• 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 this passage from A Treatise on Atonement, by Hosea Ballou:

There is an immortal desire, in every soul, for future existence and happiness: For the truth of this assertion I appeal to the consciences of my readers. Why should the Almighty implant this desire in us, if he never intended to satisfy it?

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