• Small worship table and cloth
• Chalice, candle and lighter or LED battery-operated candle
• A copy of Singing the Living Tradition, the Unitarian Universalist hymnbook
• Newsprint, markers, and tape
• Optional: Microphone

• Set up the altar or centering table with the cloth, chalice, candle and matches or lighter.
• Place chairs in a semicircle around the table.
• Prepare and post a sheet of newsprint with these words of Annie Dillard:

We are here to abet creation and

to witness to it,

to notice each other's beautiful

face and complex nature

so that creation need not play to

an empty house.

Welcome participants. Invite a participant to light the chalice while you read aloud Reading 418 in Singing the Living Tradition, "Come into the circle of love and justice" by Israel Zangwill (adapted) or share these words of Charles Chauncy:

Have you, in truth, been made partakers of the Divine nature... ? And let me tell you, if you have indeed been renewed in the spirit of your minds, it will [show] it self in your lives.

In one word, there will be an amendment of your carriage in all the relations you sustain. You will be better husbands and wives; better parents and children; better masters and servants: You will be better neighbours, better friends, better subjects yea, you will be better in every station, and in every condition of life: Nor other wise may you think you have been renewed after the image of him that created you. Let no man deceive you; he that doth righteousness, is righteous, even as he is righteous.

Invite participants to join in reading aloud the opening words you have posted on newsprint, "We are here to abet creation" by Annie Dillard.