Readings
Gordon B. McKeemanAlso appropriate as Meditation Manuals
Anyone's Ministry
Ministry is
a quality of relationship between and among
human beingsthat beckons forth hidden possibilities;
inviting people into deeper, more constant
more reverent relationship with the world
and with one another;carrying forward a long heritage of hope and
liberation that has dignified and informed
the human venture over many centuries;being present with, to, and for others
in their terrors and torments
in their grief, misery and pain;knowing that those feelings
are our feelings, too;celebrating the triumphs of the human spirit,
the miracles of birth and life,
the wonders of devotion and sacrifice;witnessing to life-enhancing values;
speaking truth to power;speaking for human dignity and equity,
for compassion and aspiration;believing in life in the presence of death;
struggling for human responsibility
against principalities and structures
that ignore humaneness and become
instruments of death.
It is all these and much, much more than all of
them, present in
the wordless,
the unspoken,
the ineffable.
It is speaking and living the highest we know
and living with the knowledge that it is
never as deep, or as wide
or a high as we wish.
Whenever there is a meeting
that summons us to our better selves, wherever
our lostness is found,
our fragments are united,
our wounds begin healing,
our spines stiffen and
our muscles grow strong for the task,
there is ministry.
Source: Singing in the Night: Collected Meditations, Vol. 5 edited by Mary Benard (Skinner House, 2004)
Copyright: The author has given Unitarian Universalist Association member congregations permission to reprint this piece for use in public worship. Any reprints must acknowledge the name of the author.
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Last updated on Monday, May 12, 2008.
