Centering (5 minutes)

This is a time to make the transition from the busy world to the group experience. A member of the group may read these words from Unitarian Universalist minister Burton Carley:

For these gifts of life
I make this day a thanksgiving:

For all that offers contrast – 
morning light and night sky,
autumn fields and blue above,
the seasons of the soul.

For all that is invisible – 
love and wind, 
hope and faith,
spirit and breath.

For all that is bold – 
courage and color
mountain and ocean,
language and feelings.

For all that is beautiful –
art form and burning candle,
green earth and oak tree,
birds singing and people laughing.

For all that is mystery – 
renewal and grace,
mind and being,
stars and creatures.

For these gifts of life – 
contrasts, things invisible,
bold, beautiful, mysterious – 
I raise my voice in song 
with the choir of creation, 
praising what is mine to know and hold,
but never to possess.

Check-in (10 to 25 minutes)

Each person in the group has the opportunity to share something about his or her life. What significant events have taken place recently in your life? Have you accomplished something meaningful to you? Have you experienced any losses or setbacks? Have you had any insights or new ideas?

Group Discussion (45 to 70 minutes)

Our spiritual theme for this month is Gratitude. The Czech Unitarian minister Norbert Capek, who originated the Flower Communion with his congregation in the 1920s, was one of many remarkable leaders in the history of Unitarian Universalism. How might we best express our gratitude toward these people? Community is a prominent theme in the Flower Communion. How might we best express our gratitude for all the contributions our fellow Unitarian Universalists bring to this religious community and to the larger Unitarian Universalist movement? Nature is another prominent theme of the Flower Communion. How might we best express our gratitude for the gift of being alive and being part of the great web of life?

For group discussion, please consider the questions associated with one or more of the following numbered sections. You need not address all of these sections, and you need not address them in this order.

1. Do you feel a sense of gratitude toward Unitarians and Universalists from many years ago who strengthened and advanced our liberal religious tradition in their time and then bequeathed it to us? If so, what do you think is an appropriate way for you to express this gratitude?

2. History does not record the names of many Unitarians and Universalists from many years ago who contributed to our liberal religious tradition. Does your gratitude focus entirely on those whose names and biographies are recorded? Or does your gratitude extend to those who are now anonymous?

3. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names… . The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.”

Are you properly grateful for your life, despite its imperfections? Or do you focus on the imperfections so that you are perhaps unnecessarily resentful or regretful? Do you find faults even in paradise?

4. We receive much in our lives that we did not earn. We are blessed by relationships or gifts or good fortune that we did create, or that we did not create all by ourselves. Thus, an “attitude of gratitude” may be an acknowledgement of our interdependence with other people and with our communities and with our natural environment. Have you sometimes found it difficult to acknowledge this interdependence? Within Unitarian Univesalism, what encouragement do we offer to acknowledge this interdependence?

Conclusion (5 to 10 minutes)

What will you take away from this discussion? What would have made this time together more meaningful or satisfying to you? What did you enjoy? A group member may share these words from Unitarian Universalist minister Max Coots:

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:
For children who are our second planting, and, though they grow like weeds, and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.
Let us give thanks:
For generous friends … with hearts … and smiles as bright as their blossoms;
For feisty friends as tart as apples;
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we’ve had them;
For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and as good for you;
For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;
For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you throughout the winter;
For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;
For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;
And, finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;
For all these we give thanks.