Keep On Keeping On

A service titled ‘Keep On Keeping On, led by Dr. Patricia Brewerton, with readings given by Brian Ellis, Hannah King, and David Brewerton, and music from Benjie del Rosario and Andrew Robinson.

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SPEAKER_04 1:31

We gather today with the sacred intention to declare that justice is our prayer. We affirm that beloved community is possible, not here, not quite yet. The seeds have been planted time and again, and we remember all those who went before us and who made beloved community a dream that could be realized. Justice is our prayer. May our time together continue to water the budding trees of our diverse interdependence. May it give air and nourishment to the parts of our collective spirits that need to grow and thrive, that embrace equity as a known way of being. Justice is our prayer, and we affirm that it is possible. These words from Rebecca Savage, welcome everyone who's managed to put their clocks right and get to church on time this morning. Welcome to you here, and to those joining us on Zoom or tuning in via YouTube or the podcast at a later date. For anyone who doesn't know me, I'm Patricia Brewerton and I'm a member of this congregation. Our service this morning is about keeping on, keeping on doing what we can to create a world of justice and peace, and to keep on hoping that someday our dream will come true. Let us light our chalice as we do each week. The simple ritual connects us with Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist congregations everywhere and reminds us of the proud and historic progressive religious tradition of which this gathering is part. It's a moment to settle down, put aside anything that's troubling you, ready to share this special time together. Like our faith, it is not magic, nor is it mysterious. We light it as a reminder of what we share as a community and of who each of us is called to be. When we feel lost in a chaotic world, may the light of our chalice show us the path. When we are afraid of the times we live in, may the light of our chalice give us courage. When we despair at the injustice and cruelty around us, may the light of our chalice recall us to a faithful hope. Our chalice is a symbol of our commitment to each other and to ourselves, and we light it today as a gathered community that we may understand more completely and act more boldly and hope more fiercely. It's time to sing our first hymn, and it's number thirty-eight in your grey hymn books, Morning Has Broken. It is my favourite morning hymn, and when I got up this morning the sun was shining, so it seemed even better. So, okay, there are not many of us, but we have Benji, so let's sing up to greet the day. This prayer is based on some words by Andrew Usher. You might want to adjust your position for comfort, close your eyes or soften your gaze. There may be a posture that helps you to feel more prayerful. Whatever helps you to get into the right state of body and mind for us to pray together, to be fully present with ourselves, with each other, and with that which is both within us and beyond us. Spirit of life, God of all love, in whom we live and move and have our being. We turn our full attention to you, the light within and without, as we tune into the depths of this life and the greater wisdom to which and through which we are all intimately connected. Be with us now as we allow ourselves to drop into the silence and stillness at the very centre of our book. We gather this morning from many places and with many different thoughts and we pause now in the quiet to reflect on our lives, our hopes and dreams, our doubts and fears those things we regret doing, and those things which bring us joy. We pray for a better world, a more peaceful and caring world, and we ask for the strength and courage to keep on doing whatever is needed to fulfil our dreams of justice, however futile those dreams may seem. We recognize that too often we fall short of our ideals. We are too willing to give up our dreams of justice. We know that we aren't always as peaceful and caring as we want to be. We pray for the vision to recognise our failures of part of what it means to be human, and in recognizing our own failures, may we be more willing to give forgive the failures of others. We call to mind those who live in conditions we would find difficult to accept, those living in damp and moldy accommodation. We think of those who work to provide our needs, whose work is often physically demanding, those who face bullying and discrimination in the workplace and all those whose lives are made more difficult by poverty and uncertainty. We turn our thoughts now to the wider world. We think of those living in lands torn apart by war, where hunger and violence are their everyday experience. We remember those forced to flee their homes again and again in order to survive. We remember that we all live in the same world and we cannot turn away from what is happening in lands far away. And let us bring to mind those people we love, family, friends and neighbours, those who are suffering, those who we haven't seen for too long. And let us remember to be thankful for the love we share with them and the joy that they bring into our lives. And as we pause now in the quietness of our own thoughts, let us reflect on both the blessings and the trials of our lives, and dedicate ourselves to sharing our blessings and to doing what we can to ease the trials of others. Spirit of life, O God of all love, as this time of prayer comes to a close, we offer up our joys and concerns, our hopes and fears, our beauty and our brokenness, and we call on you for insight, healing, and renewal. As we look forward now to the coming week, help us to live well each day and be our best selves using our unique gifts in the service of love, justice, and peace. Let's sing again. Our second hymn is number one two one. We'll build a land. Now I know we usually sing this at the end of a service, but it fits better here today.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

When he thought about hope, he felt weary and bored, and constructed a mirage and said, How shall I evaluate my mirage? He searched in his desk drawers for the person he was before asking this question, but found no notes containing thoughtless or destructive urges. Nor did he find a document confirming he had stood in the rain for no reason. When he thought about hope, the gap widened between a body that was no longer agile, and a heart that had acquired wisdom. He did not repeat the question, who am I? Because he was so upset by the smell of lilies and the no and the neighbour's loud music. He opened a window on what remained of a horizon, and saw two cats playing with a puppy in a narrow street, and a dove building a nest in a chimney. And he said, Hope is not the opposite of despair. Perhaps it is the faith that springs from divine indifference, which has left us dependent on our own special talents to make sense of the fog surrounding us. He said, Hope is neither something tangible nor an idea. It's a talent. It's a computer blocker putting the question aside.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

You might as well know this thing is going to take endless repair. Rubber bands, crazy glue, happy yoga, the square of the hypotenuse, 19th century bubble, heart strings, sunrise. All of these are useful. Also feathers. To keep it humming, sometimes you have to stand on an incline where everything looks possible, on the line you drew yourself, or in the grocery line, making faces at a toddler secretly over his mother's shoulder. You might have to pop the clutch and run past all the evidence, past everyone who is laughing or praying for you. Definitely you don't want to go directly to jail, but still, here you go. Passing time, passing strange. Don't pass this up. In the worst of times, you will have to pass it off. Park it and fly by the seat of your pants. With nothing in the bank, you'll still want to take the express. Tiptoe past the dogs of the apocalypse that are sleeping in the shade of your future. Pay at the window. You might still have just enough time to make a deposit.

SPEAKER_04 20:19

We're going into a time of meditation now. And to lead you into this, I'm going to read some words from Dr. Selena Montemini. Then there will be three minutes of silence, which will end with the sound of a bell, and then we'll have some lovely music from Benji and Andrew. So do what you need to get comfortable. Adjust your position, put down anything you don't need to be carrying, and put your feet flat on the floor, and maybe close your eyes. Whatever helps you to settle into this time. The words I'm going to read are just an offering. Feel free to meditate in your own way. It lives in my chest. It lives in my breath. It lives in the way I find myself staring out of the window, searching for something I can't quite name a framework, a shared understanding of decency, of truth, of what's right what's way, way off. What does it mean to create a life rooted in something real when so much of the world feels hollow? How do we comp reclaim the sacred in the middle of a system built on distraction? If you too are aching today, you're not alone. We can't fix a fractured world but we can choose to be a force of Repair inside it by naming what hurts instead of numbing it, by making space for wonder of the world with care. By telling the truth. These are not small things, these are the seeds of something sacred.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

This is part of a long line by David Joseph Jr. Hope is resistance. Hope is not a wish. It's a weapon. Hope wears work boots, not wings. It is built in soup kitchens, in protest lines, in pews where tired saints still raise holy hands for justice not yet seen. Hope stands when grief says sit. It rises when oppression says kneel. It keeps marching when the road has been paved with disappointment. There are names we remember, because hope kept them alive. Songs that survived because someone believed the melody mattered. Movements that breathed because a mother refused to let her child grow up, believing nothing could change. Hope resists. Not because it is blind, but because it sees too much to give up. Hope is not naive. It knows the weight of history, but carries it anyway. It's the drumbeat beneath the chart, the tremble in the voice that still says yes when the world has said no. So we carry hope like fire in our chests. We pass it like torches down crowded streets and family tables. We protect it not because it is fragile, but because it is sacred. And in the days when the sky grows heavy, when your voice feels small, when the world seems unmoved, remember. Hope is not for the untested. Hope is for the bold. Hope is how we resist without becoming what we resist. Hope is how we rise, how we rebuild, how we remember that we are still here, not by accident, but by audacity. Because hope, true hope, will always be the beginning of freedom.

SPEAKER_04 31:48

But she added, we don't usually celebrate Palm Sunday. However, when planning a service, you have to start somewhere, and the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem seemed to me as good a place as any. Today, in what I think of as mainstream churches, people will be celebrating Palm Sunday. The clergy may wear red vestments, and the congregation given crosses made from a single palm leaf. In some places, they will process into church carrying palm fronds to symbolize the entry into Jerusalem. I'm sure you all know the story, which starts with a couple of disciples being sent to borrow a colt or an ass on which Jesus will be carried into the city. As Jesus enters Jerusalem, a crowd greets him. They form a procession and spread their garments in front of him. They wave palms and they shout Hosanna. It's a lively, loud and joyful manifestation of hope. People living under foreign occupation and oppressed by a religious elite marching together in support of someone or something that they believe will make their life better. Reading further on in the story you discover that not surprisingly this religious elite is mightily troubled. They get together to grumble and plot. They need to find a way to deal with a situation that they feel may get out of hand and challenge their authority. But they feared the multitude. In the end, as we know, they do find a way and finally get Jesus sentenced to death. People coming together to speak out against a regime which is oppressing them or their community, as we have seen recently, still troubles those in power mightily. And the answer still seems to be to use violence, or more subtly, to devise and pass laws to suppress any demonstration of solidarity. Of course, not everyone who takes to our streets is calling for justice and peace. We have seen some ugly and violent scenes on our streets in the last year or so. And a short while after Jesus was greeted with palms and hosannas, a crowd took to the streets to demand his death. Fifty years ago, my friend Jen and I pushed our prams along Brentwood High Street on a march to lift the weight on the 128. Following the death of a young cyclist, we wanted heavy lorries banned from the A-128 which ran through the town. We've since marched together many times. We marched to stop the bomb, to end apartheid in South Africa, and with over a million others, including, I am sure some of you here, we marched against the war in Iraq. But when I asked her if she'd join me in a march for Palestine, she declined, saying that she couldn't see the point anymore, because Martin had never achieved anything. And maybe she has a point. Heavy lorries do no longer go along the A128. Although I must admit, that has more to do with the M25, which now bypasses the town than anything we did on our march. How many marches did how much marches did to change the regime in South Africa we cannot know. And sadly, the world still faces the threat of nuclear weapons. And wars in the Middle East have certainly not gone away. But people coming together to demand change must have some effect, or otherwise governments would not feel a need to prevent them. Most of us have a yearning for a better world, future for the world. Maybe it's homelessness, maybe it's hunger and poverty, maybe it's the environment that concerns you most. I'm sure all of us can find our hearts moved by some cause or other. Sometimes there is something practical you can do. You can volunteer in a food bank. You can peel vegetables to feed the hungry. You can show your concern by donating to a particular cause. But for some of us, sometimes the situation demands that we take to the street to call for justice, however futile that may seem. The American historian and activist Rachel Sonett argues that actions often ripple beyond their immediate objective, and remembering this is a reason to act in the hope that what you do matters even when the results are unlikely to be immediate or obvious. The future is unwritten and part of what happens is up to us. In a recent article she writes we are social animals and we need to be with other people. She suggests there's a sense of belonging that goes deeper than words, especially when we're with like minded people, a congregation in prayer or thousands on a march. And I can testify to this. Joining a congregation in prayer and joining thousands on a march does bring a sense of belonging, of being with people who share my longing for peace and justice, and that's why I keep on doing both. We have just sung about building a land where justice will roll down like water, and peace like an ever flowing stream. I don't suppose anyone here really thinks we can do this just by singing about it. They recognise it's just not that easy to fix all the things that are wrong with our world. Nor do I expect governments to respond to our demands for a free Palestine anytime soon. Nevertheless, I keep joining with many thousands who marched and I marched yesterday and plan to keep on marching. We sing and we march because these are ways of keeping hope alive. To keep on, keeping on. Hope, Sonnet writes, is not a naive ignorance of the world. Far from it. It's a feeling that moves us away from easy despair to act courageously. And even if it seems we can change nothing, we can at least show our support for those who are suffering in our world. We have recently witnessed the support the people of Minneapolis have shown their neighbors by risking their lives to protest the presence of ice on their streets, or by simply taking food and medicines to neighbors, too frightened to leave their homes in case they are arrested and deported. Archelis Abbey shared a photo with me of the first Unitarian Society Justice Choir of Minneapolis singing in the Capitol Rotunda in Wisconsin in solidarity with health workers calling for justice for Alex Pritti, the nurse shot dead by federal agents in Minneapolis in January. Two hundred people just singing together for justice. On protest marches these days, no one sings hand Hosanna. They do chant slogans, and a favourite of mine is we are the people. We won't be silent. And that's it. We are the people. So let's not be silent, but keep on doing what we can to bring about the future word we longed for. Amen. Time for one last hymn. It's on your hymn sheet, Resistance Song. We sang it for the first time recently, and Jane agreed that we could sing it again today. It seems to fit. Some announcements now. Thank you to Ramona for hosting and supporting me, and Janine for co-hosting. Thanks to Benji and Andrew for lovely music. Thanks to Brian and Hannah and David for reading. David stood in at the last moment. I didn't really want my husband doing the reading, but I couldn't find anyone else. Thanks to Juliet for greeting and Julia for making coffee. If you're in person, do stay for coffee. And I have bought an Italian Columba cake, uh Easter cake. So stay and have a piece of cake and a chat. And if you're online, stay for a chat with Janine if you can. Tonight and Friday at 7 pm, we've got our online Heart and Soul Contempt Spirit Ritual Gathering. This week it's on Knowing Our Limits. Sign up with Jane if you want to join. On Wednesday, there's the poetry group with Brian in person here at church. Let him know if you're planning to come along to that and tell him what poem you plan to share. Next Sunday is our Easter service with special music from our quartet of singers. Jane will be back for that. And we're going to have a bring and share lunch after the service next week. Marianne has kindly volunteered to coordinate that, so please sign up with her and let her know what you're going to bring. On the 12th of April, which is Sunday after next, we're going to have another Each Child workshop after I think Hannah might be doing yoga on that day, but it'll be after yoga for those who of you who do yoga. Looking a bit further ahead, we'll change the date for our next walk. We're now meeting on Tuesday, the 21st of April, and we'll explore Greenwich Park and possibly also Mudshute Farm. This month the book club is reading Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard. And I think we have a few copies to lend out. Let Jane know if you borrow a copy and if you plan to come. Details of all our activities are printed on the Order of Service and also in the Friday email. So sign up for our mailing list if you haven't already do so, and do take a newsletter which is outside there. The congregation very much has a life beyond Sunday mornings. We encourage you to keep in touch, look out for each other, and do what you can to nurture supportive connections. And Julia has something to say. Wow, it's not on the list. Anyway, Margaret has her singing class at twelve twelve thirty here. That's okay. That's it. Seven thirty here tomorrow night. Just time for our closing words and closing music now. The flame but not our hope for the future. We share all the world.