C3/CCC Prayer Transcript for March 23, 2008
We recognize our connection in this ritual meal with all those who have gone before us, and those who will follow us. We think of the Vandermeulen/ Hood family- Helen and Jan and families, after the death of Roger VanderMeulen We think also of the birth of Lucas Erwin---son born to Amy and Kyle Williams May this eucharist awaken you to both the tragedy and beauty written into the cycle of life. May bread and cup become for you spiritual nourishment; expressing your joys and tears, your visions and dreams. We offer ceremonial gratitude as people have always done. The original devotees of the Goddess designed rituals of thanksgiving for the fertility of the earth in bearing fruit, and to assuage the spirit of the animals which gave their lives for sustenance. Worshippers of Yahweh ate a memorial meal to recall stories of divine deliverance throughout their history. In this lineage, disciples of Jesus created a Eucharist symbolic of life, death, and rebirth. Today, we revere the universal themes in all traditions; liberation, love, the search for meaning, our relatedness to the earth, and the wondrous cycle of birth, death, and life renewed. May the dry bread of ‘barely enough’ be transformed into a splendid banquet. May the crushed grapes of despair transform into the cup of abundance. May order emerge out of chaos; rays of light out of dark seasons, and wholeness out of broken places. Sallie McFague wrote, “What if the 'resurrection of the body' were not seen as the resurrection of particular bodies that ascend, beginning with Jesus of Nazareth, into another world, but as God's promise to be with us always in God's body, our world?" Take bread and remember that the world is God’s body. Take cup and remember that transformation arises out of the ashes of death. Bread broken- a sign of shared humanity. Cup poured- a sign of love shared. May these gifts of earth and rebirth touch, cleanse, refine, and enliven you. close window | ^ top | home |