Sermons

READING: By Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor from her book An Altar in the World in a chapter entitled, “The Practice of Wearing Skin”: “…I think it is important to pray naked in front of a full-length mirror sometimes, especially when you are full of loathing for your body. Maybe you think you are too heavy. Maybe you never liked the way your hipbones stick out…Are you too hairy? It is always something. Then again, maybe you have been sick, or gone through surgery that has changed the...

READING: Fault Line,” by Robert Walsh Did you ever think there might be a fault line Passing underneath your living room: A place in which your life is lived in meeting And in separating, wondering And telling, unaware that just beneath You is the unseen seam of great plates That strain through time? And that your life, already Spilling over the brim, could be invaded, Sent off in a new direction, turned Aside by forces you were warned about But not prepared for? Shelves could be spilled out,...

READING: “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in...

READING: Self Portrait, by David Whyte It doesn’t interest me if there is one God Or many gods. I want to know if you belong — or feel abandoned; If you know despair Or can see it in others. I want to know If you are prepared to live in the world With its harsh need to change you; If you can look back with firm eyes Saying “this is where I stand.” I want to know if you know how to melt Into that fierce heat of living Falling toward the center of your longing. I want to know if you are willing...

“Love After Love,” by St. Lucian poet, playwright and professor, Derek Walcott. The time will come  when, with elation  you will greet yourself arriving  at your own door, in your own mirror  and each will smile at the other's welcome,  and say, sit here. Eat.  You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart  to itself, to the stranger who has loved you  all your life, whom you ignored  for another, who knows you by heart.  Take down the love...

“With That Moon Language” by Sufi Poet Hafez Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.” Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops. Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear? “A Conversion to Humanity” Love is the spirit of this church.  Why not...

Reading:  Let Evening Come, Jane Kenyon Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn. Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come. To the bottle in the ditch, to...

“The Book of Genesis,” Kei Miller Suppose there was a book full only of the word, let – from whose clipped sound all things began: fir and firmament, feather, the first whale — and suppose we could scroll through its pages every day to find and pronounce a Let meant only for us — we would stumble through the streets with open books, eyes crossed from too much reading; we would speak in auto-rhyme, the world would echo itself — and still we’d continue in rounds, saying let and let and let until...

My name is Charlyn Bethell and my pronouns are she/her. I gratefully serve as the music director here at First Parish, with my partner, Guy Urban.  As a musician, I wear several hats, so to speak—a conductor, an oboist, and an oboe teacher. I teach oboe lessons at Phillips Andover and this summer, I worked with a student on Zoom because she was home in Singapore.  We worked on a piece for solo oboe with many technical and musical challenges.  She played it safely within what she thought of as...