I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
Oberlin Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
“I Have Known Rivers”
Sunday, April 29
Cal Frye, service leader
Katie Cross, pianist
Marge Diamond, dulcimer
Sara Harris, Chalice lighter
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
Gathering Music, As Tranquil Streams
Announcements and Welcome
Lighting the Chalice, Laura Horton-Ludwig
Opening Song: #100, I’ve Got Peace Like a River
Reading, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
#662, Strange and Foolish Walls, Rev. A. Powell Davies
Story For All Ages, by Alice McLerran, Eric Carle, illustrator
! The Mountain That Loved a Bird
Children Leave for Classes, #413, Go, Now, in Peace
Reading, Psalm 65
Joys and Concerns
Reading, James Dillet Freeman, Rivers
Offertory: River, by Bill Staines, Margaret Diamond,
dulcimer
Homily, Cal Frye, “I Have Known Rivers”
Closing Song: #145, As Tranquil Streams
Closing Words, Langston Hughes
Extinguishing the Chalice,
Postlude, “Prelude” from Le Tombeau de Couperin by
Maurice Ravel - Katie Cross
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
There are many ways to salvation, and one of them is to follow a
river. —David Brower
Gathering Music, As Tranquil Streams
Welcome and Announcements
Good Morning, everyone. I am Cal Frye, this morning’s
service leader, and I am a member of this Fellowship.
We are glad to have you with us this morning.
I’d like to draw your attention to the announcements
page for events of the week and the service next week. If
you didn’t pick up one with your program, you can find
copies on the table behind you. Other announcements
may be found on bulletin board in the lobby, and I
encourage you to look these over following the service
during our coffee hour.
In addition to the printed announcements and those
listed here, I have the following special announcements:
___________________________
I hope you will join us for next Sunday’s service on
“Can I See Another’s Woe”, with Lisette Burwasser as
our service leader.
[bell] Welcome, everyone, to the Oberlin Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship. Whomever you are, where ever
you have come from, whomever you love, we welcome
you. Let our service begin.
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
Lighting the Chalice, Laura Horton-Ludwig
Fire and water, ancient opposites
Sun and ocean, the cradle of life
Dancing flame and dancing river—
We invoke them together today
As we kindle our chalice flame.
Opening Song: #100, I’ve Got Peace Like a River
Reading, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
He thought his happiness was complete when, as he
meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the
edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a
river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal,
chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle
and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh
playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught
and held again. All as a-shake and a-shiver—glints and
gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and
bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated.
By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when
very small, by the side of a man who holds one
spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he
sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him,
a babbling procession of the best stories in the world,
sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the
insatiable sea.
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
Story For All Ages,
Our story this morning is one of things found and lost
and found again, of transformation, and joy. Oh, yes,
and a river. I invite the children, or your inner children,
to come up front as I share the story called “The
Mountain That Loved a Bird” by Alice McLerran and
illustrated by Eric Carle.
Children Leave for Classes
! #413, Go, Now, in Peace
Reading, #643, Psalm 65
The great river swells with water, filling the ridges,
blessing the growth of grain, ...crown[ing] the year
with...abundance.
The pastures are perfumed with dew.
The hills deck themselves with joy.
The meadows adorn themselves with flocks.
The valleys gown themselves with grain.
They shout for joy; They join in song.
Joys and Concerns
As part of our free religious community, we share both
our joys and concerns each week. I invite you as you are
moved to come forward and light a candle to mark that
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
you would share with us this morning. Please
remember to state your name as you do so.
---------------As is our custom, I light one further candle to honor
those joys or sorrows held in the silence of our hearts.
Reading, (James Dillet Freeman, “Rivers”)
Rivers hardly ever run in a straight line.
Rivers are willing to take ten thousand meanders
and enjoy every one
and grow from every one.
When they leave a meander,
they are always more
than when they entered it.
When rivers meet an obstacle,
they do not try to run over it.
They merely go around
but they always get to the other side.
Rivers accept things as they are,
conform to the shape they find the world in,
yet nothing changes things more than rivers.
Rivers move even mountains into the sea.
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
Rivers hardly ever are in a hurry
yet is there anything more likely
to reach the point it sets out for
than a river?
Offertory:
Now we will be collecting your offering. If you are a
visitor this morning, please let the basket pass; you are our
guest. As this is the last Sunday of the month, at this time
we would be collecting your donations for our Minister’s
Discretionary Fund which is used to help address the
needs of this community. Today, however, that fund is
being collected for a special purpose. The UU annual
convention, usually called General Assembly, meets this
year in Phoenix, Arizona, and has been renamed the
Justice Assembly, with the aim of bringing the Unitarian
Universalist witness to the plight of immigrants in
Arizona. This Fellowship tries to have a delegate at
General Assembly if we can, and this year Sien Rivera will
be our representative in Phoenix. Being a soon-to-graduate
College senior, however, I’m sure Sien can use our help in
getting there. Your offering this morning will be collected
to send him to Justice Assembly 2012.
[cue]
Homily, Cal Frye, “I Have Known Rivers”
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
When I need a recharge; when my mind gets full of debris
and clutter and fret and furor; like Hercules, I prefer to
divert a river through it to wash it clean and get things
back to order. This photo is a bit grainy, but I’m in the
stern of the drab little craft in the background being
upstaged by the flashy kayaker speeding by in the
foreground. As the song describes, there’s nothing quite
like the moments when “I’ve got peace like a river in my
soul.”
But what sort of peace is that anyway, a river-like peace?
Gaze across that tranquil stream, around the boaters and
through the lily pads in the distance. Is this river a place of
calm, still peace? Certainly not.
Look beneath the surface, watch the fish dart back and
forth, or work their fins steadily just to hover in one spot
against the current and watch us drift by. Listen to the
croak and chirp of frog and toad along the margins, the
buzz of dragonfly wings skimming across the water. Hear
the prehistoric disturbance as a heron registers her
complaint that some canoeist has dared to get too close.
Numerous other birds call from bank to bank going about
their avian business. What we think of as a tranquil,
peaceful morning on the river is really a communion with
a good sample of the interdependent web of life in one
easy to reach location.
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
I have known rivers. My grandparents were active in the
Isaac Walton League and the Muskingum Watershed
Conservancy, conservationists of the Teddy Roosevelt
school. Rivers, and their care and feeding, were part of our
family stories. As a Boy Scout growing up, I learned to
canoe several Ohio rivers, and as you can see have not lost
my love of the craft, although the kayak as little sports car
compared to the minivan of the aluminum canoe does
look appealing.
I studied geology in graduate school, and I learned much
more about rivers than how to paddle my way up one and
back again, too. We describe rivers in some of the same
terms we describe ourselves, but stretched out in distance
rather than time.
[slide - stream profile]
Streams follow the path of least resistance, and always
downhill. They’re gravity-driven creatures.
Up in the hills, streams have relatively low volume but
they drop rapidly, picking up speed and energy as the
water cascades downhill. This is the youthful phase of the
stream, and up here, the water has energy to push sand
and gravel along, scouring the streambed and eroding the
mountainside and transporting much of it downstream.
These stream valleys are narrow and steep.
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
In the center reaches of this hypothetical river, we say it’s
reached maturity. The draw of gravity is more gradual,
overall energy declines a bit, and the river deposits some
of that carried burden as easily as it picks it up again and
draws it yet downstream. Sound familiar? The valley
occupied by a mature stream is broad, and the river curves
from one side to another as it flows along.
Down near its mouth, we say rivers reach their old age.
Their minds might wander and the river bed meanders,
forming great loops back and forth across their valleys,
which are very broad and flat. At least that’s what they do
when the Army Corps of Engineers leaves them alone. The
streams deposit more material than they carry at this stage
in their lives, finally forming great deltas when they reach
the sea.
[slide]
Look at this old bridge across Bird’s Nest Creek in Iowa.
Where’s the creek? In the more arid regions of our
midwest and western states, many streams flow only
intermittently. But look at the size of the rocks in the
creekbed. Something brought those boulders down here.
When this creek does flow, it can flow with great energy,
and can push even large rocks right along, if only for a
couple hours or days at a time. And each such flood picks
up more of the surrounding soil and rock and flushes it
down the Mississippi toward the Gulf of Mexico. Let me
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
show you the magnitude of some of these little ephemeral
streams.
[slide - video, flash flood]
This is a flash flood, in a small stream in Colorado. The
rain fell up in the mountains some miles away from this
spot, where a crew of US Geological Survey scientists were
installing a stream gauge. This is the danger of looking for
rocks and fossils in along dry streambeds and not paying
attention.
You can hear the power of the boulders grinding away
down on the bottom of this creekbed!
This is stream work being done at double-time. The rains
have come, and the stream has picked up its work gloves
and launched into action, another increment in opening
up the mountainside.
[slide]
Once the water has gone, a dry stream is left behind again,
just the boulders remaining in testimony of the kind of
work that had been done.
This is the way streams work. Youthful streams tend to
work in fits and starts, but sometimes huge boulders can
be pushed around by the force of exuberant splashing
water, when all gathered together in a mass.
[slide - meander loops]
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
Mature streams can carry a large load, cutting away at
their banks where the stream flows swiftest, depositing
material when flow is reduced, frequently at the same
time, just on opposite sides of the channel. The water
along the outside of the bend moves most rapidly, and is
erosive, carrying the largest particles and greatest load.
The water in the inside of the bend flows more gradually,
dropping it’s load and coasting along effortlessly. But it’s
the same river, even the same water. Cross-currents bring
water from slow-flow regions into the faster parts and out
again as the river in general flows downhill...
[Describe meanders]
I can go on like this for hours...
How about those tranquil streams?
When water is truly peaceful, still, not moving, it turns
stagnant and no longer able to support life. Healthy
streams may be tranquil on the surface, but they remain in
motion. Beneath the surface, water flow runs fast in some
places, slower in others. Fish, crayfish, and many other
organisms often just rest in one spot and wait for the
current to bring them something tasty for lunch.
Healthy streams are picking up things here, and putting
them down again over there; loosening the rocks in one
place while stacking them up again in another. Things are
always in motion, stuff is always happening. Sound
familiar?
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
I’m not the first to describe life as a stream. Sometimes
mine has been a torrent, uncontrollable, scary. More often
it’s been that of this stream here. Pick someone up here,
deliver someone else over there. Do this, do that. Once in a
while it still feels torrential, but with luck you can limit
these times to the occasional spring floods, allowing the
rest of the time to be tranquilly busy, tranquilly
productive. Indeed, that describes both a healthy stream
and a healthy life.
I originally set down to write this as a metaphor for
running a personal life, but at this exciting time I can’t
keep from turning it into a model for our lives collectively.
We’re entering a new period in our history together, this
Fellowship. We’re about to begin the process of turning a
new house into our home, and that’s going to take lots of
work. Our relationships with each other are likely to
change a bit as new responsibilities are found and
opportunities of using unknown talents open up to our
community. It’s going to be a busy time.
We can do this! [slide]
Any goal worth having takes work. Work to prepare, work
to achieve, work to maintain. Keep the peace, keep the
movement, keep moving.
Not only can we do this, but I think its going to work out
best if we can do this as streams would. Push at obstacles
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
as you can, but if they’re not going to budge, flow around
them! Carry only what you can carry, but carry something
when you can. If something too large needs to be carried,
wait until there’s more hands to add to the flow until it
can be carried. At the flood stage, if you’re feeling
overwhelmed, put down the boulders and coast along
with the flow for a while, catch your breath. We’re all in
this together, and we can support each other while the job
continues. That’s what fellowship means.
Remember, while the Colorado River carved the Grand
Canyon, it did not do it overnight! Streams use the twin
powers of patience and persistence to get jobs like that
accomplished, sometimes one sand grain at a time. We’re
not going to be able to turn our new building into a
finished home over the summer, but we don’t need to.
We’re going to be working on that river bed for a while
before we’re settled into it and it seems like home to us.
But it will be usable and useful well before that. Keep
moving, and it will get done. Don’t just go with the flow,
be the flow.
“Rivers hardly ever are in a hurry
yet is there anything more likely
to reach the point it sets out for
than a river?”
Closing Song: #145, As Tranquil Streams
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
Service for Sunday, April 29, 2012
Closing Words, Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than
the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above
it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers;
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Extinguishing the Chalice,
May we leave this place as tranquil streams, not stagnant
ponds; with calm determination smoothing the roil and
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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I Have Known Rivers!
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ripple of life and ‘getting things done.’ Remember, clear
water can level whole mountains with time; and when
the rocks have been softened and you share your
strength with those around you, perhaps Joy will come
to stay.
Postlude, “Prelude” from Le Tombeau de Couperin by
Maurice Ravel - Katie Cross
Notes following the service:
© 2012, Cal Frye, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License.!
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