Click right here Sunday shortly before 10 to join our next online service.
Join us for this First Sunday service, hosted by the Social and Environmental Action Committee. For the month of November, our Sunday offerings will be shared with The Root Social Justice Center. Our guest at this service will be Shela Linton, Program Director, who will tell us about the The Root’s work to grow equality, diversity, and social justice in our community.
“What Grows at the Root?”
Click right here Sunday shortly before 10:00 AM to join our online service.
Order of Service
Sunday, November 1, 2020
Gathering and Announcements
Prelude Allegretto from the 7th Symphony Ludwig van Beethoven
Peter Gibbons, viola; Eva Greene, piano
Chalice Lighting by Rev. Gretchen Haley
Freedom has a rhythm to it, a longing our bodies know without words, a movement away from everything small and scared, a waking up to possibility, healing backwards, and forwards. Even now, we are beginning again – unafraid of this much mercy, tenderness, pleasure we come to lean in, to learn the sound of liberation like the sound of our names receiving, and releasing. We come to be free for more than ourselves, to call love the greatest liberty, to sing of loyalty, courage, and kindness, to remember we are all doing the best we can. Despair hasn’t gotten us yet, nor overwhelm – Which is, a kind of miracle – surrounded as we are by this much beauty. Come, let us worship, together.
Opening Words
Hymn The Storm Is Passing Over Charles Albert Tindley (1905)
Dan Kasnitz, tenor; Eva Greene, piano. Produced by Dan Kasnitz
Poem “The Low Road” by Marge Piercy
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know you who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
Special Music: #338 We Would Be One
words by Samuel Wright; melody Finlandia (Sibelius)
sung by Eva Greene, Steve Squires, George Carvill
Story for All Ages : “A Is For Activist” by Innosanto Nagara
Offering Guest Speaker: “What’s Growing At The Root?”
Shela Linton, Program Director, The Root Social Justice Center
Offertory Un Dia de Noviembre (excerpt) Leo Brouwer
performed by Tatyana Ryzhkova
The Candles of Joy and Concern
Unison Affirmation
“Love is the spirit of this congregation and
service is its call. let this be our covenant:
to dwell together in peace,
to seek the truth in love,
and to help one another.”
Hymn Woyaya (We Keep Going) by Osibisa, musicians from Ghana & Nigeria
performed by Tangled Up in Blue (Yale undergraduate chorus)
Extinguishing the Chalice by Maureen Killoran
We extinguish this chalice flame,
daring to carry forward the vision of this free faith,
that freedom, reason and justice
will one day prevail in this nation and across the Earth.
Closing Circle Song
“Carry the flame of peace and love until we meet again.”
(sung 2 times)
Benediction
Conversation and Coffee Hour