SUNDAY, February 23, 2025: "The salvation of man is through love and in love.” - Viktor Frankl
TODAY we celebrate our kinship which begins with a greeting at 3:45 PM Pacific Time followed by our liturgy at 4:00 and then a potluck.
We will meet face-to-face in our new home at Christ Church United Methodist:
1717 Yulupa Ave Santa Rosa, CA 95405
Opening Song: We Are The World, Clarksville Elementary Students
https://youtu.be/J7711tVOzJQ
Linda Welcoming: February is the month of love, a good time to consciously review what touches our hearts.
Reflections:
Jane Riley
The subject tonight is Love
And for tomorrow night as well,
As a matter of fact,
I know of no better topic
For us to discuss
Until we all Die!
Hafez
Kay: Last time we met, Marcie and Mary offered the gospel of John; The wedding of Cana, when Jesus converted water into wine at the bequest of his mother. We reflected on how God modeled for us, to love more open-heartedly transforming our lives to change the world. We strive to love more perfectly, to find the ties that bind us and our common humanity within each of us.
Today’s liturgy is zeroing in on agape, the highest form of love, selfless, unconditional love and service. The more I walk down this path as a seeker, a student of spirituality the more I KNOW that most religions have more in common than differences. In the spirit of deep ecumenism, the reflections that follow are quotes about agape from many of those religions.
In her Book, Love Without Reason, Marci Shimoff defines many religions.
Victoria: “In Christianity, the term that’s used for the highest imperious form of love is agape, a word borrowed from the Greeks. In the New Testament agape is the love that God has for man, and that commands us to have for each other. It is selfless, generous, and healing. The foundation for a good life.”
Ed: When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door that leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu – Muslim – Christian – Jewish – Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of St. John: "Let us love one another; for love is God, and everyone that loves us is born of God and knoweth God.” Martin Luther King Jr’s address to an anti-war group
Victoria: “In Hebrew, the word for love is ahavah, and for love for no reason, ahavat chinam, love we show to a fellow human being without regard to our own interest, simply because we are human and we see the humanity of another.”
Ed: To quote Viktor Frankl, Holocaust Survivor, “The truth—that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
Victoria: The Buddhist called this love, Metta or loving kindness, love that makes one want to help and to give of oneself for the welfare and well-being of humanity. They consider this the ultimate source of strength and power.
Ed: Thich Nhat Hanh says, ‘Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself—if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself—it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it’s clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice.’
Victoria: Hinduism uses the sand script phrase Parama prema, supreme, love, describes a state of love that is full, with no conditions, and it brings a person to the truth of life.
Ed: Atharvaveda text says, ‘Beyond the reach of Wind or Fire, the Sun or the Moon, you, O Love, are the eldest of all, altogether mighty. To you we pay homage ‘
Victoria: And in the sect of Islam called Sufism, the word Ishq expresses this quality of unconditional and divine love.
Ed: Rumi says, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” “I belong to no religion. My religion is love. My heart is my temple.”
Victoria: From the Ojibwa Tribe:
Teach us love, compassion, and honor that we may heal the earth and heal each other.
Black Elk believed that love is a way to create a better world, and that we should look within our own hearts to connect with that love.
Ed: What is present in these traditions is the certainty that God is love and each of us has access to that love inside.
There are so many other religions and most of them have love as their main message.
Response Song: In Christ There is No East or West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DumvCAO-rP8
Kay: According to a recent PEW survey over 85% of the world’s population identify with a religion. If only that percentage would walk the principle of love as prescribed by their chosen religion….to quote Louis Armstrong “What a Wonderful World it would be!
Linda Shared Homily: Valerie Kaur, a Sikh activist, posted on her webpage, “Some days will be so deadly, you will taste the ash in your mouth. Your sacred task will be to lift your gaze and realize that you are not alone in the dark. There are more of us than ever before – millions of us longing for a world of love and liberation. Imagine we are together in the dark.”
What do you need to do, to expand your footprint of love?
Are there preconceived judgments you believe may be holding you back from loving fully?
How do we inch our way out to the margins to stand with those who carry unbearable burdens?
Have you had an experience when you overcame fear or judgement allowing you to reach out to another person?
Song: One Foot/Lead with Love. Melanie DeMore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJEFXpS_xPs
Sacrament of Love:
Jim Keck: “That devotee who looks upon friend and foe with equal regard, who is not buoyed up by praise nor cast down by blame, alike in heat and cold, pleasure and pain, free from selfish attachments, the same in honor and dishonor, quiet, ever full, in harmony everywhere, firm in faith — such a one is dear to me.”
Bhagavad Gita, 12:18
Who shall you bring to the table?
Kay: So that everyone has time to speak tonight, I encourage us to say only the name of someone or something we’d like to bring to our hearts and later at our meal we can share the details should we desire to do so.
Linda, Bread and wine:
O Spirit of God You move among us as God’s breath, as natural and rhythmic as our own. We find you in the ten thousand things of creation.”
We remember Jesus, who challenges us to set ourselves free: free from images and ideas and religious practices that bind us into fear and a false sense of separation from the Spirit of all Life.
We, too, are blessed in the power of that same Spirit, which we now invoke upon all gathered here, to celebrate our gifts of bread and wine.
We remember the night before he died, when he took bread, broke the bread and shared it with his friends asking them to remember his total surrender to the Spirit of Life….and Love and his enduring love for each of them saying:
All: This is my body which is being given up for you.
Knowing his life was to be poured out, Jesus shared the cup of wine in a spirit of kinship with his friends, saying:
All: This is the cup of my love, poured out for all of you so you may know the Spirit. Do this in memory of me.
Linda: Let us in the room and on Zoom, share our table together.
Communion Song: Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) – George Harrison
https://youtu.be/yX3DJohuMBE?si=KnSb0vA9NHXW89Yu
Closing prayer: the Buddhist Metta/Maitri
Reflection: Jeanine
May I be at peace
May my heart remain open
May I awaken to my own true nature
May I be healed
May I be a source of healing for others.
Closing Song:
We Are The World, Clarksville Elementary students
https://youtu.be/J7711tVOzJQ
Announcements: Kay
We know God in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. ~ Dorothy Day
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