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O Divine Source of Love

O Divine Source of Love

Praise and thanks to you, divine source of comfort, of pleasure, of knowledge and of peace.

J Judy Welles
Meditation on Courage and Vulnerability

Meditation on Courage and Vulnerability

I am seeking the courage to be open.

D Douglas Taylor
Meditation on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Meditation on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

On a foggy Christmas Eve, Santa realized Rudolph could make the difference in guiding the sleigh.

E Edward Harris
On Imagination and Being an Ally

On Imagination and Being an Ally

There is hope through imagination.

D Douglas Taylor
Every Moment Is One

Every Moment Is One

Your first Christmas, your last Christmas, this Christmas, and the redemption of the whole world are all happening right now, forever.

Q Quinn G. Caldwell
Let this Be a Place of Silence

Let this Be a Place of Silence

Let this be a place of warm and gentle silence: the silence that soothes and comforts the wounded, the silence that yields insights into heart and soul, the silence that calms, the silence the listens, the silence that speaks, the silence that renews. Let this be a place of warm and gentle silence.

B Barbara Stevens
The Communion Prayer

The Communion Prayer

In the name of Providence, which implants in the seed the future of the tree and in the hearts of men [and women] the longing for people living in [human] love; in the name of the highest....

N Norbert Fabian Capek
Fall Equinox Meditation

Fall Equinox Meditation

Like the sun moving toward the shortest day, each moment arises—and is gone before we know it.

L Lori Gorgas Hlaban
In These Days of Fire

In These Days of Fire

Let us pause, and breathe, and be in touch with the sacred presence that permeates all, including this room, now. Web of All... of life, death, and renewal: We open our hearts to those who suffer as a result of the wildfires.

J John Gibb Millspaugh and Sarah Gibb Millspaugh
Fathering Words

Fathering Words

I invite you into a period of quiet meditation. Close your eyes if you wish, and get comfortable in your seat. Think about the father-figure you carry in your heart. I invite you to remember the gifts and the wounds you received from that person or persons. If any feelings come up, just breathe...

M Myke Johnson
When Lonely Press Left Paw

When Lonely Press Left Paw

My son has sent me a “Build-A-Bear.” Dressed in the latest digital camouflage ACUs.* (Build-A-Bear hasn’t yet caught up with multicam.) It came with a note in my eight-year-old’s handwriting: “Press left paw for I love you and I miss you.” Sure enough, when I press the left paw, my...

G George A Tyger
Prayer for Compassion

Prayer for Compassion

Spirit of Life, I give thanks for the opportunities to love that present themselves in the turmoil of life. Where the light catches the tears in another’s eyes, where hands are held and there are moments without words, let us be present then, and alive to the possibility of changing. Let us seek...

E Elizabeth Tarbox
Imagine yourself on a wide, flowing river in a small boat

Imagine yourself on a wide, flowing river in a small boat

Imagine yourself on a wide, flowing river in a small boat, You are one little speck of being in a wide expanse of water bordered by rocky cliffs, towering trees and bright blue skies. Ahead of you are boulders and white water rapids, but also calm pools and sand bars for picnics. Around you are...

S Susan Enzweiler
When Everything Is New

When Everything Is New

Sometimes you can open your eyes and find that everything is new like you moved to a new town don't know where your grocery store is don't even know what lies at the end of your own street. You can open your eyes and everything is new like a shock like the call that delivers the message the...

S Susan Maginn
Children Widen the Circle of Our Being in Ways That Are Limitless

Children Widen the Circle of Our Being in Ways That Are Limitless

Children widen the circle of our being in ways that are limitless. Every baby that’s born connects us to our history, our own parents, grandparents and unknown forbears who brought new life to the world in each successive generation. Every baby that’s born links us to the future, to a world yet...

G Gary Kowalski
Tis the Season

Tis the Season

‘Tis the Season . . . of advertisers run amok and ambitions amplified beyond belief . . . of Martha Stewart moments mixed with desert island dreams . . . when even the most dedicated holiday-hopper admits perfection isn’t possible and “good enough” is how the season ought to be. ‘Tis the...

M Maureen Killoran
For We Are in Need

For We Are in Need

Holy spirit, We feel you moving among us here. Bless us with your presence. For we are in need… …in need of strength and courage. Our road is filled with rocks, with boulders strewn, boulders so high we sometimes wonder whether we can climb them, We are in need… …in need of comfort and...

J Judith L Quarles
Giver of being and freedom

Giver of being and freedom

Giver of being and freedom, thou who touches our lives in unforeseen ways, who unsettles our ease and upsets our self-satisfactions: We wait in these moments of stillness to let the hidden processes of healing and growth do their silent work within us, and to let the quiet work of reconciliation ...

G George Kimmich Beach
Blessing for Flower Communion

Blessing for Flower Communion

Blessed be the flower that triumphs at last Over the snows, over the centuries, over the heavy feet of cattle and of soldiers treading down the fragile places of the earth....

M Michael DeVernon Boblett
Meditation on the Equinox

Meditation on the Equinox

Over our heads, the great wheel of stars shifts, the autumnal (or spring) equinox manifests itself, and for one precious instant darkness and light exist in balanced proportion to one another. Within our minds the great web of neurons shifts, new consciousness arises, and for one precious instant...

T Thomas Rhodes
Come Christmas!

Come Christmas!

No one is ever really ready for Christmas....

M Maureen Killoran
Being the Resurrection

Being the Resurrection

The stone has got to be rolled back from the tomb again and again every year. Roll up your sleeves. He is not coming back, you know....

V Victoria Weinstein
Autumn Meditation

Autumn Meditation

Please join with me in the spirit of meditation and prayer. We know the leaves are dying. We know that their blaze of beauty is a preparation for death. It is a time when we appreciate the effort of nature to rise above the ordinariness of life and death. It is a time when we visibly comprehend...

E Elizabeth M Strong
In this time of anticipated spring

In this time of anticipated spring

In this time of anticipated spring let us allow ourselves to extend the anticipation—to value the time of budding before blooming, of seeding before sprouting. This is a time of revelation: the revealing of that which is eternal, which we see every year, but still need to be reminded to see it in...

T Terasa Cooley
The Strength of Water

The Strength of Water

The strength of water takes on many, many forms—just as each of you has a unique and necessary strength that you bring to our community and to the work of love. Take a moment now to drop down into the deep wellspring of your own spirit and bathe yourself in the strength that is the groundwater of...

J Jamila Batchelder and Molly Housh Gordon
Meditation on Attention

Meditation on Attention

Sit and rest for a minute. Take several deep breaths in and out again, calling your attention to this space. Attention. Pay attention. Pay attention to where you are right now. I mean where you are, Where you are, And where you are....

N Nancy Reid-McKee
The Pulse of Life

The Pulse of Life

These are anxious days. Hair-pulling, hand-wringing days. We are bombarded from all sides with new and unprecedented developments. Grave threats to our national values and institutions on one hand, and countless calls to action on the other... and then the flood of critique and analysis. Whose...

J Jennifer Johnson
Easter Morning

Easter Morning

Dear God: Good Friday is gone—a dark day on the calendar, A time of suffering—with more losses than gains, And more pain than we thought we could bear. We are tired of crying, We are tired of burying, We are tired of mourning. But Easter is here—and we who survived are prepared For the turning...

D David O. Rankin
Thanks Be for These

Thanks Be for These

For the sound of bow on string, Of breath over reed, Of touch on keyboard; For slants of sunlight through windows, For shimmering shadows on snow, For the whisper of wind on my face; For the smooth skin of an apple, For the caress of a collar on my neck; For the prickling of my skin when I am dee...

R Richard S. Gilbert
Christmas Eve Night

Christmas Eve Night

Like those shepherds who were on the hillsides with their flocks, like those wise ones in their observatories with their telescopes and astronomical charts, we find our daily work interrupted by these holidays. Like them, we can’t keep on working, we have to listen to singing angels, we have to...

M Mary Wellemeyer
I Want to Be Better

I Want to Be Better

The concern which I lay bare before God today is my need to be better: I want to be better than I am in my most ordinary day-by-day contacts: With my friends— With my family— With my casual contacts— With my business relations— With my associates in work and play. I want to be better than I...

H Howard Thurman
Prayer of the War Atheist

Prayer of the War Atheist

My prayer today is that I learn to stay a war atheist— my prayer today for each of us, for everyone in this nation, in this world, is that we all learn to be war atheists. I don’t believe in war anymore. My prayer today is that I never again succumb to fear, fear which seduces me to believe that...

J Jessica Purple Rodela
It's Hard Work

It's Hard Work

For just as the body without the spirit is dead, faith without works is also dead. —James 2:26 Why are we still talking about inclusivity and diversity when we have done so little to make them real? Why are we still looking pained about the lack of diversity in the denomination?...

R Rosemary Bray McNatt
Blessing of the Animals—St. Francis Day

Blessing of the Animals—St. Francis Day

You Birds of the Air, Hawk, Sparrow, and laughing Jay You embody freedom itself, delight us with your song, astound us with feats of migration Grant us your perspective, for too often our horizon is limited and we are blind to the full results of our actions....

T Thomas Rhodes
Meditation for a New Year

Meditation for a New Year

My friends, we have arrived: we are here, in this new year. We have crossed the boundary of time, into the next year, with all its resolutions and plans and schedules ahead of us. Let us pause, for just this moment, before we move boldly onward....

A Amanda Poppei
Emmanuel

Emmanuel

Emmanuel means "God is with us." Who is your Emmanuel? Who is your "God is with us," the one you were promised, the one you have been waiting for? For the ancient prophet Isaiah, he was a boy soon to be born who would guide the people of Judah back to peace and harmony with God....

S Sarah Movius Schurr
Winter Solstice Meditation

Winter Solstice Meditation

We join our hearts and minds together in a time of meditation or prayer; spoken, silent, sung, and shared....

C Christine Robinson
In the moments when Word is silence

In the moments when Word is silence

In the moments when Word is silence give yourself to it in wholeness and wait. Let the knowing of this primal sound carry you into circles where sound itself— where silence itself—becomes new and the new a song you sing from your bones.

S Susan L Van Dreser
The Love's the Thing

The Love's the Thing

I was a foster parent long before I was a mom, and an inside look at families "in the system" reveals pretty quickly that love and parenthood are two different qualities, and the relationship between them is neither straightforward nor guaranteed....

L Lisa Doege
The Longest Night: a Solstice Meditation

The Longest Night: a Solstice Meditation

The winter solstice is a time to look back upon our ancestors, gather our family and friends close, and rejoice in the return of the sun. It is a time of renewed hope and a time of resurrection – for just as Arianrhod’s Wheel turns and the Oak King resumes his rightful place, so must we go on.

A Andrea Hawkins-Kamper
I Am Who I Am

I Am Who I Am

Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them out of that land to a good and broad land, a land...

J John Nichols
Experience Connection

Experience Connection

What does deep spirituality feel like to you? Spirituality is impossible to define and difficult to describe. For me, it feels like connection—connection to myself, to others around me, to the earth and all of creation. Connection to myself feels like deep peace, awareness, calm, authenticity.

P Peter Morales
Return

Return

The first stop on U.S. soil after a deployment is the airport. From there, it’s all downhill until you get to see your family and loved ones again. But the airport is its own scene when you’re a soldier in uniform. On my trip home, I’m reminded of the last time I was in the airport—returning...

G George A Tyger
In Between

In Between

In between, liminal, that space where we wait. Between moments; events, results, action, no action. To stand on the threshold, waiting for something to end, And something new to arrive, a pause in the rumble of time. Awareness claims us, alert, a shadow of something different....

K Kate R. Walker
Prayer for Travelers / Oración Para Los Viajeros

Prayer for Travelers / Oración Para Los Viajeros

In English This is a prayer for all the travelers. For the ones who start out in beauty, who fall from grace, who step gingerly, looking for the way back. And for those who are born into the margins, who travel from one liminal space to another, crossing boundaries in search of center. This is a...

A Angela Herrera
Into the Wilderness

Into the Wilderness

When Jesus was baptized the spirit descended upon him like a dove and God said, “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased.” It must have been a great feeling, but it didn’t last long. The next thing Jesus knew, the nice spirit that had descended like a dove became aggressive and drove him...

S Sarah York
Traditional Transylvanian Blessing (II)

Traditional Transylvanian Blessing (II)

I am Unitarian, I live and work in this faith. Jesus is my guide And God is my help. We, humans, are all brothers/sisters, Our law is one: love. The goal of our work is shared, Happy are those of God's Kingdom...

U Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council
God of goodness

God of goodness

God of goodness, you are the life of life, the breath of all, the eternal yet ever-changing wholeness into which infinity is poured and from which life is born anew. To you I offer myself, with you I simply am; as you I amaze myself with energy, compassion and calm....

L Lucinda S Duncan
Waving the Palms

Waving the Palms

Palm Sunday is found: whenever we are serving a noble and unpopular cause with selfless devotion, holding to the ideals of truth and justice; whenever we are seeking to uplift the fallen, to comfort the brokenhearted, to strengthen and encourage the weak and hopeless; whenever we are working brav...

D David O. Rankin
Prayer for All Who Mother

Prayer for All Who Mother

We reflect in thanksgiving this day for all those whose lives have nurtured ours.The life-giving onesWho heal with their presenceWho listen in sympathyWho give wise advice ......

V Victoria Weinstein
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