Clear our heart, O God, that we may see you.
Clear our heart, O God, that we may truly see ourselves.
Clear our heart, O God, that we may know the sacredness of this moment
and in every moment
seek you
serve you
strengthen you
as the Living Presence in every presence.
Clear our heart, O God,
that we may see.
From — J. Philip Newell, Praying with the Earth:  A Prayerbook for Peace

Check in:  Briefly touch base with each other.
Theme: Sabbath Rest
[Facilitator note:  today’s small group should be kept clean and simple.  An opportunity to touch-base and reflect briefly, but rest is the theme and the goal of Sabbath.)
Reading:
He [sic] who wants to enter into the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil.  He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal of embezzling his own life.  He must say farewell to (work) and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man.  Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.”
[Heschel, p.13 The Sabbath.]

Reflecting: How will you keep a joyful and holy sabbath today?  What is the gift which God is trying to give you in inviting you to “come to rest?”

Psalm 127:1-2
1 Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD guards the city,
the guard keeps watch in vain.
2 It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives sleep to his beloved.

Closing:  The Pilgrims Prayer

Adapted from Paul H. Lang, The Pilgrim’s Compass: Finding and Following the God We Seek (2019).