Photo by Dea Brayden.

Sunday before Thanksgiving. Themes can include gratitude to God, gratitude for loved ones, gathering the family together, breaking bread together, Native American perspective on the holiday, Puritans, remembering those less fortunate.

From Tapestry of Faith Curricula

Unitarian Universalist Perspectives

Guest at Your Table

Guest at Your Table is an annual tradition in which congregation members take home a box featuring people that the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) has worked with recently. These people are your 'guests,' and you are asked to share your blessings with them each meal by putting your spare change in the box. As you give to your guests, you can learn about them by reading the Stories of Hope booklet. UUSC uses the funds raised through this program to support their human-rights work in the United States and around the world!

Most congregations begin their Guest at Your Table celebration on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, but please check your congregational calendar for your opening date.

Some congregations celebrate bread communion at this service. This ritual can include the breaking and passing around of bread throughout the congregation. Congregants eat the bread, or feed it to one another, while being led in a reflection about gratitude, sharing and being together in community.

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  • “There’s a hunger beyond food that’s expressed in food, and that’s why feeding is always a kind of miracle. It speaks to a bigger desire.” Note: one version of this quote, quasi-attributed, appears in Take This Bread (p. 23) by Sara Miles.
    Quote | By William E. Swing | June 1, 2018 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Abundance, Body, Communion (Christian), Direct Experience, Food, Food Justice, Generosity, Hospitality, Humanism, Searching, Secular, Stewardship, Table Grace, Thanksgiving
  • We are hungry We are eating our daily bread and bowing our heads and yet we are hungry We are thanking the farmer and the farm worker and yet we are hungry We are speaking in spaces for food that is healthy and still we are hungry We are tiring of slogans that say Feed the Children and mean feed ...
    Meditation | By Debra Smith | February 11, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), 6th Principle (World Community), 7th Principle (Interconnected Web), Christianity, Communion (Christian), Democracy, Direct Experience, Food, Food Justice, Generosity, Human Rights, Humanism, Justice, Justice Sunday, Poverty, Prayer Practices, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Spiritual Practice, Table Grace, Thanksgiving, Transcendence, Transformation, WorshipWeb
  • I [do not] mean to present myself as some kind of bodhisattva of compassion. However, in my better moments—at least in my more conscious moments—while I’m eating, I do try to imagine the lives and even the deaths of the creatures who nourish me. I try to think of the freedom and exhilaration...
    Reading | By Lillian Nye | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 7th Principle (Interconnected Web), Activism, Animals, Body, Earth Day, Ethics, Food, Food Justice, Nature, Thanksgiving, Unitarian Universalism, Work