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Call to Worship

Holy and beautiful is the custom that brings us together on this quiet Sunday following Christmas Day.
Here we are gathered to give our thanks and to face our ideals, to remember our loved ones, to seek that which is permanent, and to serve goodness and beauty and the qualities of life that make it rich and whole.
Through this hour breathes the worship of all the ages, the cathedral music of all history, and blessed are the ears that hear that eternal sound.

The Lighting of the Chalice

May the flame in this chalice
Recall for us
The flickering fires of life
And the glowing embers of memory
Which holds us all in the light eternal.

Reading

The reflection I will give later in this service is titled "Wrapping Up Christmas" - saying goodbye to Christmas. As I was preparing for this a poem of Robert Frost came to mind, his poem titled, "After Apple-Picking."

"After Apple-Picking" is an autumn poem, an "ode to autumn," as I have heard it described. So it might seem a little odd to be reading an autumn poem at Christmas time.

But it's a poem that's about more than autumn. It's a poem relating to transitions, to endings, and to saying of "Goodbye."

And it's a poem for when you're tired and need to rest, a poem for the time when you need to say "Enough," a poem of collapse, of letting go, of giving in to sleep and to the dream-world.

And it's a poem relating to human limitation. An individual can't pick all the fruit that might be harvested. One can't make real all the things the imagination proposes as possible. Thus, this poem has to do with reaching your limits, and recognizing your limits, of letting go of what you haven't done and won't be able to do. It's a poem of returning intentions back to the earth to be recycled.

Finally, it's a poem of being overcome and undone by the very thing that you yourself desired. As Frost will say in the poem, " I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired." This is certainly often the case at Christmas: we become overtired and overcome by the very things we sought.

"After Apple-Picking," by Robert Frost:

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

"WRAPPING UP CHRISTMAS"
Bruce A. Bode

Perhaps we can say there are three basic movements to Christmas: 1) wrapping for Christmas, 2) unwrapping of Christmas, and 3) wrapping up Christmas.

This morning, on this day following Christmas, we are looking at Christmas from that third perspective, from after the event, from the side of "wrapping up Christmas."

Typically, we look at Christmas from the perspective of before the event, spending a lot of time in anticipation and preparation. We build and build toward Christmas - the whole season of Advent.

I try to do my part in the build-up. I do my best to heighten the anticipation, to engage the imagination of the child: "Christmas is coming!" I say. "Look, it's on its way. See these banners appearing on the wall. See these candles we are lighting - one, two, three, four; purple, green, blue, red; Faith, Hope, Love, and Joy! Christmas is coming! Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?"

As with so many things, the anticipation is a great part of the event. Sometimes, as it turns out, it is the most enjoyable and meaningful part of the event. The actual event, given its build-up, given the vast amount of energy invested in preparation for it, is difficult to live up to and often a bit of a let down.

Not always, but frequently. The reality of the imagination frequently outruns the capacity of actual reality to obtain the hoped-for ideal. Actual, concrete, in-the-flesh reality has a hard time competing with the reality of the imagination.

For one thing, the actual event happens so quickly. It's over before you know it - almost like the 100-yard dash in track and field events. Sprinters spend enormous time in training and preparation for the event. Then the gun sounds and in 10-12 seconds the event is over.

The unwrapping of Christmas doesn't take place quite that quickly, but relative to the wrapping for Christmas the unwrapping is over in a flash.

And even if all goes well, even if expectations are met or nearly met, we are soon ready to move on.

Something Albert Schweitzer wrote came to my mind as I was preparing this, and perhaps he was in a somber mood when he wrote it.

Life attracts us... with a thousand expectations, and fulfills hardly one of them. And the fulfilled expectation is almost a disappointment, for only anticipated pleasure is really pleasure; in pleasure which is fulfilled its opposite is already stirring.

But I hope that your Christmas season has been a good one. I hope that in the preparation and build-up for Christmas you have had time to reflect on the qualities of Christmas and to experience what Christmas means for the human heart.

And I hope that the Christmas event itself was good for you, that the unwrapping of Christmas at least partially met the hopes and dreams that went into the wrapping for Christmas.

I hope that your spirit has been stirred and deepened in this Christmas season.

I hope that like Ebenezer Scrooge the hard shell of painful reality that so often overlays and blocks the qualities of Christmas has been broken through and that you found a way to bring forth the treasures of your more generous self.

But even if this has not been the case, even if you have mostly missed the qualities of Christmas this year - have perhaps been busy to the point of distraction, or full of concern for the direction the world seems to be taking, or overcome by personal and family concerns - even if this has been the case, it may still be possible to catch the spirit of Christmas, to catch it as it now recedes from view.

Often as you are putting things away you take note of what you hadn't noted before. Quietly and without fanfare you see what you may not have been able to see from other perspectives. Often in saying goodbye we see a fullness it wasn't possible to catch before.

So take your time this year as you wrap up Christmas, putting Christmas away for another year. Because there is no expectation attached to it, and because there is a little time for life to go fallow, one may find an opportunity to connect with the treasures of Christmas.

As you return the ornaments and decorations to their boxes and bins of storage, handle each with care. Play the carols that mark the season one more time.

Before moving too quickly into the next aspect of your life, take your time with the wrapping up of Christmas. These days following the main event may even be for some of you the very best part of the Christmas season.

Benediction

And now may the blessings of life be upon us.
May the memories we gather here give us hope for the future.
May the love we share strengthen us
And bring joy to our hearts,
This day and forever. Amen.

(Adapted from Gary Kowalski)

Extinguishing of Chalice

We extinguish this chalice
But not the light of truth,
The warmth of community,
Or the fire of commitment.
These we carry in our hearts
Until we are together again.

(NOTE: This is a manuscript version of the reflection given by The Reverend Bruce A. Bode at the Fifth Annual Music Service of the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on December 26, 2004. The spoken reflection, available on audio cassette and CD at the Fellowship, may differ slightly in phrasing and detail from this manuscript version.)