1/3/21 Unfinished Business by Rev. Eric Meter

Welcome
Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year and welcome to the Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church in Racine, WI. We gather together this morning as best we can to restore in one another’s company a sense that we are anchored in hope at the start of the new year and during this season of slowly lengthening days.

Prelude Jesu, meiner Seelen Wonne (Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring) by J.S. Bach, Lynn Orlando and Anna Kojovic-Frodl

Chalice Lighting words by Gretchen Haley
It starts here
In this moment
In this breath
You feel rising
In your chest
This beat building between us
The healing, the hunger, the hope
The courage, the calling, the commitment
The drawing out
of a new day
It begins now
In the imagination
In this story we weave
together
this song we sing
this prayer
we bring into being
from our hearts
to our lips
from our hands
to our life
Our shared life
It starts here
With praise, and thanksgiving
Forgiveness, and this humble centering confession
that we could be wrong –
this promise
that we make –
to keep learning
to keep trying
to keep our sense
of humor
to keep close
this knowing
that we are all
in this
together
Come, let us begin,
Come, let us worship, together.
Our chalice is lit.

Music Morning Has Come by Jason Shelton, OBUUC Choir (Stuart Bard & Lynn Orlando)

 

Gesture of Friendship

 

Time for All Ages Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Children’s Blessing

Centering Words by Sara LaWall
Spirit of life and love, holy mystery How do we pray for hope?
How do we bow down or look up
or sit in silence or walk among the trees to make hope come alive,
when it feels so far beyond our grasp?
We breathe. We look within. We listen. We reach out.
We hold in the depths of our heart, that knowing
That hope is a gift we cannot destroy
It is the heartbeat always stirring within us
It is the imagination awakening to us to possibility
It is the unfolding of faith in action
May we hold on to hope
And carry it for one another
and for this broken and hurting world
May we be vessels of comfort and compassion
May we be vessels of peace and justice
May we be vessels of hope and healing
May love prevail.
In the name of all that is holy, we pray, Amen.
set up time of stillness and reflection

Time of Stillness and Reflection

Reading by Richard Gilbert Addison
In the midst of the whirling day,
In the hectic rush to be doing,
In the frantic pace of life,
Pause here for a moment.
Catch your breath;
Relax your body;
Loosen your grip on life.
Consider that our lives are always unfinished business;
Imagine that the picture of our being is never complete;
Allow your life to be a work in progress.
Do not hurry to mold the masterpiece;
Do not rush to finish the picture;
Do not be impatient to complete the drawing.
From beckoning birth to dawning death we are in process,
And always there is more to be done.
Do not let the incompleteness weigh on your spirit;
Do not despair that imperfection marks your every day;
Do not fear that we are still in the making.
Let us instead be grateful that the world is still to be created;
Let us give thanks that we can be more than we are;
Let us celebrate the power of the incomplete;
For life is always unfinished business.

Reflection by Rev. Eric Meter

Hymn #95 There is More Love Somewhere, Stuart Bard

Offering
The Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church is a community of generosity and abundance. Especially now, in this challenging time, your generosity is what keeps this community as vital as it is, a beacon of respectful engagement and faith in the power of love.

The Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church is a community of generosity and abundance. Especially now, in this challenging time, your generosity is what keeps this community as vital as it is, a beacon of respectful engagement and faith in the power of love.

Each month we share the generosity of our collection with a local partner. Our outreach partner for January is the Women’s Resource Center of Racine. It is Racine County’s only provider of emergency shelter and a variety of services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

For more information on how to donate to OBUUC and the Women’s Resource Center of Racine, please visit our church website, obuuc.org.

To tell us a bit more about the WRC and its services to both adults and children, here is the agency’s Executive Director, Pamala Handrow:

Please join me in being as generous as you can be. Together our gifts are multiplied and have a much greater impact than any could alone.

Offertory Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant by Maurice Ravel, Lynn Orlando and Anna Kojovic-Frodl

Benediction by Michael A Schuler
We have reached the end of this time
For the gathering of memory
And for letting the imagination play with future possibilities.
We have enjoyed magic moments and edified each other.
Shall it be concluded, then?
Or will this adventure, now commenced, continue?
Our separate paths converging, meeting, merging
In the unending quest for love more perfect,
The joyous struggle for meaning more sufficient and life more abundant.
Is this ending to be an ending,
Or merely prelude to new, more glorious beginnings?
I pose the question;
In your hearts lies the answer.

Postlude Sonatina by Carl Czerny, Lynn Orlando and Anna Kojovic-Frodl