Hymn of the Universe: I. The Offering (Live)

1. The Offering

Since once again, I have neither bread nor wine, nor altar,

I raise myself up to the pure majesty of the real itself

I make the whole earth my altar and offer you all the labors and sufferings of the world.

Over there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched the light,

the outermost fringe of the eastern sky.

Beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles.

I place the harvest to be won by this renewal of labor,

I pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth's fruits.

The depth of a soul is laid widely open

to all the forces rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the spirit.

Grant me the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those

whom the light is now awakening to the new day.

One by one, I call before me the whole vast anonymous army of living humanity

those who truly believe in the progress of earthly reality

All the things in the world to which this day will bring increase

all those that will diminish all those too that will die all of them,

I gather into my arms, and hold them out to you.

Receive, O Lord, this all-embracing host which your whole creation

   offers you at the dawn of a new day.

This bread, our toil, is of itself, but an immense fragmentation

This wine, our pain, is no more than a draught that dissolves.

Yet in the very depths of this formless mass you have implanted a desire, irresistible,

which makes us cry out: Lord, make us one.