Chalice Flame Contemplation by Samuel A Trumbore
UU Lent 2021 – Day 13 – Light
Samuel A. Trumbore
UU Lent – Day 34 – Trust
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Prelude: “GONNA BUILD A MOUNTAIN” from Stop The World I Want to Get Off Composed by Bricusse and Newley Performed by Penn Yan Community Chorus
Welcome: “You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing.” – Henry Louis Mencken
Chalice Lighting: Global Chalice Lighting for May 2017
The words of Aleks Zglinska offered to us by the British Unitarians
A sacred flame burns in my heart, tells me I’m one, sets me apart. Helps me to find that which is true, in reaching out to you. Once we’re a few a brighter light cuts through the darkness of the night. In these connections we shall see, strength in community. The light we find in others hearts brings us together. Then we start, transforming lives and making friends with this the light will never end.
Holding Reality and Possibility Together
I invite you now into a time of gratitude, reflection, renewal and hope.
What an unearned blessing to delight in the calming peace of this space;
to hear the robin’s song again at daybreak;
to feel the warmth in this room,
and to enjoy the promise of summer almost upon us.
Each moment of wakefulness has so many gifts that offer energy and delight.
Yet, too often they seem unavailable
as the weight of our troubles press down on us.
The threats to our well being, real or exaggerated,
feel like mosquitoes in the night looking for a place to land.
Minds become captive to rising flood waters: forceful, murky, threatening and ominous.
Even in moments of great danger, the direction of attention is a choice.
Fear can dominate the mind, binding it like a straitjacket.
Or love can unbind it and open it to resource and opportunity.
The soil of the mind can be watered with kindness.
The thorns can be removed one by one to appreciate the buds ready to flower.
Great possibilities await us even if all we can see is the cliff before us.
The grandeur of life, of which we are a part,
scatters rainbows in every direction, even as the deluge approaches.
Holding reality and possibility together is the holy, hope-filled work of humanity
If…we choose it, again and again, in love.
Sunday January 8, 2017
Prelude: Willow by Heather Jinmaku
Welcome: Do Not Be Alone Right Now By Karen G. Johnston
Do not be alone right now. Gather together.
Gathering together grows courage: in ourselves and in others who see the numbers swelling. It is a small thing, but right now it is an important thing.
Great sources of wisdom remind us: just because you cannot stem the tide of all hate, it is still right to do the thing you can do. These things add up: your one thing & my one thing; his one thing & their one thing & her one thing. Together it becomes a BIG thing.
Do not be alone right now. Any liberation—all liberation—is collective liberation. My freedom is bound with yours and yours with mine. Inextricably.
Let us together cast our lots doing this BIG thing: bending the moral arc of the universe towards justice.
Chalice Lighting: Global Chalice Lighting for November 2016 from
Chapter 1, Tao Te Ching, written by Lao-tzu
Modified from a translation by S. Mitchell
Unitarian Universalists Hong Kong (www.uuhk.org)
The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
This source is called Mystery.
Mystery within Mystery,
The gateway to all understanding.
West Fork Unitarian Universalists 