Origin: Cityside Quiet Service. 20 May 2001.
Theme:
Using the ancient Celtic ritual of grieshog – keeping of embers through the night – to reflect on God’s keeping of us through the dark times, and also of what needs to be left behind from the end of one day to the next, and what needs to be fanned into life again.
Mood:
Setup:
paints, paper, candles, feltpens, incense bowl, communion elements, TV’s running fireplace loop, central wok/brazier with fire starters and charcoal – communion, incense, candles all on pallet around wok, cushions around floor. Handouts at door.
Preservice: brazier burning, TV’s running. TRACK: Ambient running
Gear:
Running order:
Introduction: (No TRACK behind)
Grieshog is an ancient Celtic ritual for keeping the embers of a fire alive through the night.
It is the process of burying hot coals in ashes or under a layer of peat in order to preserve the fire for the cold morning to come. Instead of clearing out the hearth, they preserved the glowing coals from yesterday under beds of ashes overnight in order to have a fast-starting new fire the next day.
The process is extremely important. If the coals go out a whole new fire must be built and lit in the cold and damp of the morning – an exercise that takes precious time and slows down the more important work of the new day.
It is a holy process – the preservation of purpose, of warmth and light in darkness.
‘The Irish have another custom associated with grieshog… When a young person marries or a family moves house, they take a hot coal with them from the hearth to start the first fire in the new one. The Irish know that no fire lasts forever, that new fire has to come from somewhere, that fire is energising centre of the home, that the fires that warmed us before are worthy to warm us in the future’.
(end of The Fire in These Ashes: a spirituality of contemporary religious life, Joan Chittister,1995 (Being re-released in January 2004 by Rowan and Littlefield Publishers))
So grieshog is our image for tonight. And the work of contemplation, reflection and making of connections between that ritual, that image, and your life is mainly yours. We will provide you with some prompts and some space.
Around the space here there are paints and paper if you would like to draw or write.
Candles and sandtrays if you would like to light a candle as a prayer or response.
Grains of incense to put on the coals also as a symbol of prayer.
Words to reflect on are included in your handout.
You are welcome to participate or not at any time. We will be providing some spoken word and some music from time to time.
Later bread will be broken and wine poured if you wish to enter into the mystery of the death of Jesus Christ for you. The making available of the elements will mark the end of the formal part of our service but you are welcome to stay or leave as you wish.
Reflection
Start TRACK: #1 (22.00 – run until level drops at about 6.30) ex God Speed You Black Emperor (by God Speed You Black Emperor) Read questions over low intro to track.
Grieshog…
…what spiritual embers in your life need fanning into flame?
…what ashes need to be left behind in the past?
…what new beginnings would you like to bring to God tonight?
…what do you need from God to take you through this dark night?
TRACK continues. (approx 6.30 when level drops. Read over.)
Meditation: ‘I’m Only Asking’. Jo Frew. (See below)
TRACK: silence
TRACK: ambient
(read any extracts from handout when mood takes us! Intuitive!)
Read:
Read:
Bread and Wine: (approximately +30-35 minutes)
Words of Institution
TRACK: ‘Dante’s Prayer’, (7.10) Loreena McKennitt ex Book of Secrets #8
Silence:
TRACK: ‘The Deep Peace of the Running Wave to You’, ex Late Late Service 5: Deep Peace, #3 (2.29. repeat x3?)
Run Out TRACK: ambient
Review: An amazing 30+ punters turned up. Half of them by 6.50pm! Only 12 of them were Citysiders. 4 drove up from (out of town). They’re getting to be regulars. Service flowed well and apparently God was present and spoke to people. I saw tears, and lots of response actions were made. Final people stayed in the space until 8.15pm, 30 minutes after end of service.
Fire worked well. 4 firestarters got the charcoal glowing and flaming very nicely. I learnt that you can’t light candles off embers. You need flames. As the symbolism of lighting candles as prayers from the central fire was important I had to keep tossing serviettes etc into the brazier to get some flames. Only problem with the brazier/wok was that the block of wood under it caught on fire. I had to keep pouring water on it! I need to make some kind of metal stand and tray for this in future. It was burning for more than 90 minutes which is quite a different amount of heat generated to when we use it for 20 minutes in a regular service. Quite a bit of smoke but all part of the effect.
Very moving to see people responding to God in this very reflective, deeply personal way. Never fails to move me. I love Citysiders.
Handout text
Grieshog — ancient Celtic ritual for preserving the fire embers through the night.
Quiet Service
Cityside Baptist Church
Sunday 20 May, 2001
(every 3rd Sunday, 7pm)
Dante’s Prayer.
Loreena McKennitt (The Book of Secrets)
When the dark wood fell before me, and all the paths were overgrown,
When the priests of pride say there is no other way,
I tilled the sorrows of stone.
I did not believe because I could not see, though you came to me in the night.
When the dawn seemed forever lost, you showed me your love in the light of the stars.
Cast your eyes on the ocean. Cast your soul to the sea. When the dark night seems endless, please remember me.
Then the mountain rose before me, by the deep well of desire
From the mountain of forgiveness, beyond the ice and the fire.
Cast your eyes on the ocean. Cast your soul to the sea.
When the dark night seems endless, please remember me.
Though we share this humble path, alone, how fragile is the heart.
O give these clay feet wings to fly, to touch the face of the stars.
Breathe life into this feeble heart. Lift this mortal veil of fear.
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears,
We’ll rise above these earthly cares.
Cast your eyes on the ocean. Cast your soul to the sea.
When the dark night seems endless, please remember me , please remember me.
You must give up everything in order to gain everything. What must you give up? All that is not truly you; all that you have chosen without choosing and value without evaluating, accepting because of someone else’s extrinsic judgement, rather than your own; all your self-doubt that keeps you from trusting and loving yourself or other human beings. What will you gain? Only your own, true self; a self who is at peace, who is able to truly love and be loved, and who understands who and what (s)he is meant for. But you can be yourself only if you are no one else. You must give up ‘their’ approval, whoever they are, and look to yourself for evaluation of success and failure, in terms of your own level of aspiration that is consistent with your values. Nothing is simpler and nothing is more difficult.
(Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Death: The Final Stage of Growth (Prentice-Hall, 1975))
Interview with Bishop Desmond Tutu, who has terminal cancer…
Gospel people don’t need to hang on to anything. For them, the ego is out of the way. They’ll make a difference in the world precisely because they don’t need to. They don’t need to be first, they don’t need to be important, they don’t need to be number one. They don’t need to be rich, secure, popular, so they can do what God has told them to do. They can be obedient, God can move through them with power. That’s why spirituality is always about letting go.
(Richard Rohr, Radical Grace (St Anthony Messenger Press, 1995))
Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead.
You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how.
Self-help is no help at all.
Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.
What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself?
What could you ever trade your soul for?
Matthew 16/24-26 (The Message)
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?
Or…
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, she must deny herself and take up her cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save her life will lose it, but whoever loses her life for me will find it. What good will it be for a woman if she gains the whole world, yet forfeits her soul? Or what can a woman give in exchange for her soul?
Matthew 16/24-26 (NIV)
I’M ONLY ASKING
By Jo Frew, April 2001
Never mind bungee-jumping,
sometimes I just take risks
with strong ideas.
Jesus said “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”.
And he said ‘seek and you shall find’.
Well I’ve found Him, but I’m still still searching.
I’m searching for the freedom to be myself
I have found the freedom to ask dangerous questions.
I have a need to embrace God with my mind
which takes me to very uncomfortable places
And there are times when my questions seem to take me further and
further away from the God I’m trying to reach.
But I can’t help it,
this asking
and not knowing.
I daresay God doesn’t mind; He’s heard it all before.
I know He’s listening, really,
but there are long silences.
I’m waiting for Him to get back to me on some pretty fundamental
questions, and I think He’s got a lot of explaining to do.
Trust is a slow and frustrating business.
Sometimes, though, God speaks.
Sometimes, when I’ve reached the limits of my faith, God gives me the
‘Descartes’ test.
Descartes’ philosophy, his response to the impossible
enormity of the questions of existence- what is this world, who am I ,
why am I here,- was to strip away all uncertainties until he arrived at
one absolute reality, then move forward from there. His one truth was
this: “I think, therefore I am”.
So I’m here. I’m thinking.
But the test is to strip away all my uncertainties: all learning, all
culture and all religion, and discover what remains.
And it’s then I realise God has answered a question I didn’t even know I
was asking.
The question is simply this: Are You really there? Do You know what
You’re doing? Do You still love me?
And quietly, inevitably, He answers: “I am; I do; absolutely”.
He distils a simple truth that underpins my life and gives me hope:
God is alive. He loves me.
It’s not the answer I was hoping for, but it’s all I really need to
know. When I let that love reach me, I can look up, and look out, and
remember why I’m here.
So to rephrase Descartes:
I’m loved; therefore I can.
“The quest for certainty blocks the quest for meaning.
Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers”.
-Erich Fromm