Open Hand- Friday Morning Prayer Liturgy

Friday Morning Call to Prayer

"He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: "Follow thou me!" and sets us the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they will be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they will pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is." Albert Schweitzer

The Greeting (Doxology)

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him all creatures here below;

Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts;

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

A Reading (All in unison)

Say among the nations, "The Lord reigns." The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth. Psalm 96:10-13

For Silent Reflection (Meditation)

Domestic order is obviously threatened by the margin of the wilderness that surrounds it. Marriage may be destroyed by instinctive sexuality; the husband may choose to remain with Kalypso or the wife may run away with godlike Paris. And the forest is always waiting to overrun the fields. These are real possibilities. They must be considered, respected, even feared.

And yet I think that no culture that hopes to endure can afford to destroy them or to set up absolute safeguards against them. Invariably the failure of organized religions, by which they cut themselves off from mystery and therefore from sanctity, lies in the attempt to impose an absolute division between faith and doubt, to make belief perform as knowledge; when they forbid their prophets to go into the wilderness, they lose the possibility of renewal. And the most dangerous tendency in modern society, now rapidly emerging as a scientific-industrial ambition, is the tendency toward encapsulation of human order - the severance, once and for all, of the umbilical cord fastening us to the wilderness of Creation. The threat is not only in the totalitarian desire for absolute control. It lies in the willingness to ignore an essential paradox: the natural forces that so threaten us are the same forces that preserve and renew us.

And enduring agriculture must never cease to consider and respect and preserve wildness. The farm can exist only within the wilderness of mystery and natural force. And if the farm is to last and remain in health, the wilderness must survive within the farm. That is what agricultural fertility is: the survival of natural process in the human order. To learn to preserve the fertility of the farm, Sir Albert Howard wrote, we must study the forest.

Similarly, the instinctive sexuality within which marriage exists must somehow be made to thrive within marriage. To divide one from the other is to degrade both and ultimately to destroy marriage.

Fidelity to human order, then, if it is fully responsible, implies fidelity also to natural order. Fidelity to human order makes devotion possible. Fidelity to natural order preserves the possibility of choice, the possibility of renewal of devotion. Where there is no possibility of choice, there is no possibility of faith. One who returns home - to one's marriage and household and place in the world - desiring anew what was previously chosen, is neither the world's stranger nor its prisoner, but is at once in place and free.

If we are to have a culture as resilient and competent in the face of necessity as it needs to be, then it must somehow involve within itself a ceremonious generosity toward the wilderness or natural force and instinct. The farm must yield a place to the forest, not as a wood lot, or even as a necessary agricultural principle, but as a sacred grove - a place where the Creation is let alone, to serve as instruction, example, refuge; a place for people to go, free to work and presumption, to let themselves alone. And marriage must recognize that it survives because of, as well as in spite of, Kalypso and Paris and the generosity of instinct that they represent. It must give some ceremonially acknowledged place to the sexual energies that now thrive outside all established forms, in the destructive freedom of moral ignorance or disregard. Without these accommodations we will remain divided: some of us will continue to destroy the world for purely human ends, while others, for the sake of nature, will abandon the task of human order.

The Necessity of Wildness - Wendell Berry

Response - The Kingdom of God

Out of death came life

AND GOD DEFEATED EVIL

An empty cross and an empty tomb, A nail mark shown and a presence known.

OUT OF SORROW CAME JOY AND GOD SENT THE SPIRIT

Coming like fire to all people and ages, Coming to birth in the water of life.

OUT OF DIFFERENCE CAME UNITY AND GOD'S PEOPLE WERE CALLED

Called to receive him in bread and wine, Called to be free in the power of love.

For when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power.

AND BE WITNESS FOR CHRIST TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH.

Out of love comes celebration

AND GOD'S KINGDOM IS AMONG US:

Where peace is the means of making us one, Where truth and justice is done.

OUT OF CHANGE COMES POSSIBILITY AND GOD'S NEW CREATION BEGUN

Promise of splendor and signal of worth, Sources of all goodness, renewing the earth.

OUT OF FREEDOM COMES RESPONSIBILITY AND GOD CALLS US TO DISCIPLESHIP

In our compassion, making love known, In our conviction, God's power shown. You did not choose me, I chose you.

THIS, THEN, IS WHAT I COMMAND YOU: LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Amen.

Let us go into the world rejoicing.

It is Christ who goes before us.

THANKS BE TO GOD. AMEN