Wild
Geese, by Mary Oliver
"Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell
you mine..."
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you
mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv_4xmh_WtE
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Once more Atonement Day has come.
All
pretense gone,
naked
heart revealed to the hiding self,
we
stand on holy ground,
between
the day that was
and
the one that must be.
We
tremble.
At
what did we aim?
How
did we stumble?
What
did we take? What did we give?
To
what were we blind?
Last
year's confession came easily to my lips.
Will
this year's come from deeper than the skin?
Say
then:
Why
are our paths strewn with promises
like
fallen leaves?
Say
then:
When
shall our lust be for wisdom?
Say
now:
Love
and truth shall meet; justice and peace
shall
embrace.
Let
us nurture our impulse for good
So
we know the joy of wisdom, justice and mercy.
(Source: The Yom
Kippur/Kol Nidre service
of the
Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Fairfield County, CT)
Now
is the time for turning.
The leaves are beginning to
turn from green to red and orange.
The
birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the South.
The animals are beginning to
turn to storing their food for the winter.
For
leaves, birds, and animals turning comes instinctively.
But for us turning does not
come so easily.
It
takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking with old habits.
It means admitting that we have
been wrong; and this is never easy.
It
means losing face; it means starting all over again; and this is always
painful.
It means saying: I am sorry.
It
means recognizing that we have the ability to change. These things are hard to
do.
But unless we turn, we will be
trapped forever in yesterday's ways.
God,
help us to turn -- from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love,
from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to
discipline, from fear to faith.
Turn us around, O God, and
bring us back toward You.
Revive
our lives, as at the beginning.
And turn us toward each other,
God, for in isolation there is no life.
-
Responsive
Reading #634 from Singing the Living
Tradition,
Unitarian Universalist Hymnal
Unitarian Universalist Hymnal
May this year be a year of
blessings;
Blessings of goodness, blessings of
joy,
Peace and kindness, friendship of
love,
Creativity, strength, serenity,
Fulfilling work and dignity,
Satisfaction, success, and
sustenance,
Physical health and radiance.
May truth and justice guide our acts
And compassion temper our lives
That we may blossom as we age
And become our sweetest selves.
-Rev. Tom Capo, Adapted, Falk, Book of Blessings
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