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"Building a Consensus Community" -- UUSE Virtual Worship, November 17, 2024


Gathering Music

“Get Together”

Words and music by Chet Powers

 

Welcome and Announcements

 

Centering

 

Prelude 

“What’s Going On”

Words and music by Al Cleveland, Renaldo Benson and Marvin Gaye

 

Chalice Lighting and Call to Worship

We Meet on Holy Ground

by Richard Gilbert

 

We meet on holy ground,

For that place is holy

Where lives touch,

Where love moves,

Where hope stirs,

There is holy ground.

We meet on holy ground,

Brought into being as life encounters life,

As personal histories merge into the communal story,

As we take on the pride and pain of our companions,

As separate selves become community.

We meet on holy ground.

 

Opening Hymn   

#318 “We Would Be One”

By Samuel Anthony Wright & Jean Sibelius

Performed by Meetinghouse


We would be one as now we join in singing

our hymn of love, to pledge ourselves anew

to that high cause of greater understanding

of who we are, and what in us is true.

We would be one in living for each other

to show to all a new community.

 

We would be one in building for tomorrow

a nobler world than we have known today.

We would be one in searching for that meaning

which bends our hearts and points us on our way.

As one, we pledge ourselves to greater service,

with love and justice, strive to make us free.

 

Time for All Ages

  Story “I Am We – A Book of Community”

Written by Susan Verde

Illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds

Read by Lynn Dove

    

Song

"Just Imagine"

by Matt Falkowski

Performed by Meetinghouse

 

Just imagine

Just imagine

Just imagine a little love

 

Just imagine

Just imagine

Just imagine a little love

 

I’m gonna bring a little love

And you can bring a little love

We’ll put our love together

‘Cause a little means a lot

The world will be a better place when love is what we’ve got

 

Let’s all bring a little love

 

Just imagine

Just imagine

Just imagine a little peace

 

Just imagine

Just imagine

Just imagine a little peace

 

I’m gonna bring a little peace

 

And you can bring a little peace

We’ll put our peace together

‘Cause a little means a lot

The world will be a better place when peace is what we’ve got

 

Let’s all bring a little peace

 

Just imagine

Just imagine

Just imagine a little hope

 

Just imagine

Just imagine

Just imagine a little hope

 

I’m gonna bring a little hope

And you can bring a little hope

We’ll put our hope together

‘Cause a little means a lot

The world will be a better place when hope is what we’ve got

 

Let’s all bring a little hope

Let’s all bring a little peace

Let’s all bring a little love


 Joys and Concerns

 

Musical Interlude

 

Offering

Continuing our practice of sharing our gifts with the community beyond our walls, fifty percent of our Sunday plate collections for the month of November will be dedicated to Manchester Senior, Adult and Family Services.


Offering Music

“Imagine”

by John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Performed by Meetinghouse

 

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us, only sky

 

Imagine all the people

Livin' for today

Ah

 

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

 

Imagine all the people

Livin' life in peace

You

 

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

 

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

 

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You

 

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

 

Reading: Barbara Kingsolver, FB posting, 11.06.24

 

Truth and love have been smacked down, so many more times in history before today. Truth, because it’s often inconvenient, and love because it is vulnerable.

 

But truth is like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse: it’s still there. And love stays alive if you tend it like a flame. If you feel crushed by unkindness today, it’s a time for grieving, reaching out to loved ones, noticing one bright color somewhere in the day. Remembering what there is to love. Starting with the immediate, the place and people we can tend ourselves, and make safe. We can’t save everything all at once, but it’s still worth saving something. Because there are so many of us to do it.

 

And we are all still here today, exactly as we were yesterday. Like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse.

 

Reflections on Consensus  (Kevin Holian-Borgnis)

 

Musical Interlude

 

Homily: "Building a Consensus Community" (Kate Kimmerle)

 

Closing Hymn         

#128 “For All That Is Our Life”

By Bruce Findlow & Patrick L. Rickey

Performed by Meetinghouse


For all that is our life we sing our thanks and praise;

for all life is a gift which we are called to use

to build the common good and make our own days glad.


For needs which others serve, for services we give,f

for work and its rewards, for hours of rest and love;

we come with praise and thanks for all that is our life.


For sorrow we must bear, for failures, pain, and loss,

for each new thing we learn, for fearful hours that pass:

we come with praise and thanks for all that is our life.


For all that is our life we sing our thanks and praise;

for all life is a gift which we are called to use

to build the common good and make our own days glad.


Closing Words

#580 “The Task of the Religious Community”

by Mark Morrison-Reed


The central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all. There is a connectedness, a relationship discovered amid the particulars of our own lives and the lives of others. Once felt, it inspires us to act for justice.

It is the church that assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own but as members of a larger community. The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen and our strength too limited to do all that must be done. Together, our vision widens and our strength is renewed.


Extinguishing the Chalice

 

Closing Circle

May faith in the spirit of life

And hope for the Community of Earth

And love of the light in each other

Be ours now, and in all the days to come

 

Postlude

“We Are Family”

by Bernard Edwards, Nile Gregory Rodgers Jr.


[Chorus]

We are family

I got all my sisters with me

We are family

Get up, everybody, and sing.

We are family

I got all my sisters with me.

We are family. Get up, everybody, and sing.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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