Sermons

Minister: Rev. Margaret A. Beckman | The deepest words of the wise man teach us
the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows
or the sound of the water when it is flowing.
~ Antonio Machado ~
TIME FOR ALL AGES Hug O’War by Shel Silverstein
Selected by Silas Sewell

I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

A POET’S READING – Patricia Ranzoni

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
Selected by Rodney Flora

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

A POET’S READING – Sharon Bray

Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes by Thomas Gray
Selected by Rodney Flora

’Twas on a lofty vase’s side,
Where China’s gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.

Still had she gazed; but ’midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream;
Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw;
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?

Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretch’d, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.
Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard;
A Favourite has no friend!

From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.

In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver
Selected by Anne Price

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,

are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.

Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss

whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Three Poems of Birds

“Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Dust of Snow by Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Dreams by Langston Hughes
Selected by Johanna Sweet

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

In Loving Memory of Castine’s Poets:

Not To Tell Lies by Philip Booth
Selected by Christian Walker

He has come to a certain age.
To a tall house older than he is.
Older, by far, than he will ever be.
He has moved his things upstairs, to a room
which corners late sun. it warms a schooner model,
his daughter’s portrait, the rock his doctor brought him
back from Amchitka. When he looks at the rock he thinks Melville; when he touches the lichen he dreams Thoreau. Their testaments shelve the inboard edge of the oak-legged table he writes on.
He has nailed an ancestor’s photograph high over his head.
He has moored his bed perpendicular to the North wall;
whenever he rests his head is compassed barely west
of Polaris. He believes in powers: gravity, true
North, magnetic North, love. In how his wife
loved the year of their firstborn. When-
ever he wakes he sees the clean page in
his portable. He has sorted life out;
he feels moved to say all of it,
most of it all. He tries
to come close, he keeps
coming close: he has
gathered himself
in order not
to tell
lies.

Essential Rhythms by Louise Wheeler
Selected by Mary Ellen Hunt

The sun may also rise in other places
but it comes up first over the blue waters of Penobscot Bay.
The sun comes up out of Brooksville and it goes down into Belfast.
From the Back Shore you may watch the seals
drop off the wet rocks into the sea
as the sun sinks down into Belfast.
After the sea swallows the wet rocks the tide goes out
leaving the shore defenseless, naked and exposed to memory.
The memories stand out like boulders in the sand.
These are Castine memories which inhabit this shore.

There is a lifetime of other places, other people
inscribed on my person,
as the waves pulling and tugging,
sifting and sorting the flotsam and jetsam
have inscribed the boulders.
Unarrested, the current of life continues
irreversibly directed towards death.
In that spring when my father died I accepted mortality.

The mobility of the living and the continuity of the dead,
the cohesion of water and sand,
the events themselves and the effects of memory
may shift the ballast somewhat
but the essential rhythm persists.
The ide trundles the wayfarer home,
the sea swallows the wet rocks,
the boulders submerge,
and the sun that came up out of Brooksville
sinks down into Belfast.

Benediction
A BLESSING Bennacht by John O’Donohue

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean beyours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.