Theme “Community”
Good News in Troubled Times
When chill winds seem mired with sorrow,
When the tired heart dreads tomorrow,
Still your hearth may trust its embers,
Still the mind can pause, remember…
Not all hope is lost in grieving,
Not all joys are past believing.
Though blue skies grow dim with warning,
Some view dawns, fair light adorning.
While fraught news may travel
Sacred Space
When we gather here together,
We create a sacred space.
By our purpose and our presence,
We make room for holy grace.
As we light our flaming chalice,
We remember those who blazed
Trails of love and paths of justice
Through our hist’ry’s darker days.
When we share our songs and stories,
Tears fall softer, joys
When the Christmas Star is Shining
When the Christmas star is shining
In the night sky overhead
And the city streets are silent
And the children safe in bed,
You may not see Santa passing
With his reindeer and his sleigh,
But a horde of willing helpers
Still prepare for Christmas day.
We are each a tiny fragment
Of the boundless world
You call us out of the singularity of our everyday world
Spirit of life, love, and community, you have called us into a world of the common and the shared.
In the concerns and worries, the need, and the want of our usual comings and goings we find it hard to stop and consider deeply what we are doing. In the hurry of a working day, in
Our Faith is…
In these turbulent times we stand together.
Our faith is a beacon to the lost and helpless.
Our faith is a bastion of hope to the hopeless.
Our faith is a place of unity through all the division.
Our faith is the warm embrace in the coldest days.
Our faith is the balm to soothe
Opening Words
Written to open the NELUM District Meeting 2024.
Let’s take a moment to bring ourselves present to our selves, one another and the work we are about to share in together on behalf of our communities.
Let us be grateful for the fellowship and companionship provided by this group and the knowledge that we do not work
Impatient to be away
A prayer to close a meeting
Impatient to be away now,
to move from the focussed space of this meeting
to the liminal spaces of transition and journey –
we have our minds on the business of leaving;
locating devices and gathering up notes
instead of dwelling in the moment
as we are reluctantly
reminded to pay lip
I am not here
A prayer to open a meeting
Although I’ve taken a seat at this meeting, I’m still thinking about what just happened in my journey to get here, so I’m not here…
I am not here
Instead I’m trying to remember which papers I have skipped and if it is going to be discovered, I’m trying to remember if