• Small worship table and cloth
• Chalice, candle and lighter or LED battery-operated candle
• 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 these words from Women of the Nineteenth Century by Margaret Fuller:

I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed. Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day... Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action.

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