• Search
  • About
  • 7 Principles of UU
  • 6 Sources of UU
  • WorshipWeb
  • #BlackLivesMatter
  • Braver/Wiser
  • Settings
  • Feedback Form
  • Chalice Lighter
WorshipWeb
Search
  • Home
  • Gallery
  • Favorites
  • Donate
  • More
Affirmations Benedictions Blessings Chalice Lightings Closings Invocations Litanies Meditations Openings Poetry Prayers Readings Responsive Readings Rituals Stories
When I Feel Helpless

When I Feel Helpless

If I can do nothing more, I go out the back door and sit on the steps where the tuxedo cat rubs my leg and I look for the holy.…

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Let Mother Earth Just Be Herself

Let Mother Earth Just Be Herself

May all creatures live their lives as if no human crushed asphalt / over the land or shaved ancient forests bald.

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Slowing Down

Slowing Down

Help me remember, Beloved, that the longings of my heart are never satisfied by the sprint but rather by the slow, languid meander.…

M Manish Mishra-Marzetti
Desert Flowers

Desert Flowers

Improbably, the wind-blown seed found its way here, to a long, beautiful stretch of land, but one that was hot, dry, and arid.…

M Manish Mishra-Marzetti
Transformations

Transformations

…it is enough to release the piercing frigidity, the brittle rigidity of ice— and embrace the versatile, vital, blessing, bathing, embodiment of water.

N Nicholas D’Agosto
Hug the Prayer

Hug the Prayer

Hug the prayer before it leaves your body. Float it along like murmuring leaves.…

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Perfect, Love

Perfect, Love

Later, poets would tell of stars, shepherds, and seers, songs of angels…

D Daniel S. Schatz
No Place

No Place

Where do you keep your love? Invite love in.

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Redwing Blackbird

Redwing Blackbird

I look up and experience her music as a Beatitude of Peace, a feathery sonnet that rings of grace and hope...

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Sabr wa Iman (Patience and Faith)

Sabr wa Iman (Patience and Faith)

We need resilience, perseverance, and persistence.

S Summer Albayati
We Are the Fundamentalists

We Are the Fundamentalists

…those of us who believe in human rights for everyone; who believe in fundamentals of fairness, of equality, of equity; who believe in recognizing injustices of past, of present, and being accountable for ending them…

C Charles Thomas
Revolutionary Love

Revolutionary Love

Together we create a love energy more powerful than any force of oppression…

D Dayna Edwards
Gift from the Geese

Gift from the Geese

High up, the wild geese have pulled the rusty doorway of Autumn closed behind them, their sharp music a choir of deep acoustic truth.

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
It Is Not Always Easy to Find Love at the Center

It Is Not Always Easy to Find Love at the Center

We gather in covenant to celebrate the reality that love is at the core of our beings and that love will guide us if we open ourselves to the challenges which love requires of us.

E Esther Hurlburt
Agenda

Agenda

The agenda looks long. When will I get home? What surprises and big decisions await us?

L Lisa Smith-Horn
Ready

Ready

Wear God like a cloak / and stride forth with confidence.

R Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
Church

Church

In my chapel, redwing blackbird unravels her liquid song in the cattails.

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Say the Word

Say the Word

I never heard the word abortion in church when I was a child.

E Eileen Casey-Campbell
Earth

Earth

This is our earth. It falls through heaven like a pearl in a glass of plum wine. There are no other earths that I know of. There are no other skies that we have mapped. This is our earth. The Oneness who gave birth to it remains nameless. There was no midwife then to bring us word of the birth-cry.

M Mark Belletini
Communion Circle

Communion Circle

The earth. One planet. Round, global, so that when you trace its shape with your finger, you end up where you started. It's one. It's whole. All the dotted lines we draw on our maps of this globe are just that, dotted lines. They smear easily. Oceans can be crossed. Even the desert can be crossed.

M Mark Belletini
Earthquake

Earthquake

(Ahmedabad, India, 2001) Mother Earth is shouting but we do not hear. She is filled with anguish, for all we understand is death. And in her agony she suffers too over the fact that she must kill her own to get our attentionn...

M Marta I. Valentín
The Return of Earth/She

The Return of Earth/She

The Earth has returned. She is living, breathing, Realizing her breath was leaving. She was needing us to remember her worth, to recognize her worth all over again. We used to be her friends. We used to help her heal us. Help her, heal us. Help her heal us....

C Christopher Sims
Suppose

Suppose

Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines, but inside there is no music, then what? —Kabir Suppose you cried a thousand years for a child who died when she drank bad water. Suppose you organized a great movement to clean the water. Suppose you carried the first filled glass to the...

S Stephen M. Shick
Vanishing Song Birds

Vanishing Song Birds

I understand history as possibility...that could also stop being a possibility. —Paulo Freire The winds of extinction sing a mournful song in the rustling grass, where the bobwhite drums and the meadowlark's melody is vanishing. The winds of extinction sing a mournful song in the dark forest...

S Stephen M. Shick
Poem in a Time of Peril

Poem in a Time of Peril

Of course truth is hard. It is a rock. Yet I do not think it will fall upon me And crush me. I do not think they can hammer it to bits And stone me. Help me place the rock in the strong current Of these rushing waters. I must climb upon it. I must know how truth feels....

B Barbara Rohde
Beneath the Slow Stars — Approaching Solstice

Beneath the Slow Stars — Approaching Solstice

There in the deep sack of night, a tiny Hope was born.

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Dependence Day

Dependence Day

It would be a quieter holiday, no fireworks or loud parades, no speeches, no salutes to any flag, a day of staying home instead of crowding away, a day we celebrate nothing gained in war but what we’re given — how the sun’s warmth is democratic, touching everyone, and the rain is democratic...

J John Daniel
A Winter Blessing

A Winter Blessing

Love this world, she whispers.

R Rebecca Ann Parker
The Colors of Communion

The Colors of Communion

I am singing/of the wonder of how roots/so love the buds they bid them grow...

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Within the Miracles: Pondering Earth Day

Within the Miracles: Pondering Earth Day

Is it not a marvel?

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Home Gone

Home Gone

Miles away in a different life...

S Sharon Scholl
Order

Order

Breakfast on kosher macaroons and Diet Pepsi in the car on the way to Price Chopper for lamb. Peel five pounds of onions and let the Cuisinart shred them while you push them down and weep....

R Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
Goddess

Goddess

The blasphemy of body hatred has no place in this temple.

M Misha Sanders
A Prayer among Friends

A Prayer among Friends

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive with one another, we live here in the light of this unlikely world that isn’t ours for long. May we spend generously the time we are given. May we enact our responsibilities as thoroughly as we enjoy our pleasures....

J John Daniel
Hope, Nearly Not There

Hope, Nearly Not There

There’s no package called hope. Nothing at a shop to look for. Hope won’t store like hay in a barn. It is a last leaf on a branch in deep winter. It is a singular thing, firm when it’s found—a hand reached out. A word to the marrow. Hope is fine-grained, like lavender gone to seed. Gossamer,...

D David Breeden
When Your Best Friend Has Four or So Legs

When Your Best Friend Has Four or So Legs

What it means to have a pet is to love someone who speaks a language you do not. A dog will bow and prance, a cat will purr and blink. A guinea pig will giggle and squeak. A long time ago a friend of mine had a dog with soft ears, and considered herself the pup’s guardian....

J Julián Jamaica Soto
A Blessing for the Front Lines

A Blessing for the Front Lines

Oh you You rebel You queer and wayward child You abandoned and listless You angry and forgotten You brown and black and indigenous You homeless and impoverished You dreamer You warrior You are not alone here You have never been alone Not in this place, not in this time Not in the whole of history...

A Anna Geoffroy
Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice

Perhaps for a moment the typewriters will stop clicking, the wheels stop rolling the computers desist from computing, and a hush will fall over the city....

R Rebecca Ann Parker
Pandemic

Pandemic

What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath— the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center down. And when your...

L Lynn Ungar
A Prayer for Salvation

A Prayer for Salvation

Here I am, God, here I am. Here I am with the dishes in the sink, the dust on the shelves, the skin on my hands which is drying out and starting to crack. My appetite has gone, without any other bodies to remind my body of itself. I can pray for salvation but my bones know this is all there is....

P Peregrine Morkal-Williams
Monet Refuses the Operation

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see, to...

L Lisel Mueller
Winter Meditation

Winter Meditation

Something has changed in me this winter. In the past I’ve focused on how long winter is, How miserable I find it, and how it seems so interminable. This winter, I find myself thinking instead That every day, every hour, every minute Brings us just that much closer to spring. We all experience...

T Tess Baumberger
This Body

This Body

This body is not what it was I got shin splints from running today Ten years ago all I’d get was smelly feet My back aches just from sitting these days In my youth, all my pain came from climbing trees This body is not what it was Not some alien thing thrust upon me So clumsy, always in the way I...

K Kayla Parker
Lucky Streak

Lucky Streak

Who cast a spell over my world? Who opened the doors, stirred the crowd of possibilities, put gold dust in my dreams causing my life to turn? O Fate, O Love, O Spirit, O God: is it true that all good things must end? Or have you set me on a path of meaning Not luck Of clarity Not magic And this...

A Angela Herrera
The Wanderer

The Wanderer

A cold grey sky, a cold grey sea And a cold grey mist that is chilling me; A light that burns on the harbor bar With the dull dim glow of a distant star....

L Lewis H. Latimer
Some Day

Some Day

Once upon a time I was Now I am Some day I will become Once there was And now there is Soon there will be And some day there surely shall be Once upon a time we were Now we are And some day (Hallelujah!) we shall surely become Amen Amen...

M Margaret Williams Braxton
I Say It Touches Us

I Say It Touches Us

(adapted from the original) I say that it touches us that our blood is sea water and our tears are salt, that the seed of our bodies is scarcely different from the same cells in a seaweed, and that the stuff of our bones is like the coral. I say that the tide rolls in on us, whether we like it or...

M Marni Harmony
To Outgrow the Past

To Outgrow the Past

To outgrow the past but not extinguish it; To be progressive but not raw, Free but not mad, critical but not sterile, expectant but not deluded; To be scientific but not to live on formulas that cut us off from life; To hear amidst clamor the pure, deep tones of the spirit; To seek the wisdom tha...

W William Laurence Sullivan
The Legacy of Caring

The Legacy of Caring

Despair is my private pain Born from what I have failed to say failed to do failed to overcome. Be still my inner self let me rise to you let me reach down into your pain and soothe you....

T Thandeka
Beyond Borders

Beyond Borders

Go forth Because we are always going forth from somewhere Going from our homes, our childhoods Going from our cities and countries Going from innocence to experience to enlightenment Going into mystery and questions Going into the desert Getting to the other side....

R Rick Hoyt