=== I. AGAPE / TEA-AFTERNOONS / POT-LUCKS WORSHIP SERVICE ===
� The officiant begins with these, or other, OPENING WORDS.
Come into this circle of love and justice. Come into the community of
mercy, holiness, and health. Come and you shall know peace and joy.
(Israel Zangwill)
� A HYMN may be sung or said.
We gather together in joyful thanksgiving,
acclaiming creation, whose bounty we share
both sorrow and gladness we find now in our living,
we sing a hymn of praise to the life that we share.
� A READING is offered.
� A period of SILENCE, MEDITATION, OR TEXT EXEGESIS may follow.
� PRAYERS may be offered for ourselves and others.
Spirit of Community, in which we share and find strength and common
purpose, we turn our minds and hearts toward one another seeking to bring
into our circle of concern all who need our love and support: those who
are ill, those who are in pain, either in body or in spirit, those who are
lonely, those who have been wronged. [Here, people may say the names of
those to be remembered]. We are part of a web of life that makes us one
with all humanity, one with all the universe. We are grateful for the
miracle of consciousness that we share, the consciousness that gives us
the power to remember, to love, to care. Amen.
� The PRAYER OF JESUS is said.
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be they Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our tresspasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
[For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
� Or, in place of the Prayer of Jesus, the following:
Eternal Spirit, whom we call God, you are our life. You are the best and
most beautiful in us and beyond us. Your spirit is in animals, birds,
plants, and in people whom we
do not know or who seem very different from us. All of us share the gift
of life. Help us to remember that life is good. Help us to know that we
don't stop loving people or
other living things when they are no longer close to us. Love lasts
always. May we look for ways to love one another, and to love all living
things. Amen. (Licinda Steven
Duncan)
� AGAPE, or pot-luck, is served.
� A BENEDICTION is given.
May the Love which overcomes all differences,
Which heals all wounds,
which puts to flight all fears,
which reconciles all who are separated,
be in us and among us
now and always.
(Frederick E. Gillis)
� A CLOSING SONG may be sung or said.
We gather together to join in the journey,
confirming, committing our passage to be
a true affirmation, in joy and tribulation,
when bound to human care and hope then we are free.
=== Daily Devotions for use in Unitarian Circles
II. /In the morning/
For the sun and the dawn which we did not create
For the moon and the evening which we did not make;
For food which we plan but cannot grow;
For friends and loved ones we have not earned and cannot buy;
For this gathered company which welcomes us as we are, from wherever we
have come;
For all our free churches that keep us human and encourage us in our
quest for beauty, truth, and love;
For all things which come to us as gifts of being from sources beyond
ourselves;
Gifts of life and love and and friendship. We lift our hearts in
thanks this day.
(Richard M. Fewkes)
/At noon/
Why should we live in such a hurry and waste of life?
We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.
I wish to live deliberately, o front only the essential facts of life.
I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die,
discover that I have not lived.
I do not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear,
Nor do I wish to practice resignation, unless it is quite necessary.
I wish to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
I want to cut a broad swath, to drive life into a corner, and reduce
it to its lowest terms.
If it proves to be mean, then to get he whole and genuine meanness of
it, and publish its meanness to the world;
Or if it is sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to
give a true account of it.
(Henry David Thoreau)
/In the evening/
I am glad I came into this world able to think and reason
I am glad I came int this world able to feel pain and pleasure,
sorry and joy, anger and love.
I am glad I am able to heal, both physically and mentally able to be
aware, to grow and to change.
I am glad I am able to respond to love, beauty and truth: able to
discern reality, face it, accept it.
I am glad I came into this world able to feel with others, to care for
others.
I am glad I came into this world unique and singular.
I am glad I came into this world as an unfinished creature, moving
towards completion.
I give thanks for the many gifts of life. I am glad I came into this
world.
(Margorie Montgomery)
/In the winter, Hymn to Matter/
Blessed be you, harsh matter, barren soil, stubborn rock: you who yield
only to violence;
You who force us to work if we would eat.
Blessed be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untameable passion;
You who unless we fetter you will devious us.
Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality
ever new-born;
You who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to
go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.
Blessed be you, universal matter, unmeasurable time, boundless ether,
triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations;
You by overflowing and disolving our narrow standards of measurement
reveal to us the dimensions of God.
(Teilhard De Chardin
A doxology is always sung or said at the conclusion of the entire
portion of the responsive reading
From all that dwell below the sky;
Let songs of hope with love arise;
Let beauty truth, and good be sung;
Through every land by every tongue.
/A Reading/
A period of silence, medition, or text exegesis may follow.
A hymn may be used.
A covenant may be said.
Love is the doctrine of this church,
The quest of truth is its sacrament,
And service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge of freedom,
To serve human need,To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony
with the Divine --
Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.
(James Vila Blake)
Prayers for ourselves and others may follow. In the evening, it is
appropriate that prayers of thanksgiving for the blessings of the day,
and penitence for our sins, be included.
Spirit of Community, in which we share and find strength and common
purpose, we turn our minds and hearts toward one another seeking to
bring into our circle of concern all who need our love and support:
those who are ill, those who are in pain, either in body or in spirit,
those who are lonely, those who have been wronged. [Here, people may say
the names of those to be remembered]. We are part of a web of life that
makes us one with all humanity, one with all the universe. We are
grateful for the miracle of consciousness that we share, the
consciousness that gives us the power to remember, to love, to care. Amen.
/Confession/
The years of all of us are short, our lives precarious.
Our days and nights go hurrying on and there is scarcely time to do
the little that we might.
Yet we find time for bitterness, for petty treason and evasion.
What can we do to stretch our hearts enough to lose their litleness?
Here we are - all of us - all upon this planet, bound together in a
common destiny,
Living our lives between the briefness of the daylight and the dark.
Kindred in this, each lighted by the same precarious, flickering flame
of life, how does it happen that we are not kindred in all things else?
How strange and foolish are the walls of separation that divide us!
(A. Powell Davies)
/Thanksgiving/
For the expanding grandeur of Creation, worlds known and unknown,
galaxies beyond galaxies, filling us with awe and challenging our
imaginations.
We give thanks this day.
For this fragile planet earth, its times and tides, its sunsets and
seasons.
We give thanks this day.
For the joy of human life, its wonders and surprises, its hopes and
achievements.
We give thanks this day.
For the human community, our common past and future hope, our oneness
transcending all separation, our capacity to work for peace and justice
in the midst of hostility and oppression.
We give thanks this day.
For high hopes and noble causes, for faith without fanaticism, for
understanding of views not shared.
We give thanks this day.
For all who have labored and suffered for a fairer world, who have lived
so that others might live in dignity and freedom.
We give thanks this day.
For human liberty and sacred rites; for opportunities to change and
grow, to affirm and choose.
We give thanks this day. We pray that we may live not by our fears
but by our hopes, not by our words but by our deeds.
(O. Eugene Pickett)
/The Prayer of Jesus/
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen. Oh thou, whose kingdom is within,
may all thy names by hallowed.
May thy kingdom come to be in the life of all humankind.
May it come with peace,
with sharing, and in a near time.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Keep us from trespass against others,
and from the feeling that others are trespassing against us.
Forgive us more than we have forgiven.
Deliver us from being tempted by lesser
things to be heedless of the one great thing:
the give of thyself in us.
/The Benediction/
May the light around us guide our footsteps, and hold us fast to the
best and most righteous that we seek.
Let us seek to remember the wholeness of our lives, the weaving
of light and shadow in this great and astonishing dance in which we move.
May the darkness around us nurture our dreams, and give us rest
so that we may give ourselves to the work of our world. /Amen./
(Kathleen McTigue)
Universal Mystery, guide us away from the desire to shine light in all
the corners. Teach us to embrace the night, for without the darkness, we
never see the stars. /Amen./
