My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which,
In a moment,
Will rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the spirit.
Grant me the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the new day.
Find a comfortable position,
Keeping your heart open to a group or to the world.
Begin with a few deep breaths as you settle into your being here and now in this space together.
Let yourself sink down into the radiant center of your heart.
Pouring into my chalice the bitterness of all separations,
Of all limitations,
And of all sterile fallings away,
You then hold it out to me,
Drink ye all of this.
I shall stretch out my hand unhesitatingly towards the fiery bread which you set before me,
This bread in which you have planted the seed of all that is to develop in the future.
From the inward radiance of our own center,
Let us open our hearts into loving connection with all who are present here together in spirit and in flesh,
And beyond,
In the wider embrace of the whole world,
The global family held together in wholeness.
This bread,
Our toil,
Is of itself,
I know,
But an immense fragmentation.
This wine,
Our pain,
Is no more,
I know,
Than a draft that dissolves.
Yet,
In the very depths of this formless mass,
You have implanted,
And this I am sure of,
For I sense it,
A desire,
Irresistible,
Hallowing,
Which makes us cry out,
Lord,
Make us one.
We now move to our feet,
Grounding ourselves to this earth we all share,
Tapping into the Christ energy of the divine and material in all things,
Including our physical bodies.
Rooted in the body of God among us,
We share in our communion with all of the more than human,
With nature,
With the living earth.
May the might of those invisible hands direct and transfigure for the great world you have in mind that earthly travail which we have gathered into our hearts and now offer you in its entirety.
Remold it,
Rectify it,
Recast it down to the depths from whence it springs.
You know how your creatures can come into being only,
Like shoot from stem,
As part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.
Over every living thing which is to spring up,
To grow,
To flower,
To ripen during this day,
Say again the words,
This is my body.
And over every death force which waits in readiness to corrode,
To wither,
To cut down,
Speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith,
This is my blood.
Rich with the sap of the world,
We rise up towards the spirit whose vesture is the magnificence of the material universe.
We now move to our spiritual womb,
Into the warm embrace of our divine being,
God being us flowing from the sacred before of source,
Our living connection to the beginnings,
At home in origin,
And the ever-present becoming,
Erupting in the here and now.
In Alpha and Omega we are.
In the new humanity which is begotten today the word prolongs the unending act of birth,
And by virtue of immersion in the world's womb the great waters of the kingdom of matter have,
Without even a ripple,
Been endued with life.
No visible tremor marks this inexpressible transformation,
And yet,
Mysteriously and in very truth,
At the touch of the super-substantial word,
The immense host which is the universe is made flesh.
So far from light emerging gradually out of the womb of our darkness,
It is the light existing before all else was made which patiently,
Surely,
Eliminates our darkness.
You,
God,
Are the inmost depths,
The stability of that eternal milieu without duration or space in which our cosmos emerges gradually into being and grows gradually to its final completeness as it loses those boundaries which to our eyes seem so immense.
Everything is being,
Everywhere there is being and nothing but being.
We are,
All of us together,
Carried in the one world womb,
Yet each of us is our own little microcosm in which the incarnation is wrought independently and with degrees of intensity and shades that are incommunicable.
We now move to our head into the cleared vibrant stillness,
And we can also expand into our shared vastness,
Opening to the infinite face of God beyond us,
Into communion with the whole cosmos.
All of us,
Lord,
From the moment we are born feel within us this disturbing mixture of remoteness and nearness,
And in our heritage of sorrow and hope,
Passed down to us through the ages,
There is no yearning more desolate than that which makes us weep with vexation and desire as we stand in the midst of the presence which hovers about us nameless and impalpable and is indwelling in all things.
At this moment,
When your life has just poured with superabundant vigor into the sacrament of the world,
We shall savor with heightened consciousness the intense yet tranquil rapture of a vision whose coherence and harmonies we can never exhaust.
Thus,
Because the ultimate objective,
The totality to which our nature is attuned has been made manifest,
The powers of our being begin spontaneously to vibrate in accord with a single note of incredible richness wherein we can distinguish the most discordant tendencies effortlessly resolved,
The excitement of action and the delight of passivity,
The joy of possessing and the thrill of reaching out beyond what one possesses,
The pride in growing and the happiness of being lost in what is greater than ourselves.
And now,
In our expanding radiance,
We're simply allowing our whole being and our collective being to rest in this sacred communion of wholeness.
Now Lord,
Through the consecration of the world,
The luminosity and fragrance which suffuse the universe take on for us the liniments of a body and a face in you.
What our minds glimpsed through hesitant explorations,
What our hearts craved with so little expectation of fulfillment,
You now magnificently unfold for us,
The fact that your creatures are not merely so linked together in solidarity that none can exist unless all the rest surround it,
But that all are so dependent on a single central reality that a true life,
Born in common by them all,
Gives them,
Ultimately,
Their consistence and their unity.
Gracious Lord Christ,
The divine influence secretly diffused and active in the depths of matter,
In the dazzling center where all the innumerable fibers of the manifold meet,
Power as implacable as the world and as warm as life,
You whose eyes are of fire and whose feet are brighter than molten gold,
You whose hands imprison the stars,
You who are the first and the last,
The living and the dead and the risen again,
You who gather into your exuberant unity every beauty,
Every affinity,
Every energy,
Every mode of existence,
It is to you to whom we cry out with a desire as vast as the universe,
In truth,
You are my Lord and my God.
