and blessed be.
Closing Music: ‘Libera me’ from Faure’s Requiem
Rev. Sarah Tinker
13th November 2022
