Scott Neely

A meditation on the music of Christmas, especially when words may have lost their meaning, but music still touches our souls.

Offered on the morning of Christmas Eve 2017 at the Unitarian Univeralist Church of Spartanburg, SC.

The sermon may be hear here:

From the sermon:

“That’s Christmas: 
to go to the heart, where trouble and hard realities persist,
and to sing to them a song that is itself 
joy, and peace, and the stillness of the night.

“In your sadness and in your joy,
in the fullness of who you are,
and what this world is
without compromise or capitulation
just you as you are,

“listen for the music, 
hear the carolers through time and around the globe,
and create this night
full of magic
for you
and for a world
that longs for peace.”

“I see light / in your eyes. See it in mine.”

You are the Divine Child.

Among the many ways to reflect on the winter season–historical, theological, personal–a meditation on the mythic meaning of the Divine Child, expressed deep within even the most orthodox religious traditions. Offered at the beginning of winter celebrations, in observance of World AIDS Day, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, SC on December 3, 2017.

The meditation may be heard here: 

An excerpt of the transcript may be found here:

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“Not aggrandizing, not ego-inflating

but at once both humbling & empowering,

an echo within us,

a summons

 

to that which is Deepest & Best in us,

whatever that is.

 

You are the divine child.

The impossibility of these stories

is a sign

 

of the possible

in our own lives,

 

of just how transformative

& beautiful our lives might actually be.

 

That is how myth works–

from beyond us,

something totally implausible

echoes within us

what we most are.

 

You are the divine child.

 

Even Christian orthodoxy teaches this,

although it often does not know it.

The names and images are everywhere in the tradition:

 

theosis, deification, union with the divine;

which is a return to our very nature,

imago Dei.

 

There can be significant variations in our belief and understanding,

and there will always be authorities to tell us we are wrong.

 

But at core, the teaching is clear:

the divine is in You.

 

And the terror of this is,

that we are capable of working

transformation in the world

 

which no one expects.

That is the story of the Divine Child:

 

Each of us full of divinity—

 

which simply means

fully able

to summon the world

 

to the beauty, to the justice, to the compassion, to the freedom

 

that we know is possible,

that we know can be.

 

And no one expects it

of you—perhaps not even you yourself.

 

But I do.

I see it in you.

That is why I would choose to work with you.

 

I think this may be why

this mythic element of our traditions

is disregarded or underplayed

and so often considered blasphemous

even though it is everywhere so evident:

 

because it asks everything of us.

 

The stories are clear:

It is in our very vulnerabilities,

in the apparent smallness and limitations of our lives

that we work the greatest transformations.

 

The image of the child

is of one without power,

naïve and weak

 

who overturns the world.

 

And so with us all—

whatever our apparent weakness,

 

our very vulnerabilities

summon us

 

to turn the world, to change it

into a place

more liveable, more just, more caring,

 

more our home, more a home for everyone,

more full of light.

 

…

 

I see this in you.

 

In the symbols and songs and stories this season,

we hear an echo of who we ourselves are,

summoning us,

 

whatever anyone else says:

 

you are the Divine Child.

 

In you

everything is possible.

In me,

everything is possible.

In us,

everything is possible.

 

I see light

in your eyes.

 

See it in mine.

 

Let us fill the eyes of the world

with the light

of this season.”

 

“Grandfather,
Look at our brokenness…
We have strayed from the Sacred Way.”

(from the Ojibway)

To honor our past, and find our future. A meditation offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg on November 12, 2017.

The sermon may be heard here:

From the sermon:

“These voices
that many tried to silence
but could not,

“that created a new kind of family,
a new kind of community,
a circle

“of healing & justice,
aware of the past
but for the present, and the future—for us.

“…We come from places and people before us.
And here we are:

“we draw a circle
creating new families, new communities, new selves
seeking a stronger present and a stronger future.

“The ones who would guide us are not far away,
speaking,
whispering, encouraging,
singing

“with us,
calling us
to a more Sacred Way.”

“O our Mother the Earth,
O our Father the Sky,…
weave for us a garment of brightness;
May the warp be the white light of morning;
May the weft be the red light of evening;
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.”
–from the Tewa Pueblo

A meditation on pride, in celebration of the annual Upstate SC Pride March & Festival. Offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, SC on Sunday, November 5, 2017.

The meditation may be heard here:

An excerpt from the meditation:

“Pride,
that claiming of oneself & standing up in oneself,
that decision
to live as the light
burning within us

“& to move that light out,
that thing we so profoundly are,
illuminating the world.

“It is hard to live our truth,
there is so much pressure
not to do so

“and so much threat,
so much rejection and violence,
and so much fear of all we will lose.

“But how powerful
the decision, the pride,
to hold the light of ourselves
for ourselves and for so many others
in the face of all that would stop us;

“and how powerful,
the expanding
constellation of support
we create.

“You are the triple rainbow,
iridescent light
shining through all the coming storms:

“your self, beautiful;
awakening others to their beauty;
showing us the beauty of this world.

“Walk in the beauty of your being.
Walk together in beauty & strength.
Walk full of pride

“through this world
whose beauty
you reveal.”

“One who has entered the stream enters the flow of the dharma-nature.”(Hsuan Hua)

A meditation on the flow of our lives into one another, in celebration of the annual Gathering of Waters Service at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, SC. Offered on Sunday, September 17, 2017.

The meditation may be heard here:

An excerpt of the sermon transcript may be read here:

“Have you ever felt

in the flow of life,

in the flow of your life,

where everything moves in sequence,

when connections happen where they never should,

where people you have been thinking of appear around the corner

when they should never be there,

when what you need is right there, in your hand,

when life flows effortlessly

& you flow with it?

 

“This is an expansive feeling,

a dream-like but grounded feeling,

a silver ribbon in the sky

& you are a part of it.

 

“Breathe, and feel the fullness

of life

flow into you.

 

“Of course, it isn’t always this way.

Sometimes we feel

completely out of sync,

out of the flow,

disconnected from the world,

disconnected from ourselves,

nothing going our way,

at a loss of what to do

without the resources, internal or external,

to do what is needed, demanded, urgent,

 

“lost to ourselves,

lost,

out of the flow.

 

“We can feel it there

in its absence;

 

“we know what could be

but is not

 

“and that is a lonely, broken,

disconnected feeling,

acute,

acutely alone.

 

“Breathe:

I find in those moments

stopping to breathe may offer us

no answers,

but at least a connection back to ourselves.

When we are trying to live,

to find our lives,

breathing is a very good thing to do.

 

“Even if we feel distant from our own lives.

Just breathe…

 

“We flow,

not just in our own private lives,

but together,

we flow together:

 

“the intersection of lives

that should never connect

but do:

 

“We offer this to each other,

here, in this place,

moving through this place

on our life journeys—

 

“not perfectly,

not always smoothly,

often not consciously

 

“but pulling one another

deeper in,

into the flow

when we feel so far out of it.

 

“We flow into one another,

all of us, all of ourselves,

pulled in:

 

“our blessing and our decay,

our success and our failure,

our annoying habits and our genius,

our loves and our indifference

 

“all our deep, muddy, polluted

sacred flow:

 

“one great, luminous

silver ribbon

winding into the sky.

 

“Breathe once more together,

our breath, muddy & full of light,

our breath, so many streams

flowing into one another, moving, moving deeper, moving on–

 

“into a great

deep

beautiful

polluted

holy

all-embracing

current,

 

“a great silver ribbon,

the power of life

in its greatest depth.”