We gather together in spiritual community because we need constant reminders of what matters most in life. Together with more connection, and compassion, we learn to live with more wisdom. Below are the elements our our Sunday Services.

From: “The Work of the People”

What we do each Sunday is called the Liturgy.

The roots of the word go back through Latin to ancient Greek, meaning “the work of the people.”
Calling it “yours” means that it’s what you all are doing here on Sundays.
The people who “lead” the service, are trying to hold something up, have something happen, creating a space for something to happen – a shift in understanding, awareness, connection.
We set the tone, offer words, music, silence, ritual to open a door, offer a space, an invitation to sit at the table.
It is you who enter and sit and open yourself to the possibility of transformation.
It is your “work” to do.

CALL TO WORSHIP   
This piece of the service is intentionally named the Call to Worship, even as the word ‘worship’ is loaded for some. Its origins are in Old English, a word meaning worth-shaping.
We are not called to bow down or praise a higher being. Not at all.
Rather we are called to shape the worth of our lives, to give form to goodness, kindness, justice.
So we now call you to this work of shaping worth.

HYMNS
Our opening music is invitational. Gathers us in. Has us sing together as a community. It can also serve as a signal. We are gathering for a purpose of healing and wholeness, gathering our strength and kindness, welcoming our struggles and vulnerability, invoking the spirit(s) (however you define that) to be present to us.                                                                     

SHARING OUR BOUNTY
“Each Sunday we bring non-perishable groceries to contribute to Project Understanding to help those in need in our community.”
But why?
Because:
Generosity is fundamental to our calling as a church community.
We want to model this to our children and invite them to participate.
We also want to acknowledge that there are great needs in our wider community and we are tied to one another. There are times in our lives that we have the capacity to give and times that we are in need. And this ebb and flow and swirl of human need is reflected in the way our children move about and gather up these offerings.

TIME FOR THE CHILD IN EACH OF US   
Why do you think we invite the children up here for this time?
Some times I say we do it because we like to gather as a single worshiping community. And that is true. We also do it because the adults in the congregation really like to see you and love on you a bit.
Yet there is more to it. We really mean it that this is a time for the child in each of us. Usually this time is about the theme of the service, giving all of us a taste of what is coming. It’s another way to understand the overall message. And even though the adults are all supposedly older, wiser, and terribly erudite (which means knowing a lot), often they often really still need to hear the simplest ways to hear the message.
Does it sometimes feel like we do this part more for the adults than for you?
Well, we do want to love on you. To hear your thoughts. And when we sometimes laugh, we hope you know it’s laughter of delight because we love the wisdom that you speak, even when you may not even realize how wise you are.

And sometimes as children and youth, you change things for the whole church.
UU historian Susan Ritchie thinks she has found out about a very big one: Why so many of our churches light a chalice at the beginning of the service.
This practice actually started less than 40 years ago.
It begins with Nazi resisters and ends with children in the spiritual education program.
The flaming chalice started out as a drawing used by the Unitarian Service Committee (USC) to help Jewish refugees escape Nazis just before World War II. A refugee named Hans Deutsch created it as a stamp to help the USC’s paperwork look more “official.” It reminded some of lamps sf holy oil used by the ancient Greeks and Romans, the flame representing a spirit of helpfulness and sacrifice…
After the Unitarians and the Universalists merged in 1961, the symbol became two overlapping circles, for both traditions. We’ve changed it a couple of times since then.
So how did we get from a two-dimensional drawing to the three-dimensional chalice we use light at the beginning of worship?
No one really knows for sure.
But Susan Ritchie thinks she might have found the answer.
She says it probably started with our kids in Religious Education classes.
In the 70s a lot of lessons talked about the meaning of the chalice as our symbol, and then asked the children to make chalices in all sorts of ways.

Before long, people started putting a candle in the crafty chruch chalice and they lit it.
As far as we know, the first time anyone lit a chalice for Sunday morning service was when children and youth led worship and showed the whole congregation chalices they made and lit them.
And here we are, maybe a few decades later lighting chalices for everyone.
Our chalice doesn’t have a single meaning for every UU or in every congregation, which is fitting, Susan Ritchie thinks. So many faiths think the most important thing is that everyone believes the same thing. Yet for us, the most important part of being religious is the bond we create by loving one another and working for justice.
At first the chalice was invented to represent brave things people were doing to resist war.
Then it was made real by developed by children growing up in the cradle of love.

Pretty cool.

BRIDGE OF LOVE
Many people have told me they get tears in their eyes when we make the bridge of love and sing you all out to your classes. Our Bridge is formed about your heads to protect and guide you. And we call it a bridge because we want to support you on your journey, a journey we know will eventually carry you beyond your childhood into your lives we hope – of meaning, purpose, satisfaction, love, and happiness. No wonder some of us cry.

So now, let us form a Bridge of Love. Please rise, turn toward the center and gently place your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you and sing the words in your order of service and on the screens. And try not to weep all over our beautiful young people.

OFFERING  
The offering gives us all a chance to express a sense of expansive generosity that is one of our highest religious and spiritual values. Though it comes in different forms and circumstances, expressing generosity is part of all religious traditions.
Each Sunday this congregation gives away our collection. All cash given is donated to an organization in the wider community or to someone in our own congregation who is in need. If you wish to write a check to this cause – or to the church – please see the information in your order of service.

For many in our congregation, the act of giving our offering to outside organizations rather than keeping the money ‘in-house’ is especially meaningful. Visitors often remark how it is different than what they expect the offering part of a service to be, and that it is a value that draws them to us. And in very UU fashion, any member of the congregation can nominate an organization for a Sunday collection.

To the work of the church, which is weaving a tapestry of love we call community, the offering is gratefully received.

JOYS AND SORROWS  
We create this community out of our own good will and intention. Naming both the celebrations and tribulations of our lives is an act of commitment.

Our “work” here is to focus our attention on community. Sharing our Joys and Sorrows is an act of trust that allows us to feel a deeper connection to our community. Now is the time in the service when we hold up the great joys and sorrows that grace our lives.
We place stones in water for both the celebrations and sorrows in our hearts, making ripples that are felt throughout our community. During the week or before the service, you may write your sorrows or joys in the book kept on the table just inside the sanctuary door to be read aloud in the service.

RESPONSIVE READING  
Our reading enhances and deepens the service theme. It is scripture or wisdom literature of the broadest definition. Here and throughout the service, we look for words from many sources and traditions by people of many backgrounds and perspectives, especially from people who have too often been marginalized or even silenced by dominant cultures.

SILENT MEDITATION
What is the “work” being done in the silence? For me, it quiets all my internal talk and brings me to a place of calm and peacefulness, what my software engineer husband would refer to as a ‘reset’. For others, it is a time for silent prayer. It is one of my favorite parts of the service.

SPOKEN MEDITATION
We call this element a Spoken Meditation. For me it is the most prayerful part of the service, though I know that is another complicated concept and worthy of its own service. I deliberately begin each line of this meditation with the words “May we.” This again is our work. It is all in our hands. More frequently lately, I invoke a sense of holiness as a presence to our aspiration, to give them the solemnity of commitment for us. I close it with wishes for those within our church and far beyond who are suffering.

SERMON or HOMILY                                    
Ah, the sermon…. (Or in this case, a homily, which is essentially simply a shorter sermon.) Though I am doing the talking, you all have the work of listening, reflecting, considering.
I hope you listen with mind and heart open. Yet there is in our tradition, no requirement of agreement or assent. How could there be?

You have called me to serve this community and, as stated in my Letter of Agreement, you have offered me this pulpit “free and untrammeled. [Where I am] expected to express [my] values, views, and commitments without fear or favor.”

So here goes. I accepted your call to this pulpit, knowing that I would necessarily share it. For our religious tradition holds the possibility of many truths, ever-unfolding. So this pulpit must also host other voices and views.

This liturgy is shared work. I share it directly with a cadre of thoughtful and funny, questioning and kind Worship Associates. And it is yours to engage with on Sundays. This standard liturgy arises from a deep tradition – much of it from our Protestant roots.
We keep it mostly the same on most Sundays because familiarity and consistency – knowing what to expect – is a good thing. Yet it is not written in stone. Innovation and surprise are also good things.

They keep us on our toes, keep us open to new revelation and understanding. New possibilities.
When we change the liturgy – when we invite you to do your work in a new way – we do it intentionally, in service to a message or a hoped-for outcome.

And we also change it only with care because, good golly, people can be very attached to elements of the service. It’s not really all that surprising people grow so attached. The world is chaotic; there is comfort in the familiar.

And we are not particularly “liturgical” in a traditional sense. The Christian liturgy has far more consistency and clear purpose. The people’s “work” is to confess their sin, ask forgiveness, and experience reconciliation and communion with God. There can be a power and beauty in it. It can also be used to punish and berate. Too often, it becomes so rote as to be meaningless.
We have moved well beyond that kind of liturgy.

Yet we can move farther still.
Our liturgy arises from folks who – whatever their gifts to us – were also in a far more overtly patriarchal and white supremacist context. It is our work in our day to question all of that, seeking to uncover the ways that – for all our good intention – still feel exclusionary to people most harmed by patriarchy and systemic racism.

In my home church in Oakland, one of our Worship Associates was Dana Beard. She spelled her name the same way I do, and we were (mostly) amused that people would mix us up – me, a short white woman, and Dana, a tall, thin, half-Irish, half-African American woman.
Dana spoke from her African American roots when she invited us to be a little more responsive in worship.

Depart even more from our connection to the traditions sometimes called God’s Frozen People.
Yes, there’s the thing about applause.

Yet Dana also invited us to call out when we were so moved. She rephrased some more traditional expressions. My favorite was, “Praise Justice!” And honestly, I would love a few “amens,” an occasional “Preach it, Sister!”, and “Praise Justice!” whenever the spirit moves you.
Which carries me to the final thing I want to say about our liturgy, your work.

What I hope to leave you with on a Sunday is the sense that the spirit moved in this sanctuary and in your heart. Yes, spirit and spirituality are more of those complex words that deserve – and will soon get soon – a whole service to unpack.
I hope you are moved and changed – perhaps even full on transformed in some way – by our worshiping together.

HYMN
Our closing hymn carries us back out into the world – inspired, committed, healed, challenged or joyful. One thing we do with hymns is try to be gender-inclusive. Sometimes it is easier than others in keeping the spirit and the poetry of the hymn. This one is easier. Changing “sisters and brothers” to “neighbors and strangers” has graciousness that adds layers of meaning.

EXTINGUISHING THE CHALICE   
Susan Ritchie talks about what it means to extinguish the chalice: Many congregations extinguish their chalice at the close of worship. The fire is not so much extinguished as borne in the heart of each person, a new expression of what Ralph Waldo Emerson called “divine spark”—the manifestation of divine possibility within each human soul.

BENEDICTION
I invite the congregation to remain standing and join hands for the benediction. Benediction comes from the latin for bene-good, and diction-word. Essentially, good words to end on.

From Susan Manker-Seale

Benediction

Much of ministry is a benediction –

A speaking well of each other and the world –

A speaking well of what we value:

honesty

love

forgiveness

trust

A speaking well of our efforts –

A speaking well of our dreams.

 

This is how we celebrate life

Through speaking well of it.

Living the benediction

and become as a word

well spoken.

Turn and greet your neighbors after the service.