November 2020

Dear Friends,

The season of thanks is upon us and although these are challenging times, there is still much to hold in our minds and hearts with gratitude.

However you are marking Thanksgiving Day this year—whether with those in your immediate household or with friends and family over Zoom—please know that you are being held in the larger circle of love and care that is our church family.

As you make the time to honor this turning of the season and the many gifts of life, I hope you will find ways to use the enclosed prayers and readings. May they feed your spirit and help you connect with that which sustains and nurtures you.

I count all of you as one of my greatest blessings! In faith and with love,

Rev. Leia

Prayers & Graces for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Grace

May we hold hands quietly for a moment… feeling love flow around us and through us, knowing that as we give it away there is always more here.
For this food and all our blessings we are truly grateful.
Amen and Blessed Be.

Thank you for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat,
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you, God, for everything.
Amen.

Unitarian Universalist Prayer

From all that dwells below the skies,
Let faith and hope with joy arise;
Let beauty, truth and good be sung,
Through every land, by every tongue.

Bedtime Prayers

Now I lay me down to sleep, Please help me learn my world to keep;
To guard the air and skies of blue. The oceans, lakes and rivers, too;
Save the mighty forest lands, The plains, the shores and desert sands,
Protect all creatures wild and free, In air, on land and in the sea.

I give thanks tonight, For the blessings in my life—
The warm bed where I lay my head, My tummy full of food that’s yummy,
My friends and family,
And everyone and everything that is helping me be a better me.
Amen.

For this new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends, For everything life’s goodness sends:
Thank You.
Emerson (revised)

We give thanks for Being, We give thanks for being here,
We give thanks for being here together.
The Reverend Joseph Barth

Let Us Give Thanks

Let us give thanks for the food that we share,
Let us give thanks for people who care;
Food fills our body and love makes us whole,
Let us give thanks deep down in our soul.
by Joyce Poley


Thanksgiving Prayer

Because our lives are rich with blessings,
we give thanks today and everyday.
May our hearts be open 
to more love,
May our hands be ready to help others,
May our thoughts be prayers of peace for the world.

A Thanksgiving Prayer by Howard Thurman
Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was an African-American theologian, preacher, and
activist. Author of Jesus and the Disinherited, he mentored Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other civil rights leaders.

Today, I make my Sacrament of Thanksgiving.
I begin with the simple things of my days:
Fresh air to breathe,
Cool water to drink,
The taste of food,
The protection of houses and clothes,
The comforts of home.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!

I bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that I have known:
My mother’s arms,
The strength of my father
,
The playmates of my childhood,
The wonderful stories brought to me from the lives
Of many who talked of days gone by when fairies
And giants and all kinds of magic held sway;
The tears I have shed, the tears I have seen;
The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the Eye
with its reminder that life is good.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.

I finger one by one the messages of hope that awaited me at the crossroads:
The smile of approval from those who held in their hands the reins of my security;
The tightening of the grip in a simple handshake when I
 feared the step before me in darkness;
The whisper in my heart when the temptation was fiercest
And the claims of appetite were not to be denied;
The crucial word said, the simple sentence from an open
Page when my decision hung in the balance.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.

I pass before me the main springs of my heritage:
The fruits of labors of countless generations who lived before me,
Without whom my own life would have no meaning;
The seers who saw visions and dreamed dreams;
The prophets who sensed a truth greater than the mind could grasp
And whose words would only find fulfillment
In the years which they would never see;
The workers whose sweat has watered the trees,
The leaves of which are for the healing of the nations;
The pilgrims who set their sails for lands beyond all horizons,
Whose courage made paths into new worlds and far off places;
The saviors whose blood was shed with a recklessness that only a dream Could inspire and God could command.
For all this I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.

I linger over the meaning of my own life and the commitment
To which I give the loyalty of my heart and mind:
The little purposes in which I have shared my loves,
My desires, my gifts;
The restlessness which bottoms all I do with its stark insistence
That I have never done my best, I have never dared
To reach for the highest;
The big hope that never quite deserts me, that I and my kind
Will study war no more, that love and tenderness and all the
inner graces of Almighty affection will cover the life of the
children of God as the waters cover the sea.

All these and more than mind can think and heart can feel,
I make as my sacrament of Thanksgiving to Thee,
Our Father, in humbleness of mind and simplicity of heart.

(source: http://blogs.bu.edu/sermons/2008/11/23/a-thanksgiving-prayer/comment-page-1/)

Hymn #67, We Sing Now Together

We sing now together our song of thanksgiving,
rejoicing in goods which the ages have wrought,
for life that enfolds us, and helps and heals and holds us,
and leads beyond the goals which our forebears once sought.

We sing of the freedoms which martyrs and heroes
have won by their labor, their sorrow, their pain;
the oppressed befriending, our ampler hopes defending,
their death becomes a triumph, they died not in vain.

We sing of the prophets, the teachers, the dreamers,
designers, creators, and workers, and seers;
our own lives expanding, our gratitude commanding,
their deeds have made immortal their days and their years.

We sing of community now in the making
in every far continent, region, and land;
with those of all races,
all times and names and places,
we pledge ourselves in covenant firmly to stand.