“Giving Thanks”

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Rev. Gretchen Woods

OPENING WORDS

from Barbara Pescan

(#417 Singing the Living Tradition)

For the beauty of the earth,

this spinning blue green ball, yes!

Gaia, mother of everything

we walk gently across your back

to come together again

in this place

to remember how we can live

to remember who we are

to create how we will be.

Gaia, our home,

the lap in which we live –

welcome us.

READING

“We Give Thanks This Day” by O. Eugene Pickett (#512 Singing the Living tradition)

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 time 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 our 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 scared ties; for opportunities to change and to grow, to affirm and o 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.

APPLE COMMUNION¾served by youth

In appreciation for the wondrous gifts of the bounties of life and of this community, in appreciation for the giving we receive from one another, we now share an Apple Communion. We reaffirm the importance of being together, and we invite ALL to share in this religious community. As Unitarian Universalists, we do not exclude others over matters of doctrine or creed. We embrace Buddhists, Humanists, Christians, Jews, atheists, panentheists, pagans, agnostics, those of us who enjoy religious search without needing a label.

We are becoming an inclusive and caring religious community. Your race, age, physical ability, gender or gender orientation do not matter, so long as you share our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes. We expect to treat one another with respect. We expect to listen as well as to speak, to be active in a religion of "deeds, not creeds."

We gather in this religious community, following “. . . our search for that meaning which has power to give shape to our experience, purpose to our existence, and motivation and moral energy to our human enterprises ( quote from Lloyd Averill).” We are called together by energies which bring loving transformation to our lives and which send us into this world to be agents of loving transformation in our larger community. We gather for stimulation and for sustenance, seeking the physical, mental, emotional, moral and spiritual nourishment that gives our lives power in the world. We refuse to be paralyzed by challenges. Our spirit moves in this world.

In this Thanksgiving service, we celebrate our gratitude for being together in community. We choose this day to renew and reaffirm our ties with each other as the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis. We gather to serve and to be served in unique give and take that unites us in one body. This is corporate worship.

In sharing this common meal, our communion, we employ a simple symbol: the apple. We could use other elements and other symbols, but we have chosen the apple: a product of the natural world, embodying the nourishment we seek together. Some see an apple as a symbol of human knowledge. Others see an apple as temptation. Today, we choose the apple to stand for, to symbolize, the way the larger life process nourishes each of us and we nourish each other, giving and receiving nourishment for which we are deeply grateful. This communion is a common meal of gratitude celebrating the gift of life in community.

We especially share and celebrate together at this season, Autumn, for we are grateful for our potential to be a growing community - growing physically, mentally, emotionally, morally, spiritually - individually and collectively. We honor the splendor of the seasons of nature, the fruits of the harvest season. Apples are part of the harvest, literally as well as symbolically. So in eating apples together, we celebrate our shared potential. We celebrate in appreciation of the beauty of life, in thankfulness for the opportunity to be alive, in joy for the work and the love we experience together.

Will our youth please come forward with the apples and begin to pass them among the congregation. We ask that, rather than taking your own piece, you give one to the person next to you, thus emphasizing our gratitude for the gift of this community. Also, please hold your piece of apple until we are all served and we have blessed this moment of sharing.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, this day we celebrate our gratitude for the community of life - in which every being is invited to join with all that is: with the warmth of the sun, the color of leaf, the sound of rain, even the vastness of the starry night. We honor the ongoing process of natural life with respect, with awe, with delight, and with wonder, not only for ourselves, but for all our relations. Blessed Be!

We now eat these apples in silence, sharing the quiet as a meditation for each and all.

(adopted and adapted from the Rev. Robert Marshall)

CLOSING SONG

“Standing Like a Tree” by Betsy Rose

Standing like a tree with my roots dug down,

My branches wide and open.

Come down the sun. Come down the rain.

Come down the love to a heart that is open to be . . .