Script for Worship
Welcome
My name is Megan Visser. I am joining you from my dining room slash congregation, here in Los Angeles, California. I am an ordained UU minister and it is good to be with you, dear colleagues. I know some of you, and some of you I am meeting for the first time. I will be with you for the next 45 minutes. I am grateful to McKinley for inviting me here to be with you and share some practices at the beginning of your chapter meeting. This will be part-chapel service, worship and part-teaching of embodied healing or somatic practices. I’ll make a brief note here and there about things to take and share with your congregants. I am placing in the chat the link to my website, and the specific address, where you can find these practices in a form that’s conducive to worship or small groups or pastoral care. Also, if you need a manuscript to follow along, it is posted there as well. For now, I invite you to settle in as best you know how, whether perched on an office chair or reclining on your couch. With your camera on or off. Alone in your home, or with spouses or children or roommates nearby. Let yourself spread out, onto the surface that holds you on the Earth.
Hear this Call to Worship by Rev. Gretchen Haley:
Come in, all who long to know
how to love this world
How to keep eyes open
hands unclenched
arms wide
Breathing deeply
In, and out
This is a time to practice
Because there is
still so much good, and beauty, and joy
But it can be hard to keep telling this tale
With all the news
and the wind, and the rain, and the trembling earth
(Who wants to love this life, anyway?)
Come in, all who teeter
on this edge of cynicism
broken hearted and trying still to remember
laughter and kindness
And the chance to be alive
in these days when so much is at stake
In this place we remind each other
Why we persist
Giving each other courage
to take this path that is not always easy
to keep practicing
This love
That cannot, will not let us go
And still calls us on
Come, let us worship together
Chalice Lighting
If you have a chalice nearby, you are welcome to light your own or you are welcome to share this one with me. Maybe whisper alone to yourself the words of the chalice lighting in the congregation closest to you. Part of my ministry is in a small congregation and part of it at least until June 30, is as a professor at Starr King School for the Ministry, where we say: With the kindling of this flame, we reaffirm our commitment: to accept Life’s gifts with grace and gratitude and to use them to bless the world, in a spirit of love.
We begin with praying for one another -
If you are yourself an essential worker, a health care chaplain or make your way by work or providing care that brings your body into contact with other bodies right now, I invite you place your hand over your heart. If your life is tethered by love to someone on these front lines, essential workers of many kinds, join us in placing a palm to contact with your heart. If you or your beloved or your congregation or others close to you, are facing economic hardship, insecurity, I invite you to place another hand over your lower belly. Allow yourself to feel the steady contact, the warmth of your hand. The contact of your sit bones against the chair or couch below you, or your feet on the floor which is upon the foundation and then upon the earth. Keeping one hand where it feels best, let us extend a hand out to meet the camera, if yours is on, or just out in the direction the nearest window or door - we extend our prayers outward, in simple witness, in simple gesture of love in the midst of separation. We move our hands between these places - heart, belly and outstretched- or simply hold the place that is asking for our contact. We can reach backward, too. We reach behind us, behind our back body to recognize our interconnections to our ancestors, those who knew how to survive a pandemic, who lived through internment, fascism, long periods of separation, Knowing that before this pandemic and before somatic work would begin to take its current shape in the West and really, the West of the West, there was healing, there was medicine.
Our ancestors knew about the power of “feeling, sensing and collective action.” [1] The landscape of our spirits is deeper and wiser than we might have words for. Our survival has a lineage. Moving between heart, belly and outstretched as it feels right to do so, we send our individual prayers of care and concern out to those local colleagues who are not here in this hour.
Those who are sick, those who are alone, those who have lost jobs,
parents who are suddenly homeschooling instructors, children who are suddenly at home,
those for whom home is not a safe place,
to those who care while separated from the ill or dying,
to people in recovery, those with substance abuse disorder,
to disabled people whose skills and habits the world is now noticing and for whom access to care is being limited or derailed,
to immigrants who have been deemed ineligible for emergency support
to those elders and peers for whom the label “at-risk” does not represent their fullness and inherent worth,
to all those who are isolated and lonely.
Knowing each of these descriptions may reflect our own lives or our beloved, lives we live in bodies that deserve our recognition and care.
May all know safety, dignity, and peace. Amen.
When the World is Sick (2:01)
Embodied somatic practices support our bodies in making good choices even under stress; that is, making decisions and taking actions that reflect what we value, rather than acting from our conditioned strategies to survive. Trauma, like a pandemic, is contraction, a folding or gripping of the body as it narrows in on what will keep us alive. This focus makes complete sense. But as the threats repeat, our body can “become stuck in contraction.” When the world is sick, and no one feels well, we can start to feel that our dignity, our safety and our connection to one another and the world are at odds with one another. For religious professionals, if we don’t feel these three things - dignity, safety, connection - we can start to feel detached from our sense of competence. In addition to being more exhausted, more emotionally disrupted. We knew at one point that we were beautiful and strong, that our ministry, or at least our call, purpose was beautiful and strong. Sounding a little familiar?
In a moment, I’m going to invite you to do a practice called length, width and depth. I’ll ask you to turn your cameras off, which will likely be the most comfortable. And if you’re hearing my voice and that prayer and thinking “you know this is just a little too woo-woo for me,” I’m offering you a special greeting. I am from Boston, Massachusetts; I am a New Englander, I am an Enneagram 3 if you’re familiar with that lingo. I’ve been there, baby. Yes, I am now fully a Southern California woman, but nine years ago when I started working with somatic practices, for me, the only way into embodiment stuff was to embrace my skepticism, try things on without the requirement to commit, and let my body decide whether something was a Yes or a No. So, a special invitation for you to try things on, and let yourself be disorganized with your attention to whether embodied practice, is for you or not. Our bodies, our somatic shape, change on “Yes”. Our body’s “No” response to a practice is intelligent; its important information and trying things on with our bodies, help us gather that intelligence.
Length, Width, Depth
There’s no wrong body to practice with. This is a space in which everyone is making their own art form. Unlike a body scan or guided meditation, this is a full-on choose your own adventure. I invite you to be playful about which you choose and how you choose to practice there. I also invite you to know your body best in terms of what might cause it pain, any injuries you have or conditions that might cause pain.
Length, width and depth.
There’s a vastness within each of our bodies.
Cells, muscles, nerves, tissues, colors, shapes and textures in an immense and varied system. Contained, spilling out, aching, wiggling, beating, contracting and expanding.
We need our body’s softness and warmth to melt a scoop of ice cream on our tongue; we need the strength and the genius of our jaw each time we talk or sing or yawn.
We can feel the sturdy bones in skulls or hips or legs. When we press into a part of our body, it presses back.
We each have a length, a width and a depth in our bodies. The following is a practice of noticing our body’s spaciousness and affirming all that each body holds, supported by the earth. There’s no wrong way or wrong body to quietly notice. And we give our bodies lasting permission to say no, not now, or maybe.
(Length)
With your imagination or your index finger, draw a line from the very tip top of your skull down the center of your body, then two lines along each leg. Take your time simply inhabiting your length. Pause to notice how your body’s scaffolding extends up, the ways your body’s length is not a straight line but makes turns and splits and curves from the floor and earth below us. Keep following it down the front and then trace the back of your body, traveling up the calves and to your hips, along your spine and neck to the back of your jaw. Depending on how your body moves, you may need to break the line and trace with your mind. Take your time in this silence to dwell in your length.
(Breadth/Width)
If that felt like a “yes,” on both sides of your body and carefully, extend your arms to the side into the space beside you, then in front of you, and if it feels right, behind you. Feel the chair or pew behind you, having your back while you take up space. Simply inhabit your own width, your own breadth, clearing and claiming your personal space. We repeat this at our own pace into the silence.
(Depth)
If that felt like a yes, place a palm on the front of your torso and one on your back. It’s okay to switch or alternate or close your eyes or instead envision your hand or your cat or a pillow in front of your torso and the chair behind you. Stay with the space between your hands. Gently sense your depth. Does it have a color or a mood? Notice the movement of your hand when you take a breath and let it go. Just be with your marvelous depth; your body’s complexity is both contained and always in motion.
Whether holding or releasing your hands, as we take a second breath, we affirm your body for each time it has been your armor or your cushion.
Thank you for giving us your presence, your survival, helping you to arrive today and claim your personal physical space.
Thank you for being an ever-changing and precious vessel of all that you have been and all that you are, all that is your ministry.
There isn’t a virus or a cancellation or a bad meeting or an election that can take away your length, your width or your depth. You contain beauty and strength even here, even today, even now.
Singing Together “Loosen, Loosen” by Aly Halpert link
This morning, we are going to try a sung meditation.
Aly Halpern writes songs for community, collective liberation, & visioning different worlds. She wrote this song in service of exhales and letting go of what is ours and not ours, of compassion, lightness, & becoming who we are after and through it all. I invite you to listen to the recording for the first time through the song, then join in as you are willing and able, to sing with it for the remaining verses. Stay with the melody or try out the counterpart.
Loosen, loosen baby.
You don’t have to carry
The weight of the world in your
Muscles and bones
Let go, let go, let
Go.
Holy Breath and Holy Name
Will you ease, will you
Ease this pain?
Holy Breath and Holy Name
Will you ease, will you
Ease this pain?
Eye and Jaws
Containment practices - are those in which you allow yourself the feeling of being held, grounded, supported, a beginning and an end, a periphery. This is a great time to grab some of your softer and heavier props to help you.
Eyes
Containment:
We’re going to make a cave for our eyes. You can leave them open or let them fall closed. Place your palms on your cheekbones. And leave some space for your eyelid and lashes, creating little caves over your eyes. Try to create a steady sense of rest.
Comfort and ease are a really precise thing. What could you do in the practice to make yourself even 1% more comfortable? Put your elbows down on the table or a stack of pillows. Lay down.
“You are doing such a good job of holding it together.” Notice how your body responds to your words. If a yawn comes at any time, let it fully express itself.
Jaw
Similarly, to how we held our eyes in caves, we are going to bring our hands to cup our jaws. Bring gentle contact. Maybe put your elbows down or lie back. Notice if your jaw wants to be more neutral or open; experiment with your teeth having a little separation or more.
If this feels like a yes, as it is, keep going with the gentle contact.
If this feels like a “maybe” or “no,” try adding a little pressure until it feels good. Sometimes we want more of a firm steady support for all our jaws are holding for us. All they need to say.
“You are doing such a good job of holding it together.” Notice how your body responds to your words. If a yawn comes at any time, let it fully express itself.
Closing reading from Rev. Theresa Ines Soto:
“In this community, we hold hope close. We don’t always know what comes next, but that cannot dissuade us.
We don’t always know just what to do, but that will not mean
That we are lost in the wilderness. We rely on the certainty
Beneath, the foundation of our values and ethics. We are the people who return to love like a North Star and to
The truth that we are greater together than we are alone.
Our hope does not live in some glimmer of an indistinct future.
Rather, we know the way to the world of which we dream,
And by covenant and the movement forward of one right action
And the next, we know that one day we will arrive at home.”
[We Hold Hope Close by Rev. Theresa I. Soto, in Spilling the Light]
Postlude - “Resilient” by Appalachia Rising
Filmed in New York City, Resilient is a music video that includes several dancers’ own reflections on the poetics of the song by Appalachia Rising. The musician-directors said: “We wanted to strip away the clutter of objects and centralize the song on our common humanity. Our eyes. Skin tones. Muscles. Smiles. Power. Each dancer responded both with choreography and improvisation to what resilience meant to them personally.” They “sang the words straight into the camera to bring” us in close.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx17RvPMaQ8
[1] Richard Strozzi-Heckler, “Afterword,”in Staci Haines, The Politics of Trauma, 2020
My name is Megan Visser. I am joining you from my dining room slash congregation, here in Los Angeles, California. I am an ordained UU minister and it is good to be with you, dear colleagues. I know some of you, and some of you I am meeting for the first time. I will be with you for the next 45 minutes. I am grateful to McKinley for inviting me here to be with you and share some practices at the beginning of your chapter meeting. This will be part-chapel service, worship and part-teaching of embodied healing or somatic practices. I’ll make a brief note here and there about things to take and share with your congregants. I am placing in the chat the link to my website, and the specific address, where you can find these practices in a form that’s conducive to worship or small groups or pastoral care. Also, if you need a manuscript to follow along, it is posted there as well. For now, I invite you to settle in as best you know how, whether perched on an office chair or reclining on your couch. With your camera on or off. Alone in your home, or with spouses or children or roommates nearby. Let yourself spread out, onto the surface that holds you on the Earth.
Hear this Call to Worship by Rev. Gretchen Haley:
Come in, all who long to know
how to love this world
How to keep eyes open
hands unclenched
arms wide
Breathing deeply
In, and out
This is a time to practice
Because there is
still so much good, and beauty, and joy
But it can be hard to keep telling this tale
With all the news
and the wind, and the rain, and the trembling earth
(Who wants to love this life, anyway?)
Come in, all who teeter
on this edge of cynicism
broken hearted and trying still to remember
laughter and kindness
And the chance to be alive
in these days when so much is at stake
In this place we remind each other
Why we persist
Giving each other courage
to take this path that is not always easy
to keep practicing
This love
That cannot, will not let us go
And still calls us on
Come, let us worship together
Chalice Lighting
If you have a chalice nearby, you are welcome to light your own or you are welcome to share this one with me. Maybe whisper alone to yourself the words of the chalice lighting in the congregation closest to you. Part of my ministry is in a small congregation and part of it at least until June 30, is as a professor at Starr King School for the Ministry, where we say: With the kindling of this flame, we reaffirm our commitment: to accept Life’s gifts with grace and gratitude and to use them to bless the world, in a spirit of love.
We begin with praying for one another -
If you are yourself an essential worker, a health care chaplain or make your way by work or providing care that brings your body into contact with other bodies right now, I invite you place your hand over your heart. If your life is tethered by love to someone on these front lines, essential workers of many kinds, join us in placing a palm to contact with your heart. If you or your beloved or your congregation or others close to you, are facing economic hardship, insecurity, I invite you to place another hand over your lower belly. Allow yourself to feel the steady contact, the warmth of your hand. The contact of your sit bones against the chair or couch below you, or your feet on the floor which is upon the foundation and then upon the earth. Keeping one hand where it feels best, let us extend a hand out to meet the camera, if yours is on, or just out in the direction the nearest window or door - we extend our prayers outward, in simple witness, in simple gesture of love in the midst of separation. We move our hands between these places - heart, belly and outstretched- or simply hold the place that is asking for our contact. We can reach backward, too. We reach behind us, behind our back body to recognize our interconnections to our ancestors, those who knew how to survive a pandemic, who lived through internment, fascism, long periods of separation, Knowing that before this pandemic and before somatic work would begin to take its current shape in the West and really, the West of the West, there was healing, there was medicine.
Our ancestors knew about the power of “feeling, sensing and collective action.” [1] The landscape of our spirits is deeper and wiser than we might have words for. Our survival has a lineage. Moving between heart, belly and outstretched as it feels right to do so, we send our individual prayers of care and concern out to those local colleagues who are not here in this hour.
Those who are sick, those who are alone, those who have lost jobs,
parents who are suddenly homeschooling instructors, children who are suddenly at home,
those for whom home is not a safe place,
to those who care while separated from the ill or dying,
to people in recovery, those with substance abuse disorder,
to disabled people whose skills and habits the world is now noticing and for whom access to care is being limited or derailed,
to immigrants who have been deemed ineligible for emergency support
to those elders and peers for whom the label “at-risk” does not represent their fullness and inherent worth,
to all those who are isolated and lonely.
Knowing each of these descriptions may reflect our own lives or our beloved, lives we live in bodies that deserve our recognition and care.
May all know safety, dignity, and peace. Amen.
When the World is Sick (2:01)
Embodied somatic practices support our bodies in making good choices even under stress; that is, making decisions and taking actions that reflect what we value, rather than acting from our conditioned strategies to survive. Trauma, like a pandemic, is contraction, a folding or gripping of the body as it narrows in on what will keep us alive. This focus makes complete sense. But as the threats repeat, our body can “become stuck in contraction.” When the world is sick, and no one feels well, we can start to feel that our dignity, our safety and our connection to one another and the world are at odds with one another. For religious professionals, if we don’t feel these three things - dignity, safety, connection - we can start to feel detached from our sense of competence. In addition to being more exhausted, more emotionally disrupted. We knew at one point that we were beautiful and strong, that our ministry, or at least our call, purpose was beautiful and strong. Sounding a little familiar?
In a moment, I’m going to invite you to do a practice called length, width and depth. I’ll ask you to turn your cameras off, which will likely be the most comfortable. And if you’re hearing my voice and that prayer and thinking “you know this is just a little too woo-woo for me,” I’m offering you a special greeting. I am from Boston, Massachusetts; I am a New Englander, I am an Enneagram 3 if you’re familiar with that lingo. I’ve been there, baby. Yes, I am now fully a Southern California woman, but nine years ago when I started working with somatic practices, for me, the only way into embodiment stuff was to embrace my skepticism, try things on without the requirement to commit, and let my body decide whether something was a Yes or a No. So, a special invitation for you to try things on, and let yourself be disorganized with your attention to whether embodied practice, is for you or not. Our bodies, our somatic shape, change on “Yes”. Our body’s “No” response to a practice is intelligent; its important information and trying things on with our bodies, help us gather that intelligence.
Length, Width, Depth
There’s no wrong body to practice with. This is a space in which everyone is making their own art form. Unlike a body scan or guided meditation, this is a full-on choose your own adventure. I invite you to be playful about which you choose and how you choose to practice there. I also invite you to know your body best in terms of what might cause it pain, any injuries you have or conditions that might cause pain.
Length, width and depth.
There’s a vastness within each of our bodies.
Cells, muscles, nerves, tissues, colors, shapes and textures in an immense and varied system. Contained, spilling out, aching, wiggling, beating, contracting and expanding.
We need our body’s softness and warmth to melt a scoop of ice cream on our tongue; we need the strength and the genius of our jaw each time we talk or sing or yawn.
We can feel the sturdy bones in skulls or hips or legs. When we press into a part of our body, it presses back.
We each have a length, a width and a depth in our bodies. The following is a practice of noticing our body’s spaciousness and affirming all that each body holds, supported by the earth. There’s no wrong way or wrong body to quietly notice. And we give our bodies lasting permission to say no, not now, or maybe.
(Length)
With your imagination or your index finger, draw a line from the very tip top of your skull down the center of your body, then two lines along each leg. Take your time simply inhabiting your length. Pause to notice how your body’s scaffolding extends up, the ways your body’s length is not a straight line but makes turns and splits and curves from the floor and earth below us. Keep following it down the front and then trace the back of your body, traveling up the calves and to your hips, along your spine and neck to the back of your jaw. Depending on how your body moves, you may need to break the line and trace with your mind. Take your time in this silence to dwell in your length.
(Breadth/Width)
If that felt like a “yes,” on both sides of your body and carefully, extend your arms to the side into the space beside you, then in front of you, and if it feels right, behind you. Feel the chair or pew behind you, having your back while you take up space. Simply inhabit your own width, your own breadth, clearing and claiming your personal space. We repeat this at our own pace into the silence.
(Depth)
If that felt like a yes, place a palm on the front of your torso and one on your back. It’s okay to switch or alternate or close your eyes or instead envision your hand or your cat or a pillow in front of your torso and the chair behind you. Stay with the space between your hands. Gently sense your depth. Does it have a color or a mood? Notice the movement of your hand when you take a breath and let it go. Just be with your marvelous depth; your body’s complexity is both contained and always in motion.
Whether holding or releasing your hands, as we take a second breath, we affirm your body for each time it has been your armor or your cushion.
Thank you for giving us your presence, your survival, helping you to arrive today and claim your personal physical space.
Thank you for being an ever-changing and precious vessel of all that you have been and all that you are, all that is your ministry.
There isn’t a virus or a cancellation or a bad meeting or an election that can take away your length, your width or your depth. You contain beauty and strength even here, even today, even now.
Singing Together “Loosen, Loosen” by Aly Halpert link
This morning, we are going to try a sung meditation.
Aly Halpern writes songs for community, collective liberation, & visioning different worlds. She wrote this song in service of exhales and letting go of what is ours and not ours, of compassion, lightness, & becoming who we are after and through it all. I invite you to listen to the recording for the first time through the song, then join in as you are willing and able, to sing with it for the remaining verses. Stay with the melody or try out the counterpart.
Loosen, loosen baby.
You don’t have to carry
The weight of the world in your
Muscles and bones
Let go, let go, let
Go.
Holy Breath and Holy Name
Will you ease, will you
Ease this pain?
Holy Breath and Holy Name
Will you ease, will you
Ease this pain?
Eye and Jaws
Containment practices - are those in which you allow yourself the feeling of being held, grounded, supported, a beginning and an end, a periphery. This is a great time to grab some of your softer and heavier props to help you.
Eyes
Containment:
We’re going to make a cave for our eyes. You can leave them open or let them fall closed. Place your palms on your cheekbones. And leave some space for your eyelid and lashes, creating little caves over your eyes. Try to create a steady sense of rest.
Comfort and ease are a really precise thing. What could you do in the practice to make yourself even 1% more comfortable? Put your elbows down on the table or a stack of pillows. Lay down.
“You are doing such a good job of holding it together.” Notice how your body responds to your words. If a yawn comes at any time, let it fully express itself.
Jaw
Similarly, to how we held our eyes in caves, we are going to bring our hands to cup our jaws. Bring gentle contact. Maybe put your elbows down or lie back. Notice if your jaw wants to be more neutral or open; experiment with your teeth having a little separation or more.
If this feels like a yes, as it is, keep going with the gentle contact.
If this feels like a “maybe” or “no,” try adding a little pressure until it feels good. Sometimes we want more of a firm steady support for all our jaws are holding for us. All they need to say.
“You are doing such a good job of holding it together.” Notice how your body responds to your words. If a yawn comes at any time, let it fully express itself.
Closing reading from Rev. Theresa Ines Soto:
“In this community, we hold hope close. We don’t always know what comes next, but that cannot dissuade us.
We don’t always know just what to do, but that will not mean
That we are lost in the wilderness. We rely on the certainty
Beneath, the foundation of our values and ethics. We are the people who return to love like a North Star and to
The truth that we are greater together than we are alone.
Our hope does not live in some glimmer of an indistinct future.
Rather, we know the way to the world of which we dream,
And by covenant and the movement forward of one right action
And the next, we know that one day we will arrive at home.”
[We Hold Hope Close by Rev. Theresa I. Soto, in Spilling the Light]
Postlude - “Resilient” by Appalachia Rising
Filmed in New York City, Resilient is a music video that includes several dancers’ own reflections on the poetics of the song by Appalachia Rising. The musician-directors said: “We wanted to strip away the clutter of objects and centralize the song on our common humanity. Our eyes. Skin tones. Muscles. Smiles. Power. Each dancer responded both with choreography and improvisation to what resilience meant to them personally.” They “sang the words straight into the camera to bring” us in close.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx17RvPMaQ8
[1] Richard Strozzi-Heckler, “Afterword,”in Staci Haines, The Politics of Trauma, 2020
