Sunday, August 27, 2023
We Have Questions: How Do We Find Hope?
Speaker: Ruth Zwald, retired social worker/minister, makes her home on a farm, starting every dawn with good coffee and the crow of the rooster. She is a Mesa Carrier on the Peruvian Medicine Path, which involves personal healing, transformational healing for others, and creating ceremony and ritual for ourselves and for the earth.
Musician: Hanna Laine is a musician and vocal empowerment coach from Grand Rapids, best known as the vocalist for the Future-Soul band Earth Radio. Skilled in piano, vocal improvisation, beat-making, layering effects, and looping, her abilities to create a soundscape or groovy bop are limitless.
Music: Hannah Laine
Gathering Host: Sandy Kate Stephens
Music: Hannah Laine
Meditation: Cindy Anderson
Moment of Silence
Reading/Teaching: Ruth Zwald HOPE, noun 1. A desire of some good, accompanied with at least a slight expectation of obtaining it, or a belief that it is obtainable. hope differs from wish and desire in this, that it implies some expectation of obtaining the good desired, or the possibility of possessing it. hope therefore always gives pleasure or joy; whereas wish and desire may produce or be accompanied with pain and anxiety. 2. That which gives hope; or that which furnishes ground of expectation, or promises desired good
– Webster’s Dictionary 1828
Today we lose the words yours and mine and find
in their absence a song that can only be sung together.
How did we ever think we could attempt
this humanness alone?
To the table of love, we bring soup, bring cherries,
bring the bread of our own sweet communion.
We bring scissors to cut away the tresses of the past,
bring dark wine to toast the courage of showing up exposed.
And when we forget the words to the song,
well, there is always laughter.
And when we forget to laugh, well, there is always
the union of tears— the way many rivers
become one river, the way many voices
become one music.
~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, from her collection All the Honey
Music: Hannah Laine
Gathering Host: Sandy Kate Stephens
Music: Hannah Laine
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