Faith Curriculum Library: Tapestry of Faith: What Moves Us: A Unitarian Universalist Theology Program for Adults

Opening

Part of What Moves Us

Activity time: 5 minutes

Materials for Activity

  • 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

Preparation for Activity

  • 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.

Description of Activity

Welcome participants. Invite a participant to light the chalice while you share Reading 436 in Singing the Living Tradition, "We come to this time and this place," by David C. Pohl or share these words from James Luther Adams' essay, "A Faith for the Free":

... the achievement of freedom in community requires the power of organization and the organization of power. The free person will be unfree, will be a victim of tyranny from within or from without, if his or her faith does not assume form, in both word and deed. The commanding, transforming power is a shaping power; it shapes one's beliefs about that reality and when it works through persons it shapes the community of love and justice.

The free church is that community which is committed to determining what is rightly of ultimate concern to persons of free faith. It is a community of faithful and a community of sinners... It is the community in which the life-spirit of faith tries to create and mold life-giving, life-transforming beliefs, the community in which persons open themselves to God and each other and to commanding, sustaining, transforming experiences from the past, appropriating, criticizing, and transforming tradition and giving that tradition as well as newborn faith the occasion to become relevant to the needs of a time.

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