And you whose spirit is sad and unsure,
try to remember
the very best parts of your life, the loveliest
feelings in your body self,
occasions of bold delight and quiet confidence,
moments of unambivalent commitment and unrestrained joy.

Try to remember when you have believed passionately in
something or someone human or divine.

Try to imagine that someone now believes in you
because she trusts your loveliest feelings
- commitments, confidence, joy.

She goes with us as we are called forth to go, with one another,
evoked by historical memory
and voices audible only to ears
that can hear the power of God in history.

Her name is love.

(Carter Heyward)

‘Faith isn’t faith unless it involves a significant risk of failure…’

the life you love

If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. Sometimes the great famine of blessings in and around us derives from the fact that we are not living the life we love; rather, we are living the life that is expected of us. We have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature.

(John O'Donohue)

Prayer

The Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.

(William Herbert)

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

(Carol Ann Duffy)

Closing responses in a service of light

God of the sunlight: of love and laughter, adventure and risk:
We will live in your light.

God of the starlight: of dancing and dreaming, music and beauty:
We will live in your light.

God of moonlight: of sorrow and longing, pain and heartache:
We will live in your light.

God of the small flame and the roaring fire:
Take our small seeds of faith and turn them into lives that honour you.

Everything

God in my living
There in my breathing
God in my waking
God in my sleeping

God in my resting
There in my working
God in my thinking
God in my speaking

Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything

God in my hoping
There in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting

God in my laughing
There in my weeping
God in my hurting
God in my healing

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me the hope of glory
You are everything

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me the hope of glory
Be my everything

(Tim Hughes)