UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST in SIMI VALLEY
Second Sunday After Pentecost - June 15, 2003
Father's Day - Trinity Sunday

Anne G. Cohen
Isaiah 6:1-8

For Our Reflection:
               O Holy One, I hear and say so many words,
                           yet yours is the word I need.
               Speak now, and help me listen;
                           and, if what I hear is silence,
                           let it quiet me,
                           let it disturb me,
                           let it touch my need,
                           let it break my pride,
                           let it shrink my certainties,
                           let it enlarge my wonder.
   - Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace c.1984, p.25


The Sounds of Silence

...Rain Stick...

The voice of the God of glory thunders over mighty waters.
The voice of God is powerful;
The voice of God is full of majesty.
The voice of God breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
The voice of God flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of God shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of God causes the oaks to whirl and strips the forests bare.
May God bless all people with
peace.                                              (from Psalm 29)

...Rain Stick...

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw God sitting on a throne.
The hem of His robe filled the temple.
Angels called out to one another asserting God's ineffable glory,
a glory that filled the whole earth.
The foundations and thresholds of the temple shook from the sound
and the house filled with smoke.
I cried out, "I am silenced.  I am lost.  I am unclean and live among
the unclean - and yet I see God."
Page Two

An angel burned my lips, purifying and searing my flesh,
making clean the future of my speaking.
The voice of God shook me with a question, "Whom shall I send?
Who will go for Us?"
And I had no answer but this, "Here I am.  Send me."
                                 (from Isaiah 6:1-6)

...Rain Stick...

I dreamed that the full moon woke me out of a sound sleep.
I watched as the moon exploded silently above the dark
San Gabriel mountains.
As the shards of light thundered into the atmosphere,
I realized that we were now in danger.
But there was no fear, only wonder.
A pulverized earth makes good soil and a place to start over.
I woke up from the dream convinced that I was given a purpose.
It is a dream I return to repeatedly.
I have yet to hear the words in the silence behind the thunder.

...Rain Stick...

Before the wars and drought, Afghanistan was a triumph of human
ingenuity in one of the harshest environments on Earth. As much as 80
percent of their mostly rural population owned the land they lived and
worked on, which inspired them to be careful stewards as well as
constant innovators in folk technology and science. Old Afghanistan was
a garden. It was as if humans moved into Death Valley thousands of years
ago and proceeded to build a series of great, prosperous, and
sophisticated empires there.

Plagued with sand-bearing gales, 7th century peasants designed and build
windmills, the first in human history. Centuries ago they solved the
problem of evaporation from open-air desert canals by building a system
deep underground - to collect runoff, snowmelt and ground-water high on
the mountainsides and carry it down to the fertile plains.  Nomads
migrated in intricate skeins to survive and thrive. The manure dropped
by their herds of camels, sheep, goats, cattle and horses was a key
factor in fertilizing the desert soils along migration routes.  You
don't survive in the desert for thousands of years by being shortsighted
or insensitive to the natural world.

Page Three

When nomads were forced onto collective farms, soil quality
deteriorated. Bombs have annihilated, cities, infrastructures, villages,
forests, farms, gardens, irrigation systems, that have lasted hundreds
of years. Afghanistan is an utter disaster - with a bright future.

In Afghanistan there are many sayings:
"May Kabul be without gold rather than without snow."
"Even the highest mountain has a trail to the top."
"The world lives in hope."
And from a 17th century Afghan poet, "Be glad of a few days of peace in
this garden where the nightingales sing.  When the singing has been
silenced the beauty of my garden will be gone, too."

Refugees are returning to their land.  They are quietly rebuilding their
lives, their aqueducts and their gardens in the old ways - with some new
folk technology that does not rely on government infrastructure.

An American diplomat is quoted as saying, "Give Afghanistan two or three
years of peace, and a year or two of normal rainfall, and it will be
back on track. Bet on it."     The winter of 2003 brought heavy snows in
the mountains - giving hope of a break in the long drought.
(- from Rob Schultheis, "Perilous Gardens, Persistent Dreams,"
Sierra Club Magazine May/June 2003)

The voice of God shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The people are called home and gardens are reborn.

...Rain Stick...

In Scotland there is a village called RestAndBeThankful. 
In Peru there is a town called CHINCHERO - TheSoundOfSilence.
The people of that town follow the old ways, buying llama fetuses in the
street markets and ritually burying them in every plot of land they farm
to ensure fertility. 
They also go to Mass every Sunday, although the priest speaks Castillian
Spanish and is not regarded in high esteem. 
The priest is theatrical.  The people are silent.
The people go to Mass anyway.  They are hedging their bets. 
You can imagine which ritual makes the garden more fertile.
(from Ann Muir 6/14/03)

...Rain Stick...

Page Four

I studied Hebrew in seminary.  Ancient Hebrew is written with consonants
only.  The vowels and silences are understood.  The silences are as
important as the sounds.  Meaning is in the omissions, the spaces
between, the silence behind the voices.

...Rain Stick...

We spend much of our time fending off the future, fighting entropy,
propounding unalterable truths, establishing monuments,
preserving culture, making a lasting impression.

Gardens teach us that everything changes.  In the silence of growing
things, there is the Voice of What Ultimately Matters.  It is the voice
we heard when we were too young to remember - the voice that tells us,
even now, who we really are. 

Behind the thunder of the expectations we are living into is the silence
of What Is. 
In the spaces between our thoughts     - is a human merely being.

...Rain Stick...

Coby Hitsman was with her husband, David, at the VA in LA on Wednesday.
A group of vets with Alzheimers were in a room with a social worker who
was asking questions about current events to evaluate their mental
awareness - but doing so in an entertaining way.  David got one of the
questions right and was given a prize.  He beamed with pride.

As Coby looked at his face, she saw the presence of God shining there.
The hem of God's robe filled the room and an angel brought tears to her
eyes. Coby, for whatever reason, is losing her husband one hour, one
memory, one piece at a time. But the emptiness, the silence is filling
up with God. 

As her husband slips from doing into being, garden is being planted in
her soul.  And one day she may hear the words in the silence behind the
thunder of her grief.

...Rain Stick...

Page Five

When my backyard is neglected and the rains come, poppies spring up all
over the place.  They seem to be answering some question silently posed
by the passage of time.

...Rain Stick...

When railroad tracks are abandoned, fields overtake them and dismantle
the rails.  Occasional humans partner with nature in her reclamation
project. They collect heavy, iron railroad spikes, move the oily, wooden ties to
their gardens. 


Weather takes its toll on abandoned platforms and rust brings down the
warning lights.  The absence of thundering trains goes unnoticed by the
wind.  In the silence unbroken by bells and whistles, the garden repairs
the damage and wildflowers lure the birds back home.

The voice of God calls incessantly across the face of the earth.
The foundations of our lives are trembling from the divine discourse
that defines our purpose and depends on messengers who will embody the
message.

And in the silence that follows human self-annihilation - Nature, Time
and God will repair themselves.  And they will prepare themselves for a
future that never needed our help - a future that lives even now in the
heart of our deepest hope.

...Rain Stick...

What is it that we are supposed to be doing?
What is it that feels most right, most real, most true?
What is it that speaks to us without words
in the silence behind the thunder of civilization's
        imminent suicide,
in the silence behind the storms of our mortal pageants,
in the silence of gardens that creep steadily
across the face of the desert - dismantling our self importance,
in the silence behind the glory of God that shines in a face
with no memory but a loving heart?

...Rain Stick...

Page Six

The voice of the God of glory thunders over mighty waters.
The voice of God is powerful;
The voice of God is full of majesty.
The voice of God breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
The voice of God flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of God shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of God causes the oaks to whirl and strips the forests bare.
May God bless all people with peace.             (from Psalm 29)

...Rain Stick...


************
BULLETIN
************

WE GATHER FOR PRAYER AND CELEBRATION

Music for Gathering
Welcome and Perspective on the Day
Musical Preparation for Worship - A Time for Centering

+ Call to Worship
Out of the dusk, a shadow,
Then, a spark.
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then, a lark.
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then, a pain.
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.

+ Hymn of Praise       Holy, Holy, Holy   Hymnal # 277

+ Opening Prayer (unison)   
Thank you, God, for this season
            of sun and slow motion,
            of games and porch sitting,
            of picnics and light green fireflies
            on heavy purple evenings;
            and praise for slight breezes.
It's good, God,
            as the first long days of your creation.
Let this season be for me
            a time of gathering together the pieces
            into which my busyness has broken me.
O God, enable me now
            to grow wise through reflection,
            peaceful through the song of the cricket,
            recreated through the laughter of play.
Most of all, God,
            let me live easily and grace-fully for a spell,
            so that I may see other souls deeply,
            share in a silence unhurried,
            listen to the sound of sunlight and shadows,
explore barefoot the land of forgotten dreams and shy hopes,
            and find the right words to tell another who I am.

Time for Silent Reflection
            One:   My soul waits in silence.
            All:   God is my rock and my fortress.I will be at peace.
            Silent Reflection
            The Assurance of Good News (unison)
               In the silence, God speaks, guides and sustains us.
            Sung Response                    (CSB #5 Refrain)
                       "Hallelujah. God be praised!"

WE TEACH, REFLECT AND PROCLAIM

Conversation with Our Children

Reading from the Hebrew Prophets       Isaiah 6:1-8

Sermon                The Sounds of Silence

WE RESPOND TO GOD'S INVITATION
Intercessions, Celebrations and Encouragements
            Call to Prayer    Be still and know that I am God
                                    Hymnal # 743
            Time for Silence
            Our Joys and Concerns and an Offering of Prayer
         Sung Response   In Solitude   Hymnal#521 vv. 1 & 2

We Offer Our Gifts So That Our Lives May Be Our Prayer
      Offertory
            Prayer of Dedication (unison) 
Loosen my grip on my ways and words,
on my fears and fretfulness
that letting go into the depths of silence
and my own uncharted longings,
I may find myself held by you and linked anew to all life
in this wild and wondrous world you love so much,
so I may take to heart
that you have taken me to heart.

+ Sending Hymn          Here I Am           Insert

+ Commissioning (unison)
We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.

+ Sung Response (we gather in some semblance of a circle)         Hymnal #286
Spirit, spirit of gentleness, blow through the wilderness, calling and free.
Spirit, spirit of restlessness, stir me from placidness, wind, wind on the sea.

+ Postlude

WORSHIP NOTES
Call to Worship is by John Banister Tabb, Singing the Living Tradition
c.1993 #626
Opening Prayer is by Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace c.1984, p.125
Prayer of Dedication is by Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace c.1984, p.49
Commissioning is by T.S. Eliot, Singing the Living Tradition c.1993 #685