I love to make the coffee at church – I go and get real half-and-half and fancy sugars.  I’ll get the juice with less sugar and more anti-oxidants (super juice.)  I’ll make the coffee and pray into it. And as people are standing around after church talking about the sermon or the details of their week, I peer out from the kitchen and watch my prayers get sipped up into bodies and spirit. I watch the real half-and-half delight them, hoping that they will in turn make a decadent decision in the world and go beyond what is necessary.  I watch for the juice mustaches of children hoping that their blood-sugar levels will remain stable so they can share what happened in Sunday School with the adults in their lives rather than melt on the way home.  I tend to these little details knowing I will not see the results.  But I remain faithful to the suspicion, the hope that they have made a difference.  Coffee duty is one of my cherished spiritual practices.

We live through each other.  This is humanist immortality, which I find more potent and knock-me-to-my-knees awesome than a promise of eternal afterlife in a heaven-place.

Enjoy the Peter Mayer video to Holy Now

Lyrics to Holy Now
by Peter Mayer

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything’s a miracle

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done

This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now

 

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Tandi Rogers also likes to make coffee for herself as a meditation while listening to Peter Mayer’s music to prepare for holy work.

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Mayer began playing the guitar and writing songs when he was in high school. He studied Theology and music in college, and then spent two years in seminary. After deciding that the priesthood wasn’t for him, he took a part-time job as a church music director for 8 years, while performing at clubs and colleges, and writing and recording his music. He has nine CDs to his credit, and has sold over 70 thousand of them independently. And yes, he is Unitarian Universalist.