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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 2, 2012
As we come together for the start of First UU’s program year, each of us brings to the service a small container of water from a place that refreshed our spirits this summer. We pour our waters together in a common bowl as we mingle our spirits in a common effort to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.
Reading: Drops of God
Tess Baumberger
God, God is water sleeping
in high-piled clouds.
She is gentle drink of rain,
pooling lake, rounding pond,
angry flooding river.
She is frothy horse-maned geyser.
She is glacier on mountains and polar ice cap,
and breath-taking crystalline ideas of snowflakes.
She is frost-dance on trees.
And we, we are drops of God,
her tears of joy or sorrow,
ice crystals
and raindrops
in the ocean of her.
God, God is air wallowing
all about us,
She is thin blue atmosphere embracing
our planet, gentle breeze.
She is wind and fiercesome gale
centrifugal force of tornado and hurricane,
flurry of duststorm.
She is breath, spirit, life.
She is thought, intellect, vision and voice.
And we, we are breaths of God,
steady and soft,
changeable and destructive.
We are her laughter and her sighs,
atomic movements,
(sardines schooling)
in the firmament of her.
God, God is fire burning,
day and night.
She is sting of passion,
blinking candle,
heat that cooks our food.
She is fury forest fire
and flow of lava which destroys and creates, transforms.
She is home fire and house fire.
She is giving light of sun and
solemn mirror-face of moon,
and tiny hopes of stars.
And we, we are little licking flames
flickering in her heart,
in the conflagratory furnace of her.
God, God is power of earth,
in and under us.
She is steady, staying,
fertile loam, body, matter, tree.
She is crumbling limestone and shifting sand,
multi-colored marble.
She is rugged boulder and water-smoothed agate,
she is gold and diamond, gemstone.
She is tectonic plates and their motion,
mountains rising over us,
rumble-snap of earthquake,
tantrum of volcano.
She is turning of our day,
root of being.
And we, we are pebbles
and sand grains,
and tiny landmarks,
in the endless terrain of her.
God, God is journal of time marching
through eternity.
She is waking of seasons, phases of moon,
movements of stars.
She is grandmother, mother, daughter.
She is transcending spiral of ages
whose every turn encompasses the rest,
history a mere babe balanced on her hip.
She is spinning of universes
and ancestress of infinence.
She is memory, she is presence, she is dream.
And we, we are brief instants,
intersections, nanoseconds,
flashing gold-hoped moments in the eons of her.
God, God is.
And we, we are.
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