12 January 2014: Sunday ... service on "death and its transition" at Church and choir performs from hymnals ... walk with Heide & Dancer at Anson B. Helms in Kennett Square ... day opened up lovingly

My gracious, I look forward to Church or should I say, Society, on Sunday mornings and today, choir. It is a small but profound group of individuals searching, like I am, for meaning and it is this quest that defines our heritage and our future as Unitarian Universalists. Today's service, led by longtime ministerial student, Jim Symonds, was at its focus on the move beyond into the unknowable -- death -- and what is left in its wake. From the Children's Story onward the hymns, most from the teal book, sung by the choir (only a couple of the selections for the late morning were for the entire congregation), focused on this transition and it had its most profound effect in the unscripted portion of the service, the candles of joy and concern, where on a deliberate pace, individuals came up to share profound events in their life. Sorry, I don't know all the names yet by far but I am getting there:

1. One member's mother died a few days ago from a presumed heart attack (she was found and had come up to live close to her son a while back from Florida and she suffered from cardiac failure but was not on oxygen).
2. A young man, new to the Society, spoke courageously about his diagnosis of mental illness. He had the V-shaped physiognomy of a swimmer.
3. Kristen spoke about her grandmother's repeated hospitalization for COPD down in Florida where her church organist mother (Catholic Church all masses) went to care for her.
4. Tom Hartline, reserved choir bass, spoke of the death of his brother 5 years ago and how he still can hear his voice on the telephone in their many conversations.
5. And I lit a candle, after Jennifer Stomberg's mention of the Serafin Quartet concert last night, about my meeting one of the group's founders, Kate Ransom (who by the way accepted my FB friend request yesterday after I wrote a message extolling the concert and our conversation), violinist, and her personal recollection of talking to my parents. 

This is the reading that Jim selected for the congregation to read with him leading, It was #719 in the UU hymnal. Found it at this web site ... a poem by George Eliot:

  http://www.bartleby.com/246/302.html

“O May I Join the Choir Invisible”

George Eliot (1819–80)

Longum Illudtempus, Quum Non Ero, Magis Me Movet, Quam Hoc Exiguum.—Cicero, Ad Att.,Xii. 18.

O MAY I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirr’d to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn         5 For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man’s search To vaster issues.         So to live is heaven:         10 To make undying music in the world, Breathing as beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man. So we inherit that sweet purity For which we struggled, fail’d, and agoniz’d         15 With widening retrospect that bred despair. Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued, A vicious parent shaming still its child, Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolv’d; Its discords, quench’d by meeting harmonies,         20 Die in the large and charitable air. And all our rarer, better, truer self, That sobb’d religiously in yearning song, That watch’d to ease the burthen of the world, Laboriously tracing what must be,         25 And what may yet be better,—saw within A worthier image for the sanctuary, And shap’d it forth before the multitude, Divinely human, raising worship so To higher reverence more mix’d with love,—         30 That better self shall live till human Time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky Be gather’d like a scroll within the tomb Unread forever.         This is life to come, Which martyr’d men have made more glorious         35 For us who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,         40 Be the sweet presence of a good diffus’d, And in diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. In the