Dear All,
We hope you are well & enjoying these weeks of summer. Attention to the seasons of the year brings us to an awareness of the circle that is the pattern of our changing seasons. Our theme today is that of Circles. So much of our life experience is circular in movement – a series of circles but hopefully not just a return to the beginning but each circle taking us on a little deeper and wider.
Our blessing this week is John Glynn’s ‘Song of Blessing’ – a favourite of several of you. Let’s pray it for all those who receive these Saturday Reflections, asking that wherever each of us is in the circle of life, we all have a sense of God travelling on with us.
With our love & prayer
PS For those who join us for Evening Prayer: we will be away from Saturday 8 July for a week so no EP on Sun 2, Mon 3, Thurs 4, (and Fri 5th Community only). Back for Sunday 15th.
Circle of Life
Macrina Wiederkehr
We discover each season to be a stepping stone in a great circle of life. Round and round they go, no season ever the same as the year before, each one teaching us something more about who we are and about how life is to be lived. We have come to know this circle of life as an ongoing spiral of growth, bringing ever fuller and deeper wisdom into our lived experiences.
We hope focus on The Circle of Life will renew our awareness of the planet’s seasonal diversity, and that it will bring us home to our deepest selves where seasonal changes also occur with patterned frequency and graced opportunity. May both the external and internal seasons in the circle of life continue to bless and invite us to greater growth and wholeness.
Circles
John O’Donohue
The year is a circle. There is the winter season which gives way to the spring; then summer grows out of spring until, finally, the year completes itself in the autumn. The circle of time is never broken. This rhythm in even mirrored in the day; it too is a circle. First, the new dawn comes out of the darkness, strengthening towards noon, falling away again towards evening until night returns again. Because we live in time, the life of each person is also a circle. We come out of the unknown. We appear in the earth, live here, feed off the earth, and eventually turn back into the unknown again. The oceans move in this rhythm too; the tide comes in, turns & goes back out again. It resembles the rhythm of human breath which comes in, fills & then recedes and goes back out again. There is a harmonious wholeness to the rhythm of all life to which we need to be attuned.
A Circle Prayer
Circle me, Lord – Keep fear without, keep joy within.
Keep complaining out, keep peace within.
Keep despair without, keep hope within.
Keep deceit without, keep beauty within.
Circle me, Lord. Amen.