Sunday Service of First Parish Chelmsford
Here going like Still spe Understand I hope no one minds but I’m not ringing the bell I I don’t have the I don’t have the strength I had to have somebody help me the last time I did it okay all right sorry about the bag you e e e e e ch e for e e true
Good morning good morning thank you all for attending here in person or online on this Christmas Eve morning welcome to First Parish Unitarian Universalist of chelsford I’m Reverend Ellen Spiro we’re a covenantal community gathered for worship Mutual care Faith formation and service to the common good I’d like to extend a special
Welcome to anyone visiting us from the first time and I hope that you will join us there is social hour today both online and downstairs in the vest if you you need a hearing devic Braille or large print himels or have questions that need answering please see
Aggie who is serving as our Usher this morning couple of quick reminders wearing a mask uh is optional but the back three pews are for folks who are wearing them who need to wear them for um their own care their own health or well-being or those they love um so
Please if you sit in those pews wear a mask I have a couple of additional announcements or just one actually we do have our uh traditional Christmas Eve services this evening our wonderful crazy pageant will be at 5:00 and 7:30 will be our lessons and carols with our Senior Choir and our meeting
House ringers and I hear that there are also some other musicians involved so it should be a lot of fun are you ready I invite us if you would like to turn around and wave to the camera and say hello and come on in if you’re here it’s fine we need
People to wave so now you have to wave now that you’re here um and as you can see in for our service this morning um um we’re a skeleton crew um Christopher and Dolores because they have to work this this evening or not here this
Morning so we are going to be singing AC capella or as someone said to me this morning you can listen to others singing Acappella if you wish um but it should be a delightful and short service and I really appreciate you being here this morning so with all that in mind I am
Going going to Center us with our chalice lighting and if there’s anybody waiting in the Wings come on in the Wonder all around us by the Reverend Scott Taylor think Friends of the sky of the stars that dance like fireworks overhead think of the trees budding or be and the
Rivers and rains all are a part of this living breathing Earth that makes our living and breathing possible think too and look at the faces that surround you what a wonder it is that we don’t have to travel this world alone all of it is a miracle all of it is Mystery all
Of it deserves our all and so may this light we now Kindle may this light we now Kindle and this time we now share illuminate the astonishing preciousness of it all not only is it Christmas Eve but because it’s fallen on a Sunday it is also the last Sunday of
Advent and so we’ve been lighting our Advent wreath we did the first candle for Joy the second candle for Hope and the third Candle for Peace or something like that and our last candle that we light today is for love because of course the it’s the heart of the Christmas story
Which is the birth of love divine love in the world so for Joy for hope for peace and for love may they all come into being and now if you would join with me in singing there is more love somewhere it’s number 95 in the Himel if you need the words
The gray Himel if you need the words it’s G to be me so hang in okay Mora Francis some of you I know okay there is more there is more love I’m going to keep till I find it there is one more time for good luck there is more love Somewhere there is Your Love somewhere I’m going to keep on till I find it is more good morning morning I’m Amy Hughes um one of the lines in our covenant before I read the Covenant is I want to talk about something um and Ellen gave me the okay on
This one of the um lines of our covenant is bearing witness through service to Justice and peace um last month I was at a l litter crew cleanup and was chatting with State Rep Vanna Howard who was one of our regular volunteers and she was telling
Me about a period product drive that she was organizing in January at middle sex Community College in L I was very intrigued by this and said tell me more she told me she was collecting period products like pads tampons and underwear that would be distributed to various organizations across L while speaking
With rep Howard I learned that there are folks who fall in the low income Zone who often can’t afford to purchase the products that they need for their period so they stay home from work or school this means that there’s a possibility that they are missing 20 plus days of
School Andor work a year this blew my mind because it just wasn’t something I ever considered and honestly how many of us ever have then I started thinking about how this just perpetuates the cycle of poverty and homelessness and unemployment I immediately jumped on board and told her that I wanted to help
At the collection and started thinking about what I could do to collect items I shared her post on social media set up a collection box at work and applied for and received a faith in action Grant I literally bald my eyes out when I heard back from Dave caffeine that Not
Only was my request granted but that they gave me more than I asked for I found this out on my birthday and honestly it was the best gift I received I’ve been shopping around and I have a plan to get the most bang for my buck
But I know the need is greater than I can fill so I’m reaching out to my church community and asking you to pick up a box of pads or tampons or a pair of underwear the next time you shop and bring with you to church next Sunday
I’ll bring whatever I collect to the drive on the 6th I know there’s a lot of ask this time of year and appreciate anything that you bring to me an event like this is a living breathing example of living our first principle the inherent worth and
Dignity of every person such a small act for most of us can be a game Cher for someone else because how do you live with dignity and have selfworth when you’re in constant fear of having an accident because you weren’t fully equipped for your period if you have any
Questions or want to chat about this I’ll be downstairs at Coffee hour and now if you will join me in saying our covenant I’m not going to do it in Spanish because I struggle with speaking English half the time and I won’t put you through that we the members of First Parish of
Chelsford Covenant together to sustain and strengthen our Beloved Community by honoring and celebrating the spirit of Life nurturing All Souls in our search for truth and the sacred caring and being present to one another in our Joys and Sorrows bearing witness through service to Justice and peace and being
Good stewards of our congregation Our Heritage unarian Universalist principles and our Earth thank you Amy and thank you for doing that I had never thought of that either and I can see how it is a problem as some of you know my mom and dad moved uh to a smaller house and had
To clean out the house that they had lived in the house I grew up in um they lived there for 59 years one of the things my mother found was this article that she saved from the New York uh that I thought and she gave it to me
She said I think this would be a wonderful for all ages and I think it is it’s called the nine days of Tom and Jack I’m Catholic it’s by Michael Kelly I’m Catholic and my wife is Jewish so in our house we celebrate BR Hanukkah and Christmas which our sons Tom and Jack
Regard as an excellent thing people sometimes ask me if it is hard to raise children in respect and love for two great faiths who have some slight doctrinal disagreement between them and I say not if you give them presents every day for eight days of Hanukkah and for Christmas the more Gods
The merrier is Tom and Jack’s strong belief like other parents we try not to let the materialism get out of hand and to keep the focus on the sacred this year for the first day of Hanukkah we gave Tom age five a realistic detachable revolving red police Cruiser roof
Light so that he may follow the ancient Jewish practice of impersonating a State Trooper he may uh he received the gift with the appropriate reverence we gave Jack Age Two some Silly Putty he received the gift in his hair and now he is in fine shape to play the role in the
Christmas Pageant of the wondering child with the bald spot actually Jack has not been cast in The Pageant Tom has though he has a walk-on in the pageant staged by our local Unitarian Church there was a rehearsal the other Sunday after the service which featured the lighting of a manora during which
Apologies were offered to anyone who might take offense at lighting before Sun down followed by the traditional singing of the great Christian hymn omitt tree during which the faithful paraded around a tree that was decked in fact with mittens a Unitarian pageant turns out to be very different from a Roman Catholic
One in Tom’s pageant Jesus Christ is celebrated as a very special person and a great Rabbi and an all-around asset to the community the son of God God debate which has proved so regrettably contentious over the years is not mentioned no doubt this is all to the good there is too much disputation
Around Christmas anyway one growing issue is the white versus colored lights debate like all matters of taste this is also a matter of class white lights are high class colored lights are somewhat less so white lights make the statement that one is a refined sort who appreciates that less is more and who
Celebrates Christmas and life in general in such a fashion as that one would not be absolutely mortified if Martha Stewart dropped in unexpectedly for tea colored lights make the statement that one is the sort of person who believes that Christmas is not Christmas without an electric sled and reindeer on
The lawn an electric Santa on the roof an electric Frost osty on the front gate and an electric very special person in a Manger on the porch most of the houses in my neighborhood are white ligh houses and I have to admit they’re lovely but I was
Raised in a colored light family and I’m raising Tom and Jack to be colored light men too they do not take a lot of convincing on this we got up the first string of lights the first three string of our lights the weekend before before last and another the last two weekends at
Which time we threw out the rotted Halloween pumpkin I might have gotten more lights up by now except that the remaining three strings are not working to fix them you have to go through and find the burned out bulb and replace it and there are lots of bulbs in a string and the
Whole Enterprise is one of the things that leads Daddy to point out that this is really the sort of job that Mommy does better and Mommy claims that she doesn’t know how to do it because she wasn’t raised in a colored light family this is a copout and Unworthy of
Her still I am confident we will get all the lights up by New Year’s and all down by Easter in my family it was considered poor form to leave the lights up past e Easter it suggested shiftlessness one elderly woman in our neighborhood did leave her lights up and
Also her tree and her electric Santa all year round but she was considered a special case and no one held it against her this may have been because everyone back then was a colored light person colored lighters are more relaxed about that sort of thing than white lighters
But that was judgmental wasn’t it I should not be judgmental I learned that from the Unitarian the unitarians colored lights aren’t any better than what colored lighters aren’t any better than white lighters we are all very special persons very thanks Mom so you’re just getting my family Christmas today sorry so
This this is the angel that sits a top our Christmas tree my dad made it for me I think when I was 2 or 3 years old and my mom made me a red dress out of the same material so I matched my angel I obviously outgrew the
Dress but I’ve never outgrown the angel she is a reminder of the enchantment I felt around Christmas as a child I’m just going to put her here so I’m not looking down I love all the preparations and traditions around Christmas the decorating the tree getting out the familiar ornaments that I’ve collected
We’ve collected over the years with their stories we have the Polish stars that my mom painstakingly made with sparkly paper and toothpicks they’re all you know I I should have brought one because they’re amazing the delicate eggshell ornaments that my dad painted you blow out the eggs and then you the
Shells and then you paint the shells the ones my aunt brought back from her travels around the world what my mother called The Grateful patient ornaments made by my dad’s pediatric patients the many dog ornaments that accumulated over the years and the clumsy and slightly misshapen ones that I and my sister made
In Nursery School at kindergarten and had proudly given to our parents the very special string of of snowball lights from Sears and as you probably know if you know me in my family there’s baking lots of baking cookies holiday breads candies and all the stories that went along with
Them like the year we put the pan of caramel in the snow to cool which it did way too quickly turning into an 8 by8 in weapon of solid butter and sugar my Aunt Kay if she was in the country would always come for the holidays and we had our Christmas dinner
And opened our presents on Christmas Eve because that is another Polish tradition until I ruined everything by becoming a minister and having to work on Christmas Eve and we would have the very not polish meal of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding as our close friends who joined us Magic and Peter were from
England I’ll be honest that my usual enjoyment of Christmas fell off a bit during the pandemic our two sons are now grown and it just wasn’t the same for them and Sam was deployed overseas for at least one of those the world felt like such a mess
And I felt pulled in so many directions that it was hard to get excited about Christmas we even skipped getting a tree last year it felt like too much work with everything else we had to do I’m in the midst of reading Katherine May’s new book enchantment Awakening a Wonder in an anxious
Age and in the opening chapter she described how I’m feeling the last decade has filled so many of us with a growing sense of unreality we we seem trapped in a grind of constant change without ever getting the chance to integrate it those rolling news cycle the chatter
On social media the way that our families have split along partisan lines it feels as though we have undergone undergone a having and then a quartering and now we are some kind of social Rubble if there is a spirit of this age it would look like fear
May goes on to say that overwhelmed by all of the above and unable to process it we are losing our senses of meaning and connection not just with one another but with the Earth and with the sacred specifically our meaning and our connection with one another and the Earth as embodiments of the
Sacred she writes something has been lost here vanished Beyond living memory AFF fluency in the experiences that have patterned Humanity since we began we have surrendered the rights of Passage that used to take us from birth to death and in doing so have rendered many parts of our experiences
Unspeakable we witness them anyway separately mutely in studied isolation from our friends and our neighbors who are doing the same centuries of knowledge lost in silence generally ations of Fellowship constantly surrounded by conversation we are nevertheless chronically lonely after I read that I wanted to tell Katherine come here come to First
Parish well I agree with her assessment of the age we are living in I find with all of you the things she says I find with all of you the things she says we lack attention and witness for for the rights of Passage that take us from
Birth to death and all the living in between generations of Fellowship Gathering here for that very work we know and hopefully we practice some of the things that help us counteract anxiety and fear of our current times lifting up practices like Amy generate like generosity gratitude Beauty Joy compassion and
Hope but may added another practice to our toolbox which I hadn’t thought about or had forgotten about enchantment she writes enchantment is Small Wonder magnified through meaning Fascination caught in the web of fable and memory it relies on small doses of awe almost homeopathic those quiet traces of
Fascination that are found only only when we look for them it is the sense that we are joined together in one continuous thread of existence with the elements constituting this Earth and that there is a potency trapped in this inter connection A tingle on the border of our perception it is the Forgotten
Seam in our geology The elusive particle that binds our unstable matter it’s the ability to sense magic in the every day to channel it through our minds and bodies and be sustained by it when I think about it Christmas at its heart is about enchantment wonders big and small that
Remind us that we are connected by Love by Hope by joy and by the possibilities of Peace reindeer fly through the air with a sled full of toys while s Santa somehow gets down the chimney despite his age and girth the Grinch’s heart grows three times this day while Ebenezer Scrooge’s
Soul is saved by the visitation of the three Christmas spirits and of course there is lonus who steps in under a single Spotlight to tell Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about the birth of a child who embodied a Divine and enchanting love this year we got a tree a real tree
Henry picked it out slightly off-kilter of course and thus perfect for us we brought down our box of ornaments that we had not pulled out for a couple of years and as we put them on the tree we remembered the set of fruit ornaments Josh and I received as a wedding
Gift the one a friend made the December that Sam was born The Joint Chiefs of Staff ornament that Josh received from his time working at the Pentagon because who wouldn’t want a Joint Chiefs of Staff ornament on your dream the obligatory dog ornaments as well as the awkward craft projects made
By Sam and Henry our newest ornament this year an ornament shaped like a perogi given to Henry by Carla a story for another time and of course the angel on top of it all she’s close to 60 now a little tattered and worn but still enchanting I think Merry Christmas
We’re not going to do an offeror um but if you feel inclined I’ll leave this here on the way out the treasure asked me To no he didn’t you can also donate online from home and I don’t have any Joys or Sorrows written in in our book today so I’m just going to invite us to take a moment to breathe to Center ourselves in our source of being our source
Of Hope and peace and joy and love of Wonder and awe and enchantment whether we find that within our own Souls the presence and care of one another and the beauty and rhythms of the creation that surrounds us in the Embrace of god or goddess or Divine mystery or some
Combination of all of these if there is a name you wish to speak aloud or in your own heart someone you are holding in your thoughts and prayers someone you are remembering this day I invite you to do so now Spirit of light and love on this day of memory and
Story light and music Gatherings and celebrations may we remember the deeper meaning and year of this season When Love Is Born to Live and walk among us present in each and every one of us in every root and branch and stone every stream and Mountain and Forest Every
Creature our world is full of Enchantment and Delight may we know that this day amen and blessed be we’re going to sing again Spirit of life it’s the words are in your order of service it’s also in the gry Himel one number 123 if you need the
Music and yes we’ll be AC capella again spir of Life come unto me sing in my heart all the stirs of Compass in the wind rise in the sea in The giving life the shape of jce Roots hold me close Wings Set Me Free Spirit of come to me come to me send us back out into the world with these words by need to penfold from lifting our voices no matter what they tell you let
It be about Joy let it be about the sacred selfs surviving no thriving shining its way to the knowledge within let it be about blooming the unfolding of the universe through you because the story of you be begins 15 billion years ago with the first flash of being Merry Christmas Happy New Year
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