Rev. Frank Hall Services Archive

We’ll begin with William Blake’s most well-known poem: To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. Words like heaven, infinity and eternity are generally associated with religion — Blake used them as poetry. William […]

Opening Reading: After Apple Picking, Robert Frost My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on […]

 Opening words: from a Muslim Sufi poet, Jalal ad-Din Rumi, 1207 – 12 73 Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing There is a field I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass The world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ Doesn’t make any […]

Opening Words:  Messenger, by Mary Oliver My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? […]

One of my Methodist teachers in seminary liked to tell the story of the man in the supermarket who bumps into the minister of his Methodist church.  They chat for a minute and the man says, “I suppose you’re wondering why I haven’t been coming to church.” The minister, who came to the supermarket to […]

I Am Running into a New Year by Lucille Clifton i am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that i catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what i said to myself about […]

It was a late-June day.  School was out—first grade had been great fun, now it was finished, and now it was summer. The six-but-almost-seven-year old boy sat beside his father in the pick-up truck that carried the ladders and the toolbox.  They were going to work.  The boy promised his father that he was big […]

Opening Words: The World As I See It by Albert Einstein “How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose (we) know not, though (we) sometimes thinks (we) sense it… A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life […]

In the last few years we’ve heard a lot about the ‘wall of separation’ between church and state.  Some of us have been counting our blessings for that wall.  Thank you, Mr. Jefferson and Company—and he had a lot of company! In addition to ‘counting our blessings,’ however, we need to be vigilant about preserving, […]

We begin with a brief reading from Sam Keen’s book, To a Dancing God.  This is a passage about his relationship with his father, who he associated with God in his child-mind. “Once upon a time when there were still Indians, Gypsies, bears, and bad men in the woods of Tennessee where I played and, […]