I invite you to join me in a special ingathering ritual in which we will gather in energy and love from all directions.
Your responsive call is the “Gathered Here” chant. Some of you will participate perhaps in a more metaphysical sense and for others your participation may be more metaphorical; and that is fine—for “we are Unitarian Universalists: People of Open Minds, Loving Hearts, and Helping Hands!”
Please rise in body or spirit and face the East. We call out to the powers of the East—representing AIR and the radiance of dawn. I invite you to think of places to the east of us where you have lived or visited—perhaps places across the Ogeechee River or across the great Atlantic Ocean. And I invite you to lift to your mind friends and family who live east of here and call on those memories of times with them and their spirits of life and love to be here with us today. If you wish, you may lift their names into this sanctuary before we sing.
(sing “Gathered Here” chant)
Now I invite you to face the South. As we call on the powers of FIRE that the South represents, we lament the polluting of the Great Gulf of Mexico that lies to the South and have heard the cries of our Mother Earth. We are also thankful that with the good energies of loving people and the powers of nature, those beautiful waters are clearing again.
And I ask you to think of places to the South of us where you have lived or visited. I invite you to lift to your mind friends and family who live south of here and call on those memories of times with them and their spirits of life and love to be here with us today. You may lift their names into the sanctuary.
(sing “Gathered Here” chant)
I now invite you to face the West. We call out to the powers of the West—the power of WATER. We envision wonderful bodies of water to the west—many that we may have visited or hope to visit and I encourage you to think of them as well as other places you have lived or visited. I invite you also to lift to your mind friends and family who live west of here and call on those memories of times with them and their spirits of life and love to be here with us today. You may lift their names into the sanctuary.
(sing “Gathered Here” chant)
And I invite you to face the North as we call out to the powers of the North the powers of the mighty EARTH: the power of stone and mountain. And the North is home to water also—including the Arctic Ocean—with ice melting and warning us that we must not wait to change our ways. I encourage you to think of places north of us where you have lived or visited. And I invite you to lift to your mind friends and family who live north of here and call on those memories of times with them and their spirits of life and love to be here with us today. You may lift their names into the sanctuary.
(sing “Gathered Here” chant)
And last I invite you to turn to the Center—home of the SPIRIT. And in this special place, I invite you to lift to your mind friends and family members who have died—leaving us with gracious memories and, of course, their love. And I invite you to call on those memories of times with them and their spirits of life and love to be here with us today. You may lift their names into the sanctuary.
(sing “Gathered Here” chant)
As you continue to face the center, please join me in giving thanks by singing these lines after me.
(Call and response singing of “Oh We Give Thanks” **)
Amen and Blessed Be.
You may be seated.
*#389 in Singing the Living Tradition. Words and music by Philip A Porter.
**#1010 in Singing the Journey. Words and music by Wendy Luella Perkins.