Beginning with a Blessing

 

Steven Oliver from Q&A - ABC

 

A service of mourning and hope

 

A poem for this Sunday

 

Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End? 
By Mary Oliver

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.
And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree–
they are all in this too.
And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.
At least, closer.
And, cordially.
Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold fluttering around the corner of the sky
of God, the blue air.

the gaze of God

 Second Sunday in epiphany with a focus on the Gospel story and seeing.

New Year’s Day service

 This coming Sunday, New Year’s day, we will not be having a morning service at Ascot Vale, but will be meeting at a joint service at Airport West Uniting at 10am.

Please join us. Let us know if you want a lift. 

72 Roberts rd, Airport West.

Airport West Uniting Church

(03) 8383 8909

Map

Christmas day sermon

Incarnation as a message of love

 

Christmas day puppet show - interview with the shepherds

 

Christmas Day service details and a poem

 Our Christmas day service this year is at 9:30am and will be a family service with carols, a puppet show and time for reflection.
Here is a poem to sit with as Christmas approaches.

Christmas Poem: Mary Oliver

Says a country legend told every year:
Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see
what the creatures do as that long night tips over.
Down on their knees they will go, the fire
of an old memory whistling through their minds!

[So] I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold
I creaked back the barn door and peered in.
From town the church bells spilled their midnight music,
and the beasts listened –
yet they lay in their stalls like stone.

Oh the heretics!
Not to remember Bethlehem,
or the star as bright as a sun,
or the child born on a bed of straw!
To know only of the dissolving Now!

Still they drowsed on –
citizens of the pure, the physical world,
they loomed in the dark: powerful
of body, peaceful of mind,
innocent of history.

Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas!
And you are no heretics, but a miracle,
immaculate still as when you thundered forth
on the morning of creation!
As for Bethlehem, that blazing star

still sailed the dark, but only looked for me.
Caught in its light, listening again to its story,
I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled
my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me
the best it could all night.

Tough but Lovely

Mary and John the Baptist. A strange combo?