A Prayer For Our Church

Rev. Jeffrey Symynkywicz, April 2, 2000

Come, Spirit of Wholeness and Peace, and abide with us at this time and in this place.

A long road-- more than two and one-half centuries long-- has brought this community of faith to this day: 256 years of the full flow of human emotions; 256 years of good times and bad; years of abundance and years of scarcity; times of joy and times of sadness.

May the souls of those departed and those who will come after us crowd with us into this meeting house on this day, warming our gathering with the presence of their memory; inspiring our gathering with the radiance of their hope.

The past offers its gifts generously
with strong hands of bold and free-spirited souls
who dared to offer their world (and ours)
a liberating vision of hope and courage.
May we remember gratefully this day
those gifts of the Universalist spirit
ours for the borrowing in our time:

gifts of art and song and forms of worship (perhaps),
gifts of spirit, zest, energy, and lessons well learned--
the gift of a faith that will not rest
until the circle of its community is as wide as the universe itself
and human love grows large as the very heart of God.

May this church ever, always be
a place of love and caring, for ourselves and the world around us.
May it be a place for boundless searching, for thirsting after knowledge.
May it be a place of heated discussion and cool re-fresh-ment;
a place where differing truths are aired openly and freely, but a place of reconciliation and friendship and compassion as well.

May we always, ever be a household of faith where our worldly preoccupation with power can give way, time after time, to the magnificent, amazing workings of grace.
May we this day, each one of us, rededicate ourselves to our highest ideals and most noble aspirations; to the call of a faith as big as the whole world; to the call of a faith as expansive as the universe itself.

Blessed be. Amen.

jbs
4/2/2000

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