With music
Without music
Let’s start by taking a few deep breaths and then slowly releasing them
Now let your mind focus on the image of a rope. This rope is on the ground before you arranged as a large circle.
And you are standing on the outside of this rope. Here on the outside of this rope and circle are all the things of your daily life…. Of time, space, matter, the people you interact with, you.
And now you step over the rope, cross its threshold and enter into the circle. And as you traverse this boundary and move beyond it, you enter into the life space of the group.
Just as you might cross over and enter into the outer courts of the temple.
And now you stand here on the edge, just beyond the boundary, and you look towards the centre and there in the innermost sanctuary, the doors are open. The curtain is parted, and you can see the Word – open, inviting and offering its shining light.
As you move forward towards it, you prepare yourself.
You remove your outer garments, your expectations, the business of your day, what you’ve just been doing and thinking about, the noises in the room, the sensations of your body…. All these you remove, set aside, as you walk towards the Word.
Putting on new garments instead – of freshness, openness, of not knowing what might unfold.
And you focus on the things you have brought to offer up to place before the altar. To the Word, to the Lord who is the Word.
It might be something that has fed you, that you feel grateful for
Or something that has raised a question within you.
Something that calls from the deep, for you to come closer to
Whatever it is – you are here now.
In the life space of this group, ready to taste the wine and eat the shewbread, to smell the incense , and to see what human form will be revealed
What form of his love and wisdom will take shape now.
In this moment, in this space here now
In the temple.
In the life-space of the group…
One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.
And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me;
Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle;
I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.
Pslam 27: 1-6