Round and Round We Go Again!

Note: This short homily is the last in the "Let it be a Dance" series based on phrases from Ric Masten's song. It was delivered at the Rock Labyrinth Gathering Place in the woods behind our home at our Annual Memorial Day Weekend Picnic!

All during this program year, I’ve used phrases from Ric Masten’s song, “Let it be a dance” as the themes for my sermons.

Because we sometimes get carried away with the music and don’t really hear the words, I’d like for us to remember those special words by using his song as a responsive reading today.

And perhaps as we hear these words, we will also bring to memory our journey this year through the sermons connected to these phrases. Your response when I signal will simply be: Let it be a dance!

Let a dancing song be heard, play the music say the words, and fill the sky with sailing birds.
Let it be a dance!
Learn to follow, learn to lead, feel the rhythm, fill the need, to reap the harvest, plant the seed.
Let it be a dance!
Everybody turn and spin, let your body learn to bend, and like a willow with the wind –
Let it be a dance!
A child is born, the old must die, a time for joy, a time to cry, take it as it passes by,
Let it be a dance!
Morning star comes out at night, without the dark, there is no light. If nothing’s wrong, then nothing’s right –
Let it be a dance!
Let the sunshine, let it rain; share the laughter, bare the pain, and round and round we go again –
Let it be a dance!

Now we come to the end of our program year – only to start round again.
And indeed, your program committee has made the commitment to have worship services all year round at UUFS – including stories for all ages and music – even during the summer. So we hope that you will not see this picnic as the end of some linear map – but a gentle turn as we continue to go round and round.

When I was younger, I climbed my life – as in climbing a ladder. I would look up – see a rung that stood for something – like getting a driver’s license or a degree or a job or a promotion, rungs representing family markers too – climb, climb, sometimes slipping and falling, but climbing once again.

That ladder metaphor doesn’t work for me anymore. Now I am happy to dance in this circular labyrinth --- with seasons that come and go and come again – perhaps with different perspective, circling round and round with life
– in all the aspects that Ric Masten cited in that glorious song.

And I still may slip and fall, but I’ve tried to learn to turn that fall into a somersault, and make it part of my dance.

I love this dance – though parts may be difficult. And I think one reason I love it so is that I’m dancing with all of you and with those UU principles that we hold dear. As we share this labyrinth of life together, may we continue to bless each other – and in turn be blessings to other circles -- to the bigger circle – that sacred hoop that Black Elk spoke of when he shared:

Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.

And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy...
May it be so!

I invite you now to walk or sway and dance to the center of the labyrinth – then back out on our little stone path by the fairy.
Because it is Memorial Day weekend, you may choose a rock in remembrance of someone who has given their life in service to our country – or perhaps take a rock to symbolize your hope for peace or something else and take that rock with you to the center to leave there.

While we move through these circles, Jason will play and sing “The Circle of Life” for us.