Theme “Hope”
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
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
Meditation for Spring
Spring is the season of renewal and promise and hope.
In the natural world outside our doors,
the annual frenzy of growth is evident all around us –
in the woods, and the parks, and the gardens,
alongside the paths our feet walk,
the clean white blossom of blackthorn and hawthorn in the hedgerows,
the
Rivington chalice words
These are Chalice Words that I wrote a long time ago and they are an attempt to encapsulate the joy of being Unitarian, they are easily adjusted to suit an occasion.
We light our chalice flame, it is our Unitarian symbol of Freedom, Hope and Love. Freedom to express our many and varied beliefs and ways
Hope
This poem first appeared in the BUF News, June 2023. The author, Iris Jubb, was 11 years old when she wrote it, making her our youngest Worship Words author so far.
Hope is a sea birds eyes, cold and lost
Hope is a heartbroken love
High in the heavens above
Hope is the snow and
Waiting to be discovered
Spirit of Love that abides in all things,
We give thanks for beauty and grace unnoticed,
which lie like un-opened love letters *
strewn throughout our days…
awaiting a response.
May we be mindful of the prodigious gifts
that come our way.
Grant us the insight to see with fresh
Lead me from Death to Life, from Falsehood to Truth
There are dark and painful times
when I know a dying inside,
a dying of the soul perhaps,
when all my spiritual energy is drained,
when I have nothing left to give.
I need to find the strength
to move from these times
to choose life, to affirm life,
to begin to feel
once again fully