Connected While Apart
Longest Night Prayer Pause
Tonight, the longest night of the year, beginning right after sunset, the Great Conjunction or alignment of the planets Saturn and Jupiter, will be visible to the naked eye in the southwestern sky if cloud cover cooperates. This alignment happens every twenty years but is rarely visible. The conjunction tonight will be the closest it has been since 1623, but it wasn’t visible then since it occurred during the daytime. The last time the two planets were this closely aligned and visible was just before dawn on March 4, 1226, nearly eight hundred years ago. This alignment, when they seem to be a single planet, is called the Star of Bethlehem. It is wondrously coincidental that this year it is taking place in darkness on the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year.
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Dear Mayfield,
It has become increasingly common for churches to have some sort of a Longest Night, alternately called Blue Christmas, prayer service in December. December 21st is the ideal timing, the actual longest night, to stop and linger in acknowledgment and support for those whose journey through Advent toward Christmas is shaped with the darkness of grief and loss, pain, struggle, and uncertainty. Today’s webnote is an invitation for you to pause for a brief time. If you are near your Advent candles, light them before you begin. This prayer pause echoes the pause the sun appears to enter around the winter solstice when it seems it is resting for several days before it begins again its long rise in the sky toward summer. You might also want to take an intentional pause to go outside and see if you can spot the Great Conjunction. Look to the southwestern sky.
Peace, Martha
Longest Night Prayer Pause
Solstice Blessing and Breath (Blessing is by Padraig O Tuama)
You are invited to speak these words aloud.
A Solstice Blessing
As night stretches here,
day contracts elsewhere.
And in their night, we are
bathed in light. In all nights
there is light; in long days
there can be ache too.
For you, we call the sun
to stand still a while, and
the moon too, and stars, and
the waters and the heavens.
Hells as well — just for a
second; just for a breath.
May that breath rest you.
And may each breath rest you,
as it has until now, and now
and now. This one, after
that one, after that one after
that.
Take a few deep, restful breaths.
Instrumental Music: “In the Bleak Midwinter” (Wild Blue Ukelele Orchestra) LINK
A Litany of Remembrance (adapted from All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Atlanta)
Please speak these words aloud in virtual communion with one another and with all whom we call to heart and mind in these prayers.
We remember those persons who have been loved and lost. We pause to remember their names, their faces, their voices. We give thanks for the memory that binds them to us this season. May God’s eternal love surround them.
Pause
We pray that the pain of loss might be redeemed: the loss of relationships, the loss of jobs, the loss of hope, the loss of health, the loss of certainty, the loss of laughter, the loss of wonder, the loss of home, the loss unnamed. As we gather up this pain, past and present, we offer it to God, asking that into our open hands will be placed the gift of peace. May we be refreshed, restored, and renewed as we are led by God into an unfolding future.
Pause
We reflect on ourselves while Christmas approaches. We pause to recollect past weeks, months and for some of us, years of difficult times. We embrace poignant memories, sadness, hurts, and the pain of what is changed or gone forever. May we recall that dawn follows darkness.
Pause
We rehearse our faith and the gift of hope which God offers in the drawing near of the Christmas story. God shares our lives, promising a place and time of no more pain and suffering. May we relish that story and the one who shows the way and goes with us into our tomorrows.
Response: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” Share this response. LINK
O Come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here, until the Child of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.
Prayer (Jan Richardson) Pray virtually with other Mayfield voices
Ancient One
who makes all things new,
may we receive with gentleness
and touch with hopefulness
and protect with fierceness
and love with tenderness;
and may we celebrate with gratefulness
and welcome with humbleness
and tend with gracefulness
all that you give
into our care.
Song: “In the Bleak Midwinter” Join Jen in song. LINK
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God transcends all heaven, earth, and its domain;
heaven and earth shall flee away when Christ comes to reign;
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
the sovereign God almighty, Jesus Christ.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim thronged the midnight air;
But his mother only, in her maiden bliss,
worshiped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I offer, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a wise one, I would do my part;
but what can I offer: all my heart.
Blessing
(Dom Helder Camara)
The Spirit is breathing.
All those with eyes to see,
women and men with ears for hearing
detect a coming dawn;
a reason to go on.
They seem small these signs of dawn
perhaps ridiculous.
All those with eyes to see
women and men with ears for hearing
uncover in the night
a certain gleam of light;
they see the reason to go on.
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