My spirit shall rejoice in God
Who breaks my chains of guilt and fear;
For God upholds each person’s worth
Throughout the ages of this Earth.
If cobwebs fill the corners
That lurk within our mind
Our faith can help us brush aside
Each clinging thought we find
May the food that we eat
And the friends that we share
Give us strength for spreading
True justice and peace.
Charge our hearts with wonder,
God of sheer delight,
As we sense your presence
Filling day and night.
If Heaven is more than simply a place,
If pictures of God evolve evermore,
If love is affirmed as life’s highest grace
The mystery remains, the sacred expands
To gift compassion’s transforming embrace.
When masks of God both age and die,
With intervening deities,
As doctrines lose their rigid hold
And freedoms grow like forest trees
Leave behind illusion’s ways
Culture plants within the mind,
Clothed in vestments of the faith
Masking truths we need to find,
No one can share my inner space;
There I am alone, yet not alone,
For you are there, O God,
Deeper than my thinking,
An awakening is beginning,
The half living now arise.
All those scales which they accepted
Are now falling from their eyes.
Must death appear as always stealing life,
The fist that breaks our heart’s most sacred shrine,
Or can our own last resting space become
A wedding feast at which we gladly dine?
God wake us from illusion, rouse us from our dream,
Free us from believing that things are as they seem.
Though everything seems solid which we can see or clutch
The quantum space within them is something we can’t touch.
Let opposites all share a common space,
The inner and the outer be as one;
Each mind reflect life’s interweaving grace
And hearts all find God’s presence deep within.
O child within the Christmas scene
Come play with us today.
Melt all the ice within our hearts
And warm us as we play.
Look behind the festive scene
Both to factory and land;
Contemplate the labour force
Using both the mind and hand.
In nature as in Jesus,
All life is truly one,
But we divide Christ’s mantle
And drown Creation’s song,
The world within and world outside
Both rest within God’s caring.
When inner streams unite with seas
They herald total sharing.
Come, let us think like mountain rocks,
Come breathe the song of scented breeze;
Come join the atoms’ quantum dance,
Come weep with all the fallen trees.
Can bread and wine transform our minds
With all their complex modes?
Can sharing festive liturgies
Unlock empowering codes?
All life’s many cycles
Rest within God’s circle
And reveal Earth dying and yet living.
Who claims to own this piece of land?
Who holds its title deeds?
Who thinks it is their private space
To meet their selfish needs?
Autumn comes in all its fullness
Harvesting both land and hearts.
Autumn has its birth in Winter
In the stillness where life starts.
If you want to be happy
Love life more than things
Finding the joys which sharing brings.
If you want to end grieving
For dying or loss
Cry till your tears dissolve your cross.
Within the shadows of our thinking
Dwell glimpses of an ancient past;
Dark tales of vengeance and of terror
Beyond what gentle hearts can grasp.
What can we learn from war?
Gazing at ancient graves;
Name upon name preserved,
Marking the battle’s phase;
The lives of those who gave their all
That we should not be tyrants’ slaves.
We thank you God for history’s tales
But which version should we tell?
The story of the powerful rich
Or the poor’s oppressive hell?
Part 3 of Sacred Energy (Mass of the Universe) contains the downloadable Powerpoint slides that illustrate the various parts of the mass.
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Part 2 of Sacred Energy (Mass of the Universe) contains the complete text of the mass
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The mass in a form that you can interact with. Each individual musical segment has both an audio file (mp3) and a musical score (pdf).
read moreWho maims life today?
We maim life today
When we see the wood and not the tree,
When we fail to dream of what could be,
We maim life today.
Spirit’s golden fire,
God’s life-force in our depth, *
Fan within our hearts
Your just and caring warmth.
Deep in the human heart
The fires of justice burn;
With visions of a world renewed
Through radical concern.
What can the prophet Jesus teach us?
Where shall the mystic Christ lead us?
His Way is wonder, the path compassion,
And through letting go we shall find life.
“Knock, knock, knock and the door will surely open, *
Seek, seek, seek and the questing heart will find,”
All that only seems to lie outside us
Also dwells within our heart and mind.
When we find beauty in our depths,
When we find love within our heart,
When we find dance within our toes,
God will form our sail and chart.
