Addendul USH-Enews031209a

Why we Go to Church Reading from the Hymnal

443
We Arrive Out of Many Singular Rooms
Kenneth Patton
(20th century Unitarian scholar, poet, minister, author of innovative liturgy for worship)

We arrive out of many singular rooms, walking over the branching streets.

We come to be assured that brothers and sisters surround us, to restore their images on our eyes.

We enlarge our voices in common speaking and singing.

We try again that solitude found in the midst of those who with us seek their hidden reckoning.

Our eyes reclaim the remembered faces; their voices stir the surrounding air.

            The warmth of their hands assures us, and the gladness of our spoken names.

This is the reason of cities, of homes, of assemblies in the houses of worship.

            It is good to be with one another.

444
This House
Kenneth Patton
(20th century Unitarian scholar, poet, minister, author of innovative liturgy for worship)

This house is for the ingathering of nature and human nature.

It is a house of friendships, a haven in trouble, an open room for the encouragement of our struggle.

It is a house of freedom, guarding the dignity and worth of every person.

It offers a platform for the free voice, for declaring, both in times of security and danger, the full and undivided conflict of opinion.

It is a house of truth-seeking, where scientists can encourage devotion to their quest, where mystics can abide in a community of searchers.

            It is a house of art, adorning its celebrations with melodies and handiworks.

It is a house of prophecy, outrunning times past and times present in visions of growth and progress.

            This house is a cradle for our dreams, the workshop of our common endeavor.

474
Unto the Church Universal
Keshab Chandra Sen
(19th century religious reformer of Hinduism)
John Haynes Holmes
(Unitarian minister and activist who resigned from the American Unitarian Association in 1918 in protest)

Unto the church universal, which is the depository of all ancient wisdom and the school of all modern thought;

Which recognizes in all prophets a harmony, in all scriptures a unity, and through all dispensations a continuity;

Which abjures all that separates and divides, and always magnifies all that unifies and brings peace;

Which seeks truth in freedom, justice in love, and individual discipline in social duty;

And which shall make of all sects, classes, nations, and races, one global community;

Unto this church and unto all its members, known and unknown throughout the world,

We pledge the allegiance of our hands and hearts.

501
Spirit of Community
Frederick Gillis
(contemporary UU minister)

Spirit of Community, in which we share and find strength and common purpose, we turn our minds and hearts toward one another seeking to bring into our circle of concern all who need our love and support: those who are ill, those who are in pain, either in body or in spirit, those who are lonely, those who have been wronged.

(Here people may say the names of those to be remembered.)

We are part of a web of life that makes us one with all humanity, one with all the universe.

We are grateful for the miracle of consciousness, the consciousness that gives us the power to remember, to love, to care.

591
I Call That Church Free
James Luther Adams
(20th century UU theologian)

I call that church free which enters into covenant with the ultimate source of existence,

            That sustaining and transforming power not made with human hands.

It binds together families and generations, protecting against the idolatry of any human claim to absolute truth or authority.

This covenant is the charter and responsibility and joy of worship in the face of death as well as life.

I call that church free which brings individuals into caring, trusting fellowship,

That protects and nourishes their integrity and spiritual freedom; that yearns to belong to the church universal;

It is open to insight and conscience from every source; it bursts through rigid tradition, giving rise to new and living language, to new and broader fellowship.

            It is a pilgrim church, a servant church, on an adventure of the spirit.

The goal is the prophethood and priesthood of all believers, the one for the liberty of prophesying, the other for the ministry of healing.

It aims to find unity in diversity under the promptings of the spirit “that bloweth where it listeth…and maketh all things new.”

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