Preface This is a form of celebration closely modelled on the Liturgies at present in use in my own branch of Christianity, the Episcopal Church in Scotland. It is intended for use primarily by people who profess no particular faith, who do not necessarily worship any form of god and who may subscribe neither to eschatological beliefs nor entertain any certainties whatsoever concerning life after death. What they will however have is the strong urge to a critical knowledge of self and an unremitting desire to love and to serve.
Such people have until now been almost totally deprived of a ritual through which to express their shared aspirations and forge the bonds of mutual support.
Through a long and intimate involvement with the Christian Liturgy, being for the past ten years closely engaged in the matter of its music and hymnology, I have come, while growing more and more estranged from its content, to be correspondingly gripped by the cogency of its form. Its tripartite movement, from Preparation to Offering and from Offering to Receiving, has impressed itself more and more on my sensibilities, until I am now convinced that it may provide the ideal template for any celebration whatsoever, and especially for those who seek to be informed and strengthened in purpose, being already convinced that some deep form of selfoffering and commitment will alone make sense of their lives, yet at the same time sensing the need humbly to acknowledge their weakness and dependency and the likely benefit to be had from opening themselves to receive inspiration, guidance and support from whatever source they may.
The present text is tentative and experimental. Fellow labourers, should any emerge, may of course prefer to attempt an entirely different approach. The music though on the whole quite simple, is nonetheless somewhat different from the popularising ditties of the present-day Roman Communion, many of which are frankly an insult to the human spirit.
I should imagine that celebrations like these, were they to become at all current practice, would, as in the Churches, sprout a number of themes, giving shape and variety to their repetition, and that certain of those themes would involve key personalities from whose lives and teaching inspiration may be sought. I have accordingly chosen in this text to centre on Jesus of Nazareth. In doing so I intentionally presented myself with perhaps one of the greatest challenges – Jesus, widely known as the Christ, the Son of God, considered from a viewpoint from which he appears simply as a charismatic human. It would be hoped nevertheless that convinced Christians would feel able to join in such a celebration, designed as it is to be a gathering for all people of good will, hominibus bonae voluntatis, where all are free to add for themselves such refinements as they see fit, and the creed of none is to be disparaged.
From Act I: Preparation Following the Gloria hymn, Glory to the Spirit, the Officiant introduces the Theme of the Day – in this case, Jesus of Nazareth.There are Readings and an Address, followed by the General and Particular Calls. Act I concludes with the Collective Call:
Collective call Leaders:
As to ourselves, may we at all times be moved by the Spirit of Love and Peace, of Sincerity arid Truth and of a Disinterested Understanding; that where we love our love may be without possession; that where we support our support may be without indulgence; that where we oppose our opposition may be without hatred; that where we correct our correction may be no mere settling of scores; that where we coerce our coercion may entail the least possible resort to force; and that the maintenance of ourselves and our dependants may not involve the exploitation of others, the suffering of brute beasts or the abuse of earth’s resources.
People:
To this we consent.
To this we are pledged.
From Act II: Offering The Call to Grateful Consecration Officiant:
Brothers and sisters, with grateful joy we acknowledge all that we inherit, the resources of this world, and all that has been fashioned of them, the work of men’s hands.
We voice our thankfulness for all we gain from the devoted forethought of those who have gone before us, for our partial understanding of our universe and its harnessing to supply our needs; for the moulding of our societies and the fashioning of their moralities, their customs and their laws; sof 71 May 2005 for that tentative probing of the mysteries of human personality whereby our lives may more wisely be governed; and for the unremitting quest for truth in every domain / all these the works of the human mind.
Especially do we confess our indebtedness to all who have laboured to enhance our lives by the creation of beauty or through the superabundance of their loving joy and goodness, particularly in the works of rearing, caring and healing / fruits of the human spirit.
People:
All this we gratefully acknowledge.
Officiant:
Mindful therefore of all such blessings, we pledge and dedicate our own lives with such resources as we may possess, corporeal and spiritual, mental and material, for the preservation and betterment of our world and for the sake of all peoples, their children and their children’s children, and of all earth’s creatures.
People:
All this we pledge.
From Act III: Receiving Officiant:
Brothers and sisters, we who have now pledged ourselves in gratitude for so much received, let us now open ourselves in body, mind and spirit to a still further receiving.
But let us first be reminded of the nature of our existence: how deep we are rooted in our universe, composed, as in part we know ourselves to be, of its mineral and vegetable elements, and reliant daily upon them, as much for their continued plentifulness as for the abeyance of their more violent and injurious manifestations. It is right therefore that ritually we now set apart a certain quantity of bread and wine as tokens of this dependency and of this oneness.
And let us not forget that we are also in part constituents of the animal realm, taking our place with brute creation in the struggle for survival, both as individuals and as members of group and species, endowed therefore with equivalent needs, instincts and propensities – a twin-headed inheritance. It is right therefore that for this reason also we particularise bread and wine, as being, in their representative aspect of flesh and blood, that common ground of animal existence.
Nor dare we remain in ignorance how every animal lives upon the death of others, claiming for a season their room. And so it is with us also. It is right therefore and fitting that the bread betokening our common flesh be a bread broken, broken and gathered again for our nurture and sustaining.
Yet we, being, for all our animal nature, so made as to seek a sympathetic understanding, and hence disposed to frame ideals and to follow paths of action in furtherance of others’ deliverance from sorrows, must at times engage in conflict with certain aspects of our natural endowment, both in ourselves and as manifest in others, natural endowments to which our own more highly developed propensities have frequently lent their own twists of morbidity, corrupting even our best-seeming ventures. That in this conflict some have engaged with clearer vision and a more enduring bravery than the rest, is past denying. From many such the ultimate price is exacted. And so it is right and fitting that the wine here seen as representative of our common blood should now be poured, and being poured should also be conserved for our continued refreshing.
Nor may it be hidden from our understanding that, in works great and small for the inspiration and enlightenment of their fellows and for the betterment of our common lot, many have drawn strength from diverse sources, from their elders, from their peers, from the recorded words and deeds of predecessors, as also from more covert springs, be those, as some would claim, from supernatural influence, or, by the interpretation of others, from inaccessible and inexplicable depths of the human soul.
It is accordingly right and fitting that, aided by all we here experience and by the spirit suffusing this present celebration – and uniquely in the common reception of these so eloquent elements – we may look to know the access of a like influence. And so, acknowledging our partial nature and our much dependent condition, in humility let us now prepare to receive.
There follows a hymn and then the bread and wine are distributed to the people with the words:
Receive the bread.
Receive the wine.
There is music during the Receiving, followed by the Great Silence, the Farewell and Recessional Chant.