I
was asked to do the Chalice Lighting this Sunday morning at the Tree
of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry, Illinois. If you are not familiar with a Chalice
Lighting, it is one of the few U.U. worship rituals. A short reading usually accompanies igniting
a flame in a chalice, the symbol of our faith, which help
set the tone of the service.
At our congregation we have monthly themes for worship. This month that theme is Beauty. Instead of searching out an apt quotation from
literature or by some minister, I undertook a short original
poem.
Like
our Interim Minister, the Rev. Jenn Gracen, I was having some difficulty
reconciling beauty with some of the ugly realities we are living
in. In her Minister’s Musing shared
this week with the congregation in an e-mail she wrote:
“How beautiful on
the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.” These words come from
the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible and
are later echoed in the Christian scriptures as well. Our Soul Matters
theme for the month of May is “beauty.” When I think about beauty, images of
feet are not the first that come to mind. But then I reflect on the events of
the past few days—a leaked Supreme Court ruling that suggests that, for the first
time, we are likely to see constitutional rights revoked rather than expanded.
I reflect on the events of the past few months—an unprovoked and devastating war brought by
Russia against the people of Ukraine. I reflect on the events of the past few years—a
pandemic that has killed over 6 million people around the world, 38 thousand of
them right here in Illinois.
We could really
use some good news right now. But bringing good news to a suffering world means
we must get up and get moving. We must do the active work of teaching and
preaching, of writing and speaking, of meeting and marching, of stretching and
sharing our resources.
If we’re doing the
work we are called to, our feet (and hands and hearts and pocketbooks) are
probably going to be sore and dirty at the end of most days. Is it any wonder
that in ancient cultures, guests were welcomed to a home with foot washing?
When we’re going out into the world to do what we are called to do, sore and
dirty feet are part of the package.
So the writer of those
ancient words—“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring
good news” —was most certainly not picturing a person coming fresh from a
pedicure. They were picturing the rough, worn, tired feet of those had taken on
a long and difficult journey, proclaiming peace, good tidings, salvation, and
the reign of God to a people who had suffered captivity and exile.
May we be such
proclaimers today.
I
was wrestling with some of the same stuff. So much so that I roused from a sound
sleep with this short poem mostly formed. I rushed to scribble it down before it
evaporated and have tinkered with it for the last few days.
Like
many of the verses I have shared in worship over the years, this one will stretch
the bounds of what is in good taste for church. I think of it as a challenge to complacency.
On
Beauty in a Difficult Time
For
Tree of Life UU Service
May
8, 2022
Lilacs in a morning dew,
the
memory of cupable breast
gently
rising,
a
vista of a glacial lake
shimmering
among golden aspen.
Loving easy beauty isn’t hard.
It
delights and refreshes
and
even comforts us in revelry
like
the Rose in the Wintertime
in
that old hymn.
Hard beauty is something else—
a
fallen oak twisted and shattered
in morning
fog,
the smoldering
ruins
of a bombed out city,
a naked woman kneeling and
face down on the floor
bled out and cold.
What beauty in these facts before us?
Truth is not beauty
nor beauty
truth,
Mr.
Keats.
—Patrick Murfin
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