UU Cocoa Service 11/18/2O12: Reaching For Thanksgiving

**Pre-Service Music**
Rain Into Snow
Composed and Performed by William Coulter

**Introit**
Simple Gifts
Traditional Shaker, performed by The Mormon Tabernacle Choir

** Announcements **

Hello all.  For anyone who might not know, I am Stephanie Mesler.  I will be your guide and preacher this morning.  I am very grateful to see you all here today, especially those I have not seen before or have not seen in awhile.  Welcome to the Unitarian Universalist congregation of Cocoa.  

This service will be a little different than our usual format.  That is because, for better or worse, inspiration struck me Saturday morning.  You may or may not know that UU services can vary widely in content and format.  If you are not familiar with Unitarian Universalism ("UU"), a single service is not enough to experience the diversity of ideas and styles of interaction that UU churches have to offer.  Please come again.   You might also want to peruse the website of the Unitarian Universalist Association or that of this congregation.  After church I can share with you the urls for those sites if you like:  http://www.uucocoa.org/  http://www.uua.org   For those of you who attend here regularly, let me assure you we will share our joys and concerns, just not at the point in the service we usually do.  They will be a part of this week’s sermon.  The offering has also been temporarily relocated.  It will follow the sermon.  

If you have questions about this community or about getting more involved here, please hang around after church.  I am sure any number of folks, most specifically Paul Cummins, current president of this congregation,  would be willing to tell you how you might share your time and talents here.

Please, please consider joining us after the service for what is not always a light lunch.  It’s a chance to check in with old friends and reach out to new ones.  

Are there any other announcements?  


** Lighting the Chalice  and Opening words**

(the chalice is lighted and we join in saying the following)

Come to us all who are broken...
Come to us all who are laden...
Find strength here in safe and supportive community...
Know that this place can be your home...

Come to us in joy and in anguish...
Come to us in peace and in turmoil...
Let this light warm your heart and guide your mind...
Know that this place can be your home...

** The Word**

Good Girls’ ThanksGivings
by Stephanie Mesler

Good girls say thank you
in flowing longhand
on daintily painted note cards with violets in the corners,
cards kept on hand for giving thanks when thanks are
required.  
Good girls say thank you
for the effort
for the thought
for inclusion
absolution
restitution
They are the ones who write in gratitude journals because their God, Oprah, says they should
They write
and write
about the blessings in their lives
about how lucky they are to face each day smiling from the start
knowing God does not demand of them more than they can handle
Good girls know that suffering is good for the soul.
They thank God for opportunities to overcome
what hurts,
what rips at the seams,
what all but kills,
even that which does.
Good girls live each day behind fuchsia panes
waiting
for more reasons to say thank you.

The rest of us
send our thanks by email
resorting to telephone when the recipient of our gratitude is too ancient for the Net
We do not say thank you often,
never for something we were owed.
We know effort only counts in preschool
and absolution is mythology.
The rest of us persist in perpetual motion,
living lives of intense reality,
knowing that God and Oprah damn well do expect too much
and note cards are expensive.  

**The Sermon**

I think life turns out better when we are completely honest with ourselves and the people we love.  I know my writing comes out better when it tells the truth, even if the writing is fiction.  
I am also sure that one cannot move on to the next phase of a project without finishing the ones that came before and that its not possible to move forward in one’s life without assessing one’s past. With that in mind, I am taking advantage of this opportunity to publicly purge myself of some emotional gunk that needs purging.  I admit this is at least in part a selfish process, but I hope that if you walk through it with me this morning, you will benefit too.  

I told my partner a couple months ago that most of the bad things that have happened in my life have happened in autumn, my autumn, not calendar autumn.  I have always lived my life on an academic calendar, so fall starts when school starts, sometime around the last week in August, and ends Thanksgiving Day, because Thanksgiving Day marks the start of the holiday season and the holiday season is in winter, no matter what the calendar says.   

I have experienced my most painful losses in the autumn.  My best friend died in October; the first man I loved died in September.  So did the best cat I ever had.  I have given birth twice in Octobers.  My first child nearly died in the process and did die a few months later. My second was born hale and hearty and but I almost died making it happen.   It was autumn the first time I recall my father leaving my mother and me with no explanation and very few resources.   He returned a few months later penniless, and wanting to turn over a new leaf.   It was autumn again when my mother finally divorced him after he left us for what must have been the 10th or 12th time.   Many years later,  during another autumn, I learned my father is an even bigger monster than I always imagined him being.  That’s when I cut him off from me and my family for a number of years.  

I could tell you more of the crap things that have happened in the previous falls of my life but I’ll stop there and just suffice it to say I get really depressed in the autumn and it sucks.  

This fall has not been an easy one either.  I am having some health problems that scare me and the medical establishment can be less than responsive to patient needs.  (Isn’t it ironic that the very time one needs to be one’s own best advocate in the system is also the time when one is least up to the task?)  

I am also finding it very hard to connect socially in my new community.  Much as I love my work, it is very isolating.  I am lonely.  

In spite of that loneliness, I have again severed ties with my father, probably for the last time.  He is 86 and won’t likely live long enough for me to lose my resolve and give in to the sentimentality which has previously deceived me into believing even the most egregious of wrongs can be redeemed.  

Also this fall, I was hit pretty hard when someone I went to for support told me I was not deserving of his time, much less his support.  He was a complete stranger but holds a position of authority with some power to influence my life for the better.  He was someone who did not know me and based his impressions of me on appearances alone.  It should not have rattled me, but it did; it shook my confidence by stirring up a lot of pain that I thought was left behind along about 1990.  

This is the second Fall I have spent a thousand miles from my daughter.  Also the second autumn I have been separated from friends and community that used to be part of my daily life.  

This fall is a lot rougher than the last for a couple of reasons.  Partly its just that it feels a lot more real to me now than it did a year ago.  I am no longer basking in the glow of new experience and new love in an exotic environment.  Happy as I am to be where I am, building the life I am building, it is much more mundanely real to me now than it was a year ago. This new life does not have the analgesic qualities it did a year ago, the power to lessen the pain of separation from my child and the loss of a community that was good for me for most of the last 25 years.  Last year, the hurt throbbed some, like a dull headache; this year the pain is immobilizing.   

Oddly, this pain only increased when I went to Columbus last month and spent a few days with my daughter and other friends there.  I was reminded of the people and things I left behind.  Many of them I am glad to be rid of.  I do not grieve the loss of friends who turned out not to be friends when I made choices they couldn't understand, nor do I grieve grey winter days and miserable cold.  I am glad to be far from the scene of a marriage that imploded and a career that withered away.  

It shocked me when my daughter, then 13, made the choice to stay in Ohio when I decided to move south, but even in that early shock, I knew she was making a solid and reasonable choice for herself.  Now, she has settled into a life that does not require my physical presence, which is what I knew she would do, which is what I wanted her to do.

The real friends I have in Columbus are friends still and will be for many years to come.  I miss daily face-to-face community with them but realize that the times, they have changed; they changed before I ever left town and nothing can turn back the clock or rewrite the story I lived out in Columbus.  

So here I am, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, coming out of (I hope coming out of) my  season of depression.  I have been through this many times before, the sadness of my autumns morphing into the focused briskness of winter.  It is at this time of year I find myself able to breathe again, literally and figuratively.  

I ask you now to quietly consider your own autumns.  I don't mean the calendar season or even the autumn that coincides with the first part of the school year as mine does.  I mean your spiritual autumn.  Yours may not last as long as a season.  They may come in shorter waves that overtake you for periods of days or weeks at various times each year.  These periods may or may not be connected to historical events or with the rhythms of your own nature.  

Quietly now acknowledge your own seasons of depression.  Contemplate their origins and ask yourself what brings them to an end each time.  After a brief period of silence, I will give you the opportunity to share as you will on this topic.  If you would like to discuss the ways you come out of depression or the ways you experience joy,  save that for later in this service.  Now, a couple of moments to consider your seasons of depression.  

(Quiet Time)

Now is a time for sharing about your own seasons of depression.  We will use both a talking stick and a timer for this sharing.  No one is obligated to speak now but, if you are so inclined, please speak only when the talking stick is handed to you and limit your comments to three minutes or less if less works for you.  A timer will go off when two minutes have  passed to let you know your time is winding down.  I will pass the stick to my right.  You’re first, if you want to be.  

(Sharing)

And now the stick comes back around to me.  The title of this service is Reaching For Thanksgiving.  I called it that because every single year I come to this point when I am exhausted by weeks and weeks of glum and gloom.  I used to fight the glum and gloom,  by the way, sometimes with medication, often with therapy.  I found that no matter what I did the process of sinking into and rising out of sadness was going to happen and that, no matter what treatment I applied, it was gonna take a season to get through it.  Most importantly, I found that, even with no treatment at all, the season would pass and I would return to myself again.  

That, my friends, gives more hope than anything.  The old adage that This too shall pass is very true in the case of my depressions.  It is that knowledge that NOTHING is forever that allows me now to reach for Thanksgiving, to flex my mental, emotional and spiritual muscles and take hold of what is just within arm’s reach.  It is so close now I can smell it, the change of my seasons.  I can reach now for my future and know that it is mine to grasp.  A few days ago, I could not have done that; A month ago I had forgotten Thanksgiving would come and that I would eventually rise from the muck and be in charge again.  

This year, as every year, I am grateful for this transition, for the transformation that begins now and brings me eventually to a January where my energy and creativity will surge like a wave building from miles and miles offshore.  I will ride the wave for months during which I will be more than glad to be human and alive.  What I reach for is more than a change of season, more than reasons to be grateful as I sit at the Thanksgiving table; it is pure joy.

Last year was the first year Mike, my partner, saw me through my autumn.  I think it worried him, but maybe it did not frighten him as much as I had thought it might.  At the time I wrote a poem about what it was like to go through a depressive season in the presence of someone who has only known you to be joyful.  This is that poem.  I called it Bipolarity.  

BiPolarity
by Stephanie Mesler

You look at me like I am someone you have only just met,
not the woman you’ve screwed night after night and held softly til dawn.  .  
You think I have pulled a bait and switch,
but I never said I could be emotionally and spiritually static.
I never promised to remain as I was the day we met.
I warned you there is more than one of me.

You have known me through rose tinted pains,
swirling through life at 100 miles an hour, gusting wind made up of laughter, moxie and sex.
You have seen the me I like to be, the me they sometimes tell me is too much me,
but who seems to suit you just fine, the me who takes risks for love and adventure and freedom.
the me who gets things done.

Now I am another me, bluer tinted, prone to tears.
This me barely slogs on her knees from night to the next morning,
frightened, fighting just to look you in the eye.
This me is the one they tell me sucks too much air out of the room,
On the inside,  I am suffocating, gasping for my last breath, for visibility.  

This me does not hang around for long.
She will soon be gone, hibernating somewhere dark until it is again her season.  
I will be glad to see her go;  You may even hold open the door to let her out.
You will embrace my glowing self on her triumphant return.

But there will still be more than one of me.  
If I could, I would not banish my bluer me.  
It takes both dark and light to make a day,
both up and down to complete a pendulum’s swing,
both mes to balance my whole self.
They are my yin and my yang, each solid, each true,
both essential to a poet’s totality,
both requisite to loving you.  

So the question is not one of if but when.
When my soul is shaded again,
when I become again my tenebrous self,
will you know and love me as both my selves, as both my selves love you?


The reason I shared that poem today is because it was the first time in my life I have been able to address in writing the duality of depression and joy and how essential that duality is to making me me.  I am quite sure I would never have been a musician and would not now be a poet were there not two sides to my nature.  I am also sure that it takes both those sides to make me a good mom who understands and accepts her own child’s dual nature.  I think my partner knows he benefits from my joyful side, but maybe he does not realize yet that the depressions are what make the joy possible.  I think he sees their inevitability but may not realize that my joy cannot be born of even temperament.  Happiness, yes; contentment, yes; but Joy, no.  Joy requires the energy that comes from overcoming pain.  Joy requires the anguish that precedes it.  Some would take a pass on the joy if it allowed them to skip the anguish.  I can understand why, have even wished I could make that choice for myself.  But, as I said previously, I have learned that depression will come no matter what I do and so too the joy that follows.  I have learned to accept my nature and say a hearty thank you for the gift.  (Easy to say now, a few days before Thanksgiving.  It was not possible a few weeks ago.)

So today I am grateful for my pain and even more for the fact I can feel it lifting.  I am grateful to the people who walk by me as I sludge through the drudge every autumn, for the turn of my inner wheel, and for joy in being who I am, where I am and how I am.  Once again this season, I am grateful for the chance to spend another year just being me.  

We’ll pass the stick again now.  This time, I hope you will speak of your own joy.  And again, I am setting the timer for two minutes.  

(Sharing)

I hope you feel uplifted now, ready to enter the season ahead of us.  No matter what this last season has been for each of us, I am grateful for the winter ahead.  No matter what holidays we celebrate, I look forward to celebrating them together with open hearts and minds ready to learn from one another and support one another through life’s ups, downs, and in-betweens.  

** Offering **
A freewill offering is a sacrament of a free Church.
This fellowship is supported by the voluntary generosity of all who join with us.
There is an offering plate in the pool in front of us.
Please be generous in support of this UU fellowship.


** Musical Interlude **
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Theme
composed by Vince Guaraldi and performed by The Vince Guaraldi trio.  




**Extinguishing the chalice**

Please join me in saying the following:

We extinguish this light, but do not darken the world.
We extinguish this light so that we may return to the world, carrying with us the light of this loving fellowship wherever we go and in all we do.  

(The congregation joins in singing as the chalice is extinguished.)

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.  
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.  
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.  

**The Benediction**
Go, now,  in peace to love, light, and serve the world!

Supplies needed for this service
laptop
speakers
talking stick
timer
bulletins
.  

Monday Morning Haiku Throw-down! I'll show you mine, then you show me yours!

            

Glare of light reflects;

Grey cotton sky grasps dank ground;

      Thunder booms distant...

Please post your own Monday haiku in the comments below.  

UUtopia Service: November 1, 2012, Samhain/All Saints Remembrance Ritual

11/1/12 UUtopia

UUtopia Service:  November 1, 2012, Samhain/All Saints Remembrance Ritual


**Pre-Service Music**

In the pond before us, there are floating candles. Please take a moment now to click on one and label it with the name of someone who has died and whom you would like us to remember tonight.  

Three Intimate Elegies and Fugues
Composed and performed by Zita Carno

I Sing A Song For The Saints of God
composed by Lesbia Scott, performed by John Keys

My Father;s Eyes
Composed and performed by Eric Clapton

For All the Saints (Sine Nomine)
composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, performed by The Robert Shaw Chorale


** Announcements **

An order of service is available in notecard form by saying “oos” in local chat.  You can get a notecard for the service or you can just follow along in local.  

I am Freda Frostbite in Second Life, Stephanie Mesler in the solid world.  I will be your guide and celebrant for tonight’s service.  

Music for tonight’s service will be streamed in audio.   The words of the service will be spoken in SL voice and scrolled out in text.  

You will need to have voice and audio enabled in your SL browser and on your computer in order to hear what is going on.  

If you are unable to hear audio in SL, the spoken portions of the service will continue to appear before you in local, as they are now.  

Welcome to the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Second Life, FUUCSL as some of us affectionately call it.  

To visitors, a special welcome.  We are thrilled to have you with us tonight.  

Please feel free to IM any of the congregants in attendance here, if you are in need of assistance in following the service or if you would like more information about UUtopia, Unitarian Universalism, or Second Life.   

If you are not familiar with Unitarian Universalism ("UU"), a single service is not enough
to experience the diversity of ideas and styles of interaction that we offer,
either here in SL or in 1L.  Please come again.

You might also wish to look at UUA.org. or consider joining the group
Unitarian Universalists of SL to receive regular announcements.

Also please check out fuucsl.org, our web site.  There you will find an up-to-date calendar of events in the region as well as other useful information.

We are always looking for members of our community who wish to get more involved.

If you would like to try your hand at leading a service, please contact
a member of the Leadership Group – their names are available in the notecard dispenser
in the welcome area.

Please join us after the service for coffee, conversation, and dancing – a venerable UU tradition!  

In the pond before us, there are floating candles. Please take a moment now to click on one and label it with the name of someone who has died and whom you would like us to remember tonight.  

Are there any other announcements?

My own announcement is that we will have two special literary performances in The Garden this coming week.  

At 5pm on Monday, Caledonia Skytower, a professional storyteller and voice actor in 1L (she is the voice of many, many audio books)

and the operator of Stories Unlimited, Bard on the Beach and BooFest in SL, will present an hour of stories.  If you have never heard Caledonia perform, you won’t want to miss this!  

And on Wednesday at noon, our very own Mithrilweaver will be performing his own blend of poetry, song and drama.  

Mithrilweaver is an actor in 1L who performs at a wide variety of Literary events in SL.  You won't want to miss him either!


**The Temple Bell Sounds**

(A bell is rung, calling this far-flung community together.)


** Lighting the Chalice  and Opening words**

(the chalice is lighted and we join in saying the following)

Come to us all who are broken...
Come to us all who are laden...
Find strength here in safe and supportive community...
Know that this place can be your home...

Come to us in joy and in anguish...
Come to us in peace and in turmoil...
Let this light warm your heart and guide your mind...
Know that this place can be your home...


** Joys and Concerns **

Now let us prepare our hearts to receive the joys and concerns,
hopes and sorrows, fears and dreams of those present here tonight.

If there is something that has recently happened to you, happy or sad,
and you would like to share it with us, now is the time.

We invite you to share your joys and concerns in local chat, when you are ready.


**The Word**

Samhain in Alma, 2010
by Stephanie Mesler
(from the book, Soul Hill Lullabies)

I do not answer the ratatatat of
Children clustered on the door stoop
masked and starved
gluttonous gamins out for feast and fright
the chance to terrify an old woman,
rarely seen, turned into legendary abomination
my neighbors’ imaginations lusty and industrious

Beggars knock til an hour past sunset
then the sound of sneaking feet and feel of prying eyes
are replaced by an Autumn wind that sweeps down the Hill, calling me home
Alma is insistent: you must come.  
At my closet, I consider shocking my clan
arriving swathed in purple lace and carrying a skull in one hand
For my peers, I just might deck out in a rainbow of silk and let my hair loose,
put a diamond in my belly button and dance a bolero.
My folk expect their Gran

In grey cotton and wool,
on old lady shoes,
I start the trek
up
and winding
not by the road, where others answering Alma
would honk, offering rides to the matriarch.
Ninety-eight and the last one standing of the century old aughts,
I use my feet to keep my spine and prove my fire
The shawl warms.
A canvas bag carries treasures,
gifts for the gathered,
an offering to the turning wheel.

Bonfire at the crest
great grand-daughter’s cat looks me in the eye
I am cheeky to look him straight back
Others park below the ridge
Carrying bowls and bottles,
fiddles and harps,
they are slow to ascend,
preceded by their dogs
all cantering toward the smell of roasting pig.

The gathering is quickened by mulberry wine
pace driven by the tapping of feet
young Walt Gimlin’s banjo leading a merry twirl
Eyes lit by moon and magic,
girls test their skill as wantons
each one slipping slyly away into the forest
boys only too pleased to play night guide
under a starry blanket
as the earth starts its recess.

Against a wooden crate,
on a quilt so old as to make suitable ground cover
(could even be one pieced myself at the firemen’s grange
in a decade before wars were fought for oil),
the cat curls up against my old woman’s hip,
thick stockinged legs tucked under my skirt.

Bag opened when the moon is high,
The pipe, polished since last gathering,
adds musk
The people of Alma spin through its haze,
laughter covering the sound of falling leaves.
No one notices the earth making its final turn to winter.
It happens silently,
the crisping of air
the shortening of days.
Seemingly sudden,
a sybaritic repose, months in the earning.  

Great Grand-daughter’s cat descends the mountain
paws padding over fallen acorns, tail high,
keeps haughty distance between us.  
At my kitchen door,
he feigns disinterest until the bowl appears,
dips his whiskers in milk.


In the porch rocker, I do not sleep
but linger more permanently
drawn past Samhein into wintertide
barefoot in silks, I satisfy my god.
Great grand-daughter’s cat purrs til my body cools








**Preamble to The Ritual**

Samhain was yesterday.  That is the ancient celtic harvest holiday still celebrated by pagans around the world.  

It represents the end of autumn, the start of winter.  On Samhain, Persephone, archetypical ingenue, goes underground to Hades leaving her mother, Demeter, bereft.  

Demeter believes her daughter lost to her when she goes into the underworld.  She mourns the loss of her only child.  

While Demeter stands around wringing her hands and cursing death, Hecate, triune goddess of crossroads, light, and the moon,

reminds us that the wheel of life keeps on turning, that there is no ending that is not also a beginning.  Hecate is maiden, mother, and crone all in one.  

On Samhain the whole world becomes a crone, entering a time of rest and reflection;

people of the Earth open themselves to the wisdom of Hecate, she who proves that with age comes not just wisdom but a beauty far deeper than that of the sweet young thing, Persephone.  

Yesterday was also Halloween, that feast of overabundance that grew from the older harvest celebrations.  

On Halloween, we gorge on sweets, dare to tempt the Gods by dressing up as creatures of the night, tease our friends and families with taunts and demands for sweet treats.  

In the seventh century, Pope Boniface the IV, designated November 1 as All Saints’ Day.  

This was an attempt to blend the old ways with the ways of the relatively new Roman Catholic Church.  Roman Catholics still celebrate the day with tributes to the martyrs and saints.  

Some other religions, most being offshoots of early Catholicism, claim to be the lower-case c kind of catholic, that meaning universal.  This includes Unitarian Universalists.  

For us, all persons are considered everyday saints; no miracles or self-sacrifice required.  

On this day, we and myriad varieties of Christians celebrate the lives of all  who have died, saintly or not, with ritual, prayer and music.  

For most of us, this is still called All Saints Day; in Mexico, this is the Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos.  

Tonight we will participate in a UU sort of All Saints Celebration.  In the pond before us, there are floating candles.

If you have not already done so, please take a moment now to click on one and label it with the name of someone who has died and whom you would like to remember tonight.  






**The Ritual Begins with The Calling**


From our separate rooms around the world, we gather in community.

People of the North, join the enduring circle

People of the East, join the enduring circle

People of the South, join the enduring circle

People of the West, join the enduring circle

Know that We are One.


** Offering **

A freewill offering is a sacrament of a free Church.
This fellowship is supported by the voluntary generosity of all who join with us.

There is an offering plate in the pool in front of us.
Please be generous in support of this UU fellowship.


** Musical Interlude **

Turn, Turn, Turn
Composed by Pete Seger, Performed by The Byrds


**Invocation**


Turn, Turn, Turn!  The earth turns and us with it.  In this cooling season, we follow nature into its season of rest.  Now is the time for gazing back and dreaming forward.  

We call now to those who have come and gone before.  

Be among us and around us, above us and below.  

Surround us with memory and fill us with your truth.



On this first night after harvest, we remember those who have preceded and left us behind.  

We remember them with clear eyes as they really were.  In the dimming autumn light, we see those who have passed.



**The Sharing**

Memories are not always pretty.  The people we have lost were not always pleasant.  

Here, in the safety of this circle, we will speak of them honestly, owning the truth of who they were in our lives.  

Please take a moment now to remember in local chat those who have died.  Share as much or as little as you like.  



**Time for Reflection**

Tears In Heaven
Composed and Performed by Eric Clapton

(For a brief time, voice and text are quiet as each of us finds that inner space where memory and reflection flow unhindered.)




**The Temple Bell Sounds**

(A bell rings a second time calling us from our silence.)


**Yana Prayer**

“When I am dead
Cry for me a little
Think of me sometimes
But not too much.

Think of me now and again
As I was in life.
At some moments it's pleasant to recall
But not for long.

Leave me in peace
And I shall leave you in peace
While you live
Let your thoughts be with the living.”

anonymous


**Extinguishing the chalice**

We extinguish this light, but do not darken the world.
We extinguish this light so that we may return to the world, carrying with us the light of this loving fellowship wherever we go and in all we do.  
Let us bring a light of hope, clarity, and love to the world beyond this virtual one.


**The Benediction**
Go, now,  in peace to love, light,  and serve the world.  


**Music and Dancing!!**

Cherokee Morning Song
Performed by Robbie Robertson and friends on tour

Turn, Turn, Turn
Composed by Pete Seger, Performed by by Wilson Phillips