Harvest 2012

For our Harvest Service today we tackled our topic in three sittings.  Grace, a meal, and the postprandial reflection.  Below are the words, and links to, the Grace and Reflection elements.  The part that made up the third, the meal, was a reading on setting an extra place each mealtime, from Scott Alexander's book Everyday Spiritual Practice, a book I freely recommend to all.

'Grace' - MP3 (Click Here)

'As You Sow' - MP3 (Click Here)

'GRACE'

Whilst the formal idea of a Harvest Service was a Victorian invention, the idea of giving thanks at this time of year for our food, and for the bounty of the Earth seems a completely natural thing to do.

Here, in the West, we are always at risk of overlooking how fortunate we are.  Our supermarkets are bulging with produce form around the world.  Seasonal foods are often no longer seasonal.  We have strawberries from Kenya in February, cherries from Mexico in April, apples from New Zealand all year around. 

Here in Kent, I wonder whether it is only asparagus and cob nuts that remain as only being available at certain times of the year.

And this is perhaps where we need to take a step back and focus again on the food we have.  The food we grow, the food we buy, the food we cook, the food we eat.  They are all gifts to us in one way or another.  We cannot ‘make’ the raw ingredients.  They grow from almost nothing.

Try and make an apple pie from a handful of pips and some wheat.  It won’t work.  We need something else, something deeper, something magical, something completely natural.

In his book ‘Nourishing Wisdom’, Marc David writes:

“Be there when you eat.  Achieve the fullest experience of your food.  Taste it.  Savour it.  Pay attention to it.  Rejoice in it.”

    

Eating is a sacred act.  It is a connection and affirmation of the live-giving nature of our planet.

And it is because of this sacredness, and its simple critical importance to our own continuation on this planet, that most religious traditions will begin a meal with a short prayer, a blessing, or, as we certainly called it when I was at school.  Grace.

         For what we are about the receive

         May we be truly thankful.

Or, in the alternative known to so many more school children

         For what we are about to receive,

         May the Lord help us.

Saying Grace before a meal, giving thanks for our food, our health, our good fortune, is a vital part of our reconnection to the world and to our God

It’s a habit that is easy to start, and easy to continue. To pause, briefly, before we eat.  To take a look at the food, to consider from whence it came.  To remember and to be thankful.

I trained for Ministry at Harris Manchester College in Oxford.  And one of the great privileges of that training and location was the ‘formal dinner’ each Wednesday evening.  Full attendance, all in gowns.  Top table for the Principal and his guests.

As you enter the Dining Hall, the Arlosh Hall, the smell of delicious food surrounds you from the kitchen.  You make your way to the nearest empty chair, on the long bench tables.  Standing with your fellow students, all new and close friends already.  And you stand, waiting for the Hall to fill.

When all are assembled, a hammer is struck on a block. 

And Grace is said.

Each week by a chosen student.  And as a theologian studying for Ministry, I was chosen to give the grace on some of those occasions.

The first time came with no warning.  The steward just came over with about two minutes to go and said ‘Daniel, would you say Grace tonight’

No preparation.  Frozen with fear.  Then a simple realisation.

         We give thanks for the growers and farmers who provided our food

We give thanks for those who prepare our food so lovingly

We give thanks for the friends with whom we share this meal, and our lives

We give thanks,

Amen

Not the most sophisticated theological exploration.  But it doesn’t need to be.  It is a time to stop, take stock, to reconnect, to give thanks.

'AS YOU SOW, SO SHALL YOU REAP'

So we had Grace, we sat with an empty place – we sat with an unexpected visitor.  And we ate.  And it was good.  Time now for that postprandial reflection.

As we have said already, Harvest is a time to reflect on the importance of food.  The magic of growth, the value that can come from shared meals, shared reflections and shared stories, and shared lives. 

It is from the way we approach things, the way in which we sow the seeds of our journeys, that will determine the depth of the Harvest. 

And, as I mentioned at the start, we cannot expect the seeds we sow to grow without a little external help.

What do we need for a seed to grow?

If I had a seed in my hand, what would I need to do first, to help it grow?

(pot, soil)

And what will it need to grow?

(sun, water, care and attention)

So, our seed needs soil, and water, and food, and sunshine.  And night.  And some shelter.  And then, and only then, might it grow and produce wonderful food for us to eat.  From each tiny seed, we can have a vegetable, or vegetables, or fruits, or a nut tree or any number of different growing things.

There is magic in growth.  I know it can all be explained by science, and that is good.  It is helpful and useful to know how these things happen.

But, all the same, there is a magic to it. 

Can you picture, in your mind, the amazing transformation that takes place in that seed – growing, stretching, emerging.  And then you’re off.  Growing to be thousands and thousands of times bigger than when you started.

Nature may be explainable.  But it is still magic.

And it is so fragile.  This great world in which we live.  With the beauty of nature, and wonder of light, heat, darkness, dampness.  It is so necessary to life, and so fragile too.

And we are part of this world, part of this magic.  And we have it in our power to help it remain a magical place.  We are able to help make and keep this planet beautiful.

For me, I want that commitment to keeping the world beautiful to become a part of my own nature.  I want and hope that it is second-nature to me to treat this world and its inhabitants and its habitat with reverence, with care and with love.

As you sow, so shall you reap.

From Paul’s letter to the Galatians, Chapter 6.  As you sow, so shall you reap.  It means of course that the personal consequences of your actions are in proportion to the good or bad intentions towards others.  Or, to put it more simply, if you are nice to other people, they are more likely to be nice to you. And, if you treat this planet with respect.  If you do your best to avoid littering, polluting, and destroying the world, then the world will still be here for  little while yet, helping you to grow your food and to eat your meals.  And to be thankful.

And it can be seen in the real things we plant too.  As part of their Summer Solstice celebrations this year, this gang here in front of us planted a special sunflower in the somewhat rough soil at the back of the church. 

And it has grown.  Despite poor soil, despite all the rain, and hardly any sun, the sun flower has grown.  A beautiful, yellow shining face of a flower.  So thank you to all of you, for sowing and nurturing.  And allowing nature to do her magical thing.

As a congregation, as Sevenoaks Unitarians, we made a commitment to Fairtrade earlier this year.  And that commitment is a way of acknowledging the need to treat other people, and to treat the natural world, with respect and with love.

From the Grace at the start of the meal – being thankful to God, or the Universe, or nature, for farmers, for nature, for food and for friends.  Through the communal meal, a sharing of food, lives and love. 

Bolstered and nourished we are ready to set out into the world once more.  Ready to stand up to injustice, and ready to help heal this world.

May our Harvest be bountiful and inspiring.

Pure Waters

MP3 Download (Click Here)

In our Service today we celebrated New Beginnings.  We were lucky to have a Child Naming and Blessing within the Service, giving us the opportunity to reflect on the lessons we can learn from the innocence of childhood, but also the practical possibilities for us all to begin, renew and strengthen our lives.  Each day, each week, each year.

You can download a free MP3 of the Sermon by clicking the link above.  Alternatively, the text is below.

New beginnings.  A common theme in religious and spiritual places, yet one to which we often need to return and renew.  A new beginning for a new beginning.

I am delighted to welcome Stephen, Laura and their family and friends here today to help celebrate the arrival and blessing of Sylvie this morning.  Sylvie has of course been here a couple of times already, and has charmed the hearts of all.  Something that many babies and small children have an amazing knack of doing.

And there is, perhaps, something in the innocence and opportunity of all children that stirs a hope in our hearts.  A hope not only for a safe and healthy future for Sylvie, but also a stirring of memory and thoughts of new beginnings within each of us.  As the older and supposedly wiser individuals, we are only too aware of the wonderful possibilities of life, and of our own successes, and more importantly, failures, in trying to life that life of perfect truth and love.

Later in this service, we will bless and welcome Sylvie to this congregation, to this community, to this world.  Yet this is a celebration of life and recognition of new birth.  Sylvie is not making a conscious decision today to renew her life, to shed her old ways.  Instead this is recognition of her delightful innocence and purity.

 

The notion of baptism and renewal however is something that is not to be confined to children.  It is something that I believe we, as adults – as individuals and congregation and community, must surely reflect on as we try to make sense of this world and the goodness we might be able to bring to this broken world.

This congregation itself comes from the General Baptist movement, as do many Unitarian congregations across the country, but more usually here in the South.  The builders of this Meeting House 300 years ago believed in the power of adult baptism as a mark of membership and renewal.  The Baptistry for this congregation was a little further along the road, where the house at number 9 now sits.  The house is called the Ba’stry, and the spring and pool are a listed feature in the front garden.

But we don’t use this anymore.  We do not perform adult baptism, and very few people will experience such a thing in modern day – although of course there are some denominations that still practice it.

Nevertheless, I suspect many people do still yearn for this opportunity to renew and start again.  In work, in family, with friends, in personal choice.  We all of us make mistakes.  At heart, I believe we all seek to be good people, to live in a world where peace, love and understanding are the guides by which we live and work.  Yet, I suspect I am not alone, in sometimes looking back and wondering whether I might do better to start again.

And this cleansing with water, this act of purification is not something that has come exclusively from Christianity.  Such rituals have common in all parts of the world for thousands of years.  Not so surprising given the importance of water to human life – a ritual outward cleansing was seen as symbolic of an inward cleansing of the soul.  A sacrament.  An outward sign of inward grace.

We still do it.  We might stand in the shower in the morning, thinking of the new starts we will make this day.  We might sit in the bath at night, washing away in our thoughts the things we didn’t get right.

We start again with clean sheets, with clear consciences, with a clean set of wheels.

And these things are vital to our spiritual lives.  Without ritual, without an opportunity to try again.  Without recourse to the cleansing and refreshing power of water, the stream of life, we can become bogged down in remorse, in disappointment, in unnecessary self-criticism.  We need the chance to start again, to bring ourselves back to a new beginning.

 

In our second reading this morning, read to us by Maggie, Erica Jong spoke of the child within, and the child without.  How the memories of childhood, infact the memories of pre-birth times, provide a route back to the beginning. 

Remembering the wavesound of my blood, the thunder of my heart

and

         like your mother, always dreaming of the sea.

And we have water again.   The sea.  That great cleanser.

We were in Suffolk this summer, on the coast, and I was reminded again and again of the power of the sea. 

A dirty great mass of water, ultimately uncontrollable.

Just water.

Yet to the sea does all return.  Certainly on the Suffolk coast there

are daily reminders of how all is slowly going back.  The enormous medieval city of Dunwich was lost to the sea over a period of several hundred years.  A huge place, one of the King’s proudest ports.  Now just a couple of houses and an arch from the monastery.

The city has been cleansed.  Yet life begins a new.  Elsewhere perhaps, but afresh, anew, with a new beginning.

Elizabeth Tarbox, in our first reading, tells us too of the value our new beginnings might bring to the world.  Not just to ourselves. 

‘you cleanse the world with your breathing, you beautify the world with your giving, you perfect the world with your thinking and acting and caring’

And you do.  We do.  We all do.

When we know we need to start afresh, we need to turn that new leaf.  Then, at that moment, we are making a commitment to ourselves.  And to the world.

So childhood, water, new beginnings.  All seem somehow linked in the deeper recesses of our minds and hearts.  These are the patterns and anchor points for the soul.  We are strengthened by these things.  They help us to focus our thoughts.  Our hearts.  On the possibilities within us.

We are here to welcome Sylvie.  And we are here also to wish for her the blessings that childhood and fresh starts can bring to all.

As we bless Sylvie with life-giving waters this morning, may we each be blessed and renewed by the spirit within.