Opening Words
Gordon B. McKeemanWe summon ourselves from the demands and delights of the daily round:
We summon ourselves from the demands and delights of the daily round:from the dirty dishes and unwaxed floors;
from unmowed grass, and untrimmed bushes;
from all incompletenesses and not-yet-startednesses;
from the unholy and the unresolved.
We summon ourselves to attend to our vision
of peace and justice;
of cleanliness and health;
of delight and devotion;
of the lovely and the holy;
of who we are and what we can do.
We summon the power of tradition and the exhilaration of newness, the wisdom of the ages and the knowing of the very young.
We summon beauty, eloquence, poetry, and music to be the bearers of our dreams.
We would open our eyes, our ears, our minds, our hearts to the amplest dimensions of life.
Source: Published in Rejoice Together: Prayers, Meditations, and Other Readings for Family, Individual, and Small-Group Worship, ed. by Helen R. Pickett, Boston: Skinner House Books, 1995, 29.
Copyright: The author has given Unitarian Universalist Association member congregations permission to reprint this piece for use in public worship. Any reprints must acknowledge the name of the author.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
