A selection of readings and responsive readings for use in Unitarian Universalist worship services. Responsive readings are set in two kinds of type: regular type for the initial voice(s), and italics for the responding voice(s).
This webpage as a whole is copyright © 2021 Dan Harper.
You may NOT republish this webpage as a whole.
You MAY of course copy and repost individual readings — but not the WHOLE webpage in its entirety, and not my introduction nor my commentary.
Version 2.1, 17 October 2024.
I have to mark this Web page as copyright-protected, because a previous version of this page was widely copied and reposted online by unscrupulous people. Please respect my moral and legal rights — do not repost this webpage without permission. At the same time, feel free to copy and repost individual readings (as long as you do not include my commentary).
I’ve made an effort to find readings that can be safely used in online worship services without violating copyright. Many of these are readings by Unitarian and Universalist authors, who may not be well-known but can still inspire us today. I’ve researched the origins of readings as carefully as possible, but I make no warranty that my research is correct.
Some of the readings on this webpage don’t fit into the current feelings of piety amongst Unitarian Universalists. For example, I’ve included two versions of the famous phrase from the Hebrew Bible, “Let justice roll down as waters….” The second version includes the immediately preceding verses which give the angry emotional context for that phrase. Unitarian Universalists may prefer to ignore this anger, but it was certainly understood by Dr. King when he famously used that phrase.
Finally, I’ve included some material that I’ve written, not because I think I’m a better writer than you are, but in the hopes of inspiring other Unitarian Universalists to create their own readings for use in worship services. If I can do it, anyone can.
I. Opening words
II. Words for lighting a flaming chalice
III. Beauty and truth
IV. Nature and cosmos
V. Hope, courage, and love
VI. Work and play
VII. Community
VIII. Other religions
IX. Universalism
X. Liberation and peace
XI. Seasons of the year
XII. Closing Words
I. Opening words
Outwitted
They drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took them in.
Poem by Edwin Markham, poet, teacher, and Universalist. Public domain.
I am only one
I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something,
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale, Unitarian minister. Public domain.
Let us have faith
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Abraham Lincoln, 1860. Public domain.
The stream of life
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world, and dances in rhythmic measure.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass, and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
From Gitanjali (1910), Rabindrinath Tagore; English translation by Tagore. Public domain. Tagore, a Nobel prize winner, was affiliated with the Brahmo Samaj, a Hindu group that influenced British and American Unitarians. Public domain.
II. Words for lighting a flaming chalice
Life is born again
We light this chalice to remember that life is born again every day.
Encendemos este cáliz como recuerdo de que la vida nace de nuevo cada día.
La Sociedad Unitaria Universalista de España (Unitarian Universalist Society of Spain).
The light of the ages
The light of the ages brings wisdom and truth to all peoples, in all times of human history. We light this flame to remind us to seek wisdom in our own time.
Dan Harper. CC0
Ancient hymn to fire
Fire sends forth its far-spreading luster,
Bright, radiant, and luminous.
Its splendor shines forth like gold,
And awakens our longing thoughts.
Adapted from the Rig Veda, Book VII, Hymn X, v. 1, trans. Ralph T. H. Griffith. Public domain.
Here we gather
Here we gather, nurtured by the truth which is known by many names. Bound by our common humanity, we search together for truth and goodness, and together we strive for peace and justice here on earth, in our own time.
Unitarian Universalists around the world
The flaming chalice has become the symbol of Unitarians and Universalists around the world: in Nigeria, India, Australia, Argentina, Romania, Canada, and beyond. We light this chalice for people like us around the world who uphold religious freedom and the search for truth and goodness.
Dan Harper. CC0
III. Beauty and truth
Elevation
There are highways in the soul,
Heights like pyramids that rise
Far beyond earth veiléd skies
Sweeping through the barless skies
O’er the line where daylight dies —
There are highways in the soul!
From Heart of a Woman, Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1918. Public domain. Johnson was a writer of the Harlem Renaissance.
The prayer of Socrates
Grant to me that I be made beautiful in my inward soul, and that my outward person be in harmony with my inner self. May I consider the wise person to be rich; and may I only have such wealth as a self-restrained person can bear.
Phaedrus, 279b-c, adapted from the translations by Benjamin Jowett (1892) and Henry Fowler (1925). Public domain.
The Way
The Way that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Way. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.
If it is conceived as having no name, it is the originator of heaven and earth; conceived as having a name, it is the Mother of all things.
We must always be found without desire. if its deep mystery we would sound; but if desire be always within us, its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development takes place, it receives the different names.
Together we call them the Mystery.
Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.
From the Dao de Jing, Book I, trans. James Legge. Public domain.
In dealing with truth we are immortal
In dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change or accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindu philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity,
And still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as that first vision,
Since it was I in the ancient philosopher that was then so bold, and it is that ancient philosopher in me that now reviews the vision.
No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed.
From “Reading,” Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. Public domain.
Tell all the truth…
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
Poem by Emily Dickinson. Public domain.
Great is truth
The young man said: Great is the truth, and stronger than all things.
All the earth cries upon the truth, and the heavens bless it: all works shake and tremble at it, and with it is no unrighteous thing.
As for the truth, it endures, and is always strong; it lives and conquers for evermore.
And all the people then shouted, saying, “Great is Truth, and mighty above all things.”
Arranged from 1 Esdras 4.35-36, 38-41. Public domain.
Wisdom
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore gain wisdom;
and with our gain, also gain understanding.
Wisdom is more precious than rubies;
None of your jewels may be compared to her.
Length of days is in her right hand,
In her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
And all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her,
And happy is everyone who has wisdom.
Arranged from Proverbs 6.7, 18, 26-27; 4.13-18; as translated in Translations of the Psalms and Proverbs by George Noyes (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1886). Public domain.
All things of tenderness and grace
All things of tenderness and grace, bless our minds and lift us up forever.
Beautiful is the blue weather that follows after rain. Beautiful is the gentle river that slips through the meadows and whispering reeds.
Beautiful is the flying moon that gleams and hides in the night sky. Beautiful are the birds throwing down their showers of melody.
Beautiful the fields of ripening grain, the glory of forest leaves, and the orchards hung with fruit.
Beautiful the mist and the rain, beautiful the troubled clouds and the storm.
All things of tenderness and grace, bless our minds and lift us up forever.
From Harry Youlden, Manual of Ethical Devotion (1913). Public domain. Youlden founded the Ethical Church in Liverpool, a non-theistic congregation.
IV. Nature and cosmos
All things are one
It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to the Logos — the Law of all things — and acknowledge the oneness of the universe.
This Law is true forevermore, yet humanity is as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time: all things are one.
Fragments of Heraclitus, trans. John Burnett (1892). Public domain.
Shun passion
Shun passion, fold the hands of thrift,
Sit still, and Truth is near;
Suddenly it will uplift
Your eyes to the sphere.
Wait a little, you shall see,
The portraiture of things to be.
Poem from “Fragments on Nature and Life,” Ralph Waldo Emerson. Public domain.
May the earth continue to live
May the earth continue to live
May the heavens above continue to live
May the rains continue to dampen the land
May the wet forests continue to grow;
Then the flowers shall bloom
And we people shall live again.
In the original Hawai‘ian:
E ola mau ka honua
E ola mau ke ao lewa
E ho‘opulu mau ka ua
I ka ‘aina
E ‘ulu mau ka waokele
A laila, a mohala a‘e ka pua
Ho‘ola hou ke kanaka
From Samuel Kamakau, Na hana o ka po’e kahiko (Tales and Traditions of the People of Old), trans. from the newspaper Ke Au ‘oko’a by Mary Kawena Pukui, ed. Dorothy B. Barrere (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1976). Quoted in “Proposed Amendments to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act,” U.S. Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs (U. S. Government Printing Office, 1993), p. 59.
The black finger
I have just seen a beautiful thing
Slim and still,
Against a gold, gold sky,
A straight cypress,
Sensitive
Exquisite,
A black finger
Pointing upwards.
Why, beautiful still finger, are you black?
And why are you pointing upwards?
Angelina Weld Grimke, 1923. Public domain.
Hidden life
O hidden life, vibrant in each atom,
O hidden light, shining in every creature,
O hidden love, embracing all in oneness,
May all who feel themselves as one with you
Know that therefore they are one with every other.
O vida oculta que brilha em cada átomo
O luz oculta que brilha em cada criatura,
O amor oculto que tudo abrange na unidade,
Possa todo aquele que se sente um contigo
Saber que por isso mesmo é um com todos os
outros.
Annie Besant (1923). Trans. into Portuguese by Paulo Ereno, Brazilian Unitarian Universalists.
When I Rise Up
When I rise above the earth,
And look down on the things that fetter me,
I beat my wings upon the air,
Or tranquil lie,
Surge after surge of potent strength
Like incense comes to me
When I rise up above the earth
And look down upon the things that fetter me.
Georgia Douglas Johnson, from Heart of a Woman (1918). Public domain. Johnson was a poet of the Harlem Renaissance.
The red wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
William Carlos Williams (Unitarian), no. XXII in Spring and All (1923). Public domain. A lifelong Unitarian with a Puerto Rican mother, Williams is one of a very few famous Latinx Unitarian Universalists. Sadly, his poetic voice mostly does not fit in with today’s notions of what constitutes Unitarian Universalist piety.
The Negro speaks of rivers
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues (1926). Public domain.
Dwelling by the shore
When you dwell at the shore of the sea, where gleaming sails swell with the breath of distant adventure, where the murmur of the surf is but an echo of the infinite song of the ocean, your thoughts cannot be entirely landlocked and earthbound.
The far sweep of the ocean calls to you, and at the sound of the booming billows there awakens in you something of the poet and prophet you were in childhood.
But when you dwell by the shore of the infinite sea, and the sand you stand upon is a beach against which waves beat from an ocean other than senses can perceive —
When you know that wherever you happen to be there is the shoreline that divides the mortal from the immortal life, where tides come and go from a horizonless Vastness—
Can your thoughts still remain earthbound?
Will not the sea-surge of the infinite life sing in your blood and set your heart moving to the rhythm of eternity?
From “Dwelling by the Shore,” in The Wonder of Life (1925) by Joel Blau, pp. 164-165. Public domain.
In a Thousand Forms
Conceal yourself in a thousand forms,
Still, All-beloved, at once I know you;
Fling a magic veil over yourself,
All-present, at once I know you.
In the growth of the young cypress,
All-beautiful, at once I know you;
In the canal’s clear stirring waves,
All-flattering, well do I know you.
When the jet of the water unfolds and rises,
All-playful, how gladly I know you;
When the cloud above shapes and reshapes,
All-manifold, there I know you.
On the flowery carpet of the meadow,
All-colorful, how beautifully I know you;
In the vine twining with a thousand arms,
O All-embracing, there I know you.
When the morning ignites on the mountain,
There too, All-cheering, I greet you;
Then in the pure heavens arching over me,
Then, All-heart-expanding, I breathe you.
What I know, through inward or outward sense,
You, All-teaching, I know through you;
And when I say Allah’s many names,
With each one sounds a name for you.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West-Eastern Divan, arrangement and translation Dan Harper CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
In the hymnal Singing the Living Tradition (1993), a translation of this poem titled “Beloved Presence” is incorrectly attributed to Mohammad Hafiz, and is categorized under “Wisdom from the World’s Religions: Islam” (curiously, the version in the hymnal leaves off the last verse which contains the most explicit reference to Islam). Goethe had read Hafiz in translation, and was inspired by the ancient Persian poet; yet the poems in West-Eastern Divan are not translations but rather Goethe’s Western European poetic engagement with Hafiz. Thus, in a post-colonial reading, this would not be considered an Islamic poem, but rather a Western European Romantic poet’s engagement with or impression of an ancient Persian poet’s Islamic poem. Note that in the last verse, I decided to interpret Goethe’s poetic formulation “Namenhundert nenne” as “many names”; in the Qu’ran, Allah has ninety-nine names, and a literal translation of Goethe’s phrase to “one hundred names” seemed unnecessarily distracting. For reference, I’m including the original poem in German below, arranged as a responsive reading.
In tausend Formen
In tausend Formen magst du dich verstecken,
Doch, Allerliebste, gleich erkenn ich dich;
Du magst mit Zauberschleiern dich bedecken,
Allgegenwärtge, gleich erkenn ich dich.
An der Zypresse reinstem jungem Streben,
Allschöngewachsne, gleich erkenn ich dich.
In des Kanales reinem Wellenleben,
Allschmeichelhafte, wohl erkenn ich dich.
Wenn steigend sich der Wasserstrahl entfaltet,
Allspielende, wie froh erkenn ich dich!
Wenn Wolke sich gestaltend umgestaltet,
Allmannigfaltge, dort erkenn ich dich.
An des geblümten Schleiers Wiesenteppich,
Allbuntbesternte, schön erkenn ich dich;
Und greift umher ein tausendarmger Eppich,
O Allumklammernde, da kenn ich dich.
Wenn am Gebirg der Morgen sich entzündet,
Gleich, Allerheiternde, begrüß ich dich,
Dann über mir der Himmel rein sich ründet,
Allherzerweiternde, dann atm ich dich.
Was ich mit äußerm Sinn, mit innerm kenne,
Du Allbelehrende, kenn ich durch dich;
Und wenn ich Allahs Namenhundert nenne,
Mit jedem klingt ein Name nach für dich.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West-östlicher Divan public domain
V. Hope, courage, and love
I shall pass through this world once…
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
From Beautiful Thoughts by Henry Drummond (1892). Public domain.
Without fear
Look not mournfully into the Past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present; it is yours. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear, and with a stalwart heart.
Henry Longfellow, epigraph to Hyperion: A Romance (1839). Public domain. Longfellow, a Unitarian, translated this passage from words he found in a German graveyard.
Democracy
The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.
W. E. B. DuBois, The Negro, “The Negro in the United States” (1915). Public domain.
Time
The waves of Time may devastate our lives,
The frosts of age may check our failing breath,
They shall not touch the spirit that survives
Triumphant over doubt and pain and death.
From “Rockweeds” by Celia Thaxter (1868). Public domain.
Hope
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all
And sweetest in the Gale is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm
I’ve heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb of Me.
Poem by Emily Dickinson. Public domain.
The dream keeper
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers.
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.
Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues (1926). Public domain.
The nature of the good
Begin the morning by saying to yourself: “Today I shall have to face an idle person; an unthankful person; a false or envious person; an unsociable and uncharitable person.”
Then say to yourself, “All these ill qualities have happened to them only through ignorance of what is truly good.”
But I am one who understands the nature of the Good: I understand that only the Good only is to be desired. And I am one who understands the nature of that which is bad: I understand that is what is truly shameful.
And I know that all these people, idle or unthankful or false or uncharitable, they are my kinsfolk. We are not related by blood, but we are related because we all participate in the same reason, the same particle of divinity.
Arranged from Meditations, Book I, no. XV, by Marcus Aurelius., trans. George Long. Public domain.
Calling dreams
The right to make my dreams come true,
I ask, nay, I demand of life;
Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband
Impede my steps, nor countermand;
Too long my heart against the ground
Has beat the dusty years around;
And now at length I rise! I wake!
And stride into the morning break!
Georgia Douglas Johnson, Bronze (1922). Johnson was a writer of the Harlem Renaissance.
In times of trouble
Save me, for the waters have risen to my very neck! I sink in the deep mire, where is no foothold, I have come into deep waters, and the waves flow over me.
I am weary with crying; my throat is parched. My eyes are wasted, while I wait for comfort.
May I be delivered from the deep waters, and saved from the mire so that I shall not sink. Hear the cries of the poor and afflicted.
The hearts of those who love life shall be revived. Then can I give glory to life with song and thanksgiving.
Arranged from Psalm 69.1-3, 14-15, 29-33 in Translations of the Psalms and Proverbs translated by George Noyes (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1886). Public domain.
On joy and sorrow
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
You are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
From “On Joy and Sorrow,” Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923). Public domain.
The good is positive
Certain facts have always suggested the sublime creed, that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind;
And that one mind is everywhere active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes that will, is everywhere balked and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise.
Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity.
Goodness is absolute and real. All things proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance — just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes.
All things proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it.
When we seek good ends, we are strong by the whole strength of nature.
Arranged from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Divinity School Address.” Public domain.
The re-creating force of love
Life has in it a re-creating force. This force brings to us the sweetest results; it can remove the scar and destroy every sign of injury.
Each great thought emerging in our brains gives to us a new re-creative force, and puts new life in what appeared to be mud and dust.
Through intellect and affection, new life comes to fainting souls. Every new burst of emotion arouses the will, and it is through action that character arises.
So it is that we can change our lives. Our destinies are in our hands: what we love is what we become.
The greatest power is a loving power. But how can we know that great power?
We know it only through the touch of human love.
Adapted from a sermon by Eliza Tupper Wilkes (Universalist), preached May 6, 1895, in Palo Alto, California. Public domain.
The open road
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road!
Healthy, free, the world before me!
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose!
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
The earth — that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
I inhale great draughts of air,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger than I thought!
I did not know I held so much goodness!
Arranged from “Poem of the Road” by Walt Whitman; 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. Public domain.
The wisdom of the sage
The sage, looking up, contemplates the brilliance of the heavens, and, looking down, examines the definite arrangements of the earth; and thus knows the causes of that which is obscure, and the causes of that which is bright.
The sage will trace things to their beginning, and follow them to their end; and thus knows what can be said about death and life.
There is a similarity between the sage and the cosmos, and hence there is no contrariety between the sage, and heaven and earth.
The sage cherishes the spirit of generous benevolence, and can love without reserve.
Arranged from “The Great Treatise” of the I Ching (Yi Jing), trans. James Legge. Public domain.
VI. Work and Play
Heaven and hell
The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world’s need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this — with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need — this life is hell.
W. E. B. DuBois, “To His Newborn Great-Grandson.” 1958. Included here under fair use guidelines (fewer than 500 words of original).
Play is growth
Children are young because they play, and not vice versa; and adults grow old because they stop playing.
For play is growth; and at the top of the intellectual scale, play is the eternal type of research from sheer love of truth.
Adapted slightly from G. Stanley Hall, “Adolescence: Its Psychology” (1907). Public domain.
Equalizers of this age and land
Into us enter the essences of the real things and past and present events — the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and mines —
The perpetual coming of immigrants — the free commerce — the fisheries and whaling and gold-digging —
The noble character of all free American workers — the perfect equality of the female with the male —
We see the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms.
Let us be the equalizers of this age and land,
To supply what wants supplying and to check what wants checking.
Arranged from the prose introduction to the first edition of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1855; p. iv in the original). Public domain.
Putting in the seed
You come to fetch me from my work tonight
When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with week,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering it way and shedding the earth crumbs.
From Mountain Interval by Robert Frost (1916). Public domain. Frost’s mother was a Swedenborgian, and his father an atheist; his poetry reflects this religious mix of mysticism and atheism.
VII. Community
We are all bound up together
We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity. Society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, from her 1866 speech “We Are All Bound Up Together.” Public domain. Frances Harper belonged to a Unitarian church in Philadelphia.
Simple and sincere people
Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety. It shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations.
Louisa May Alcott (Unitarian), Little Women, ch. 36. Public domain
The horizon of our minds
Let the horizon of our minds include all humanity: the great family here on earth with us; those who have gone before and left to us their heritage of their memory and their work; and those whose lives will be shaped by what we do, or leave undone.
From Samuel Crothers (1857-1927). Public domain.
On leadership
Can we follow Jesus? If by this is meant — “Can we deduce from his teachings a set of rules by which we can regulate our conduct and be sure we are right in every instance?” — we must answer, “No.” We can neither follow Jesus nor anyone else, and to seek such a leader is to belittle ourselves and to belittle Jesus.
E. Stanton Hodgin (Unitarian), quoted in “Three Los Angeles Ministers Make Sensational Attacks on Orthodoxy,” Los Angeles Herald, 17 May 1909. Public domain. Hodgin, a Unitarian minister, was invited to sign the Humanist Manifesto in 1933. But although he felt aligned with humanism, he refused to sign something that sounded to him too much like a creed.
I shall not live in vain
If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain
Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.
Emily Dickinson. Public domain.
A time to talk
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed
And shout from where I am, “What is it?”
No, not as there is time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
Robert Frost, from Mountain Interval (1916). Public domain.
Our divine responsibilities
If instead of indulging in pious platitudes about a perfect God doing all things well, we were all resolved to do as well as we can with the things within our reach,
There would be such improvement in human conditions that we would be astonished at our own achievements.
War, the summation of all iniquities, is buttressed, defended, and excused by all of the primitive and reactionary dogmas and traditions.
If a holy zeal to accomplish what is within our collective reach seized a majority of the human race, war and all the brood of evils that go with it would not long survive.
We are, in our collective capacities, the imperfect divinity that must make the world over into the kind of abiding place that we know it ought to be.
We cannot escape our divine responsibilities, however imperfect we are.
From the 1925 sermon “Speak to the Earth” by E. Stanton Hodgin, delivered to First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. Public domain. Hodgin was a 20th century humanist and Unitarian minister.
Songs for the people
Let us make songs for the people
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.
Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage, nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of all
With more abundant life.
Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.
Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crimes shall cease,
And human hearts grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.
From “Songs for the People,” Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Unitarian). Public domain.
Drawing near the unknown
All human loves rise and merge into one that is higher, more abiding and calm.
If we lean less on these human loves as we proceed through life, it is not from ingratitude nor self-sufficiency, only because some inward support has grown stronger.
So we prepare for the last brief journey each must make alone, upheld and made unafraid by those forces of soul and character we are now gathering.
Drawing every day a little nearer the unknown, its mystery allures us more and more, losing dread and growing in a kind of sweet invitation.
It hushes the old unrest, alleviates hurts and wrongs once hard to bear.
We cease to be mere earth-travelers; we never were.
From “The Western Slope” (1903), Celia Parker Woolley (Unitarian). Public domain.
VIII. Other religions
As large as all space
As large as all space is, so large is that space within the heart.
Heaven and earth are contained within it, fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and stars;
And whatever there is of the Self here in the world is contained within the heart,
And whatever has been or will be, all that is contained within it.
Chandogya Upanishad, 8.1.3, trans. Max Muller (1879). Public domain.
One essence
The children of Adam are limbs of each other
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
Those who have no sympathy for the troubles of others
Are unworthy to be called human.
Adapted from the Gulistan of Sa’di, Story 10, Ch. 1. Public domain.
The Sage
The Sage, looking up, contemplates the brilliance of the heavens, and, looking down, examines the arrangements of the earth
So the Sage knows the causes of that which is obscure, and the causes of that which is bright.
The Sage will trace things to their beginning, and follow them to their end. So the Sage knows what can be said about death and life.
There is not tension between the Sage and haven and earth. Thus the Sage cherishes the spirit of generous benevolence, and can love without reserve.
From “The Great Treatise”, Yi Jing (I Ching), trans. James Legge. Public domain.
Brahman
I am the Self in the heart of all beings;
I am the beginning, the life, and the end of all beings.
I am the radiance of the glorious sun.
I am the mind which apprehends and thinks.
I am fame, fortune, song, and memory;
I am both all-devouring Death, and the source of all to come.
I am the knowledge of the science of the Self.
I am the great unbroken silence in learning’s secret things.
Living or lifeless, still or moving,
Whatever beings there are, exist through me.
And whatever is glorious, good, and beautiful,
All this comes from a fragment of my splendor.
From the Bhagavad Gita, chapter ten. Arranged from the translations by Edwin Arnold (1885) and Annie Besant (1922). Public domain.
Care for the world
The Dao which originated all under the sky is to be considered as the mother of them all. When the mother has been found, we know what her children should be.
When we know that we are our mother’s children, and proceed to guard the mother that belongs to us, to the end of our lives we will be free from all peril.
Heaven is long-enduring and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves. This is how they are able to continue and endure.
Therefore the Sage puts self last, and yet it is found in the foremost place. Because the Sage avoids self-interest, the Sage’s self is fulfilled.
You who would govern the world, honoring it as you honor your own body, you may be employed to govern the world;
And you who would govern the world with the love which you bear to your own body, you may be entrusted with the world.
Arranged from “The The Tâo Teh King of Lâo Dze,” trans. James Legge, Sacred Books of the East, Volume 39; chapters 52, 7, 13; with reference to the translation by Stephen Addis and Stanley Lombardo. Public domain.
From The Book of Plain Words
By consulting with the benevolent and making friends of the outspoken and blunt, we shall receive support in seasons of adversity.
By doing to others as we would wish to be done by, by being sincere and honest in all our dealings, we shall attract all people to become our friends.
From “The Su Shu: The Book of Plain Words,” in Taoist Texts: Ethical, Political, and Speculative, collected and trans. Frederic Henry Balfour (London, 1884). Public domain.
Human nature is good
Human nature is constituted for the practice of what is good. This is what I mean in saying that human nature is good.
When people do what is NOT good, you cannot blame their nature.
The feeling of commiseration belongs to all people; and the feeling of shame and dislike belongs to all people;
The feeling of courtesy and respect belongs to all people; and the feeling of approving and disapproving belongs to all people.
Humanity, Righteousness, and Knowledge are not infused in us from something outside ourselves; we are originally furnished with them.
Hence it is said, “Seek and you will find them. Neglect and you will lose them.”
Adapted from The Works of Mencius, 6A:5, trans, James Legge (with reference to translations by Wing-Tsit Chan and Charles Muller). Public domain.
IX. Universalism
To agree in love
If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, and if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.
From Treatise on Atonement (1805) by Hosea Ballou. Public domain.
This present life is our great concern
It is rather absurd to suppose a heaven filled with saints and sinners shut up all together within four jeweled walls and playing on harps, whether they like it or not.
I have faint hopes that after another hundred years or so, it will begin to dawn on the minds of those to whom this idea is such a weight, that nobody with any sense holds this idea or ever did hold it.
To a Universalist, heaven in its essential nature is not a locality, but a moral and spiritual status, and salvation is not securing one place and avoiding another, but salvation is finding eternal life.
Eternal life has primarily no reference to time or place, but to a quality. Eternal life is right life, here, there, everywhere. This present life is the great pressing concern.
Adapted from “Why I Am a Universalist” by Phineas Taylor Barnum. Public domain.
Worship is…
Worship is awe in the presence of majesty,
It is hope towering above the wrecks of hope.
It is the thirst of the scientist for truth;
It is the passion of the artist for supernal beauty.
It is the mountain climber struggling toward the windswept peak;
It is the mariner launching upon unknown seas.
It is the seed pushing toward an unseen sun;
It is a mountain stream rushing toward the distant ocean.
It is the mean and ugly rising toward the sublime;
It is the sensitive ear listening to the music of the spheres.
It is this gathered community reaching out to the wider world,
As we express together our deepest yearnings for the loftiest in the universe.
Arranged from Clarence Skinner. Skinner was a Universalist minister who was prominent in the Social Gospel movement of the early 20th C.
Religion is in everyday life
It is in the round of common everyday life that to many of us religion must have meaning, if it is to have any meaning at all.
Not in formal observances, not in creeds or doctrines, however long ago proclaimed,
But in the lives we live, in the home, the community, and in the world, is the religious way of life to be found.
A religious person is one who fulfills the highest function as a human being in all relations with other human beings.
Arranged from Clinton Lee Scott. Scott, was the Superintendent of the Massachusetts Universalist Convention in the 1950s.
Universal Love
Universalism believes in the universal relationship of all humanity.
A common origin means a common relationship. We may deny the fact, as many have denied it.
We may exalt one person to kingship and reduce the other to beggary. But the fact of our common relationship persists through all denial and partiality.
Universalism believes in the common destiny of humanity in all times and in all stations of life.
Universalism believes that all human souls have a spark of this divine in their nature, and eventually, all those human souls will reach a perfect harmony.
Never was there such a bold proclamation of universal human relationship; never such implicit faith in the solidarity of the human race.
Arranged from “The Social Implications of Universalism” (1915), by Clarence Skinner. Public domain. Skinner was a Universalist minister prominent in the Social Gospel movement of the early 20th century.
A pantheist’s creed
I believe in the existence of a universe of suns and planets, among which there is one sun belonging to our planetary system;
and that other suns, being more remote, are called stars; but that they are indeed suns to other planetary systems.
I believe that the whole universe is Nature, and that the word Nature embraces the whole universe,
and so far as we can attach any rational idea to either, that God and Nature are perfectly synonymous terms.
Arranged from “Philosophical Creed” by Abner Kneeland (1833). Public domain.
The final triumph of good
Confidence in the successful outcome of a cause energizes the will, and creates a contagion of faith.
Belief that they will recover from an illness does not enervate the patient, but gives them renewed effort.
It is reasonable to expect that faith in the final triumph of good over evil will operate likewise.
This most splendid of all hopes, radiant, joyful, pulls us into the battle line against evil, and puts into our souls that unshakable trust which makes our onrush like that of a thousand storms.
Arranged from “The Social Implications of Universalism” (1915), Clarence Skinner (Universalist). Public domain.
X. Liberation and peace
An everflowing stream
Let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
From the Hebrew prophets, Amos 5.24. Public domain.
Righteousness as a mighty stream
I despise your feast days, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Though you offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them:
Neither will I look at the peace offerings of fatted animals you make. Take away from me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your harps.
Let justice run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.
This gives a fuller excerpt than the above reading. Amos 5.21-24. Public domain.
I must stand
I must stand with anybody that stands right — stand with them while they are right and part with them when they go wrong.
Abraham Lincoln, speech given in Peoria on Oct. 16, 1854; slightly adapted. Public domain.
Poverty
I am sure that God did not intend that there be so many poor people. The class structure is of our making and our consent, not God’s. It is the way we have arranged it, and it is up to us to change it.
Dorothy Day, “Poverty Is to Care and Not to Care,” Catholic Worker (April, 1953).
Swords into ploughshares
We shall beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks:
Nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
But we shall sit, every one, under our vine and under our fig tree;
And none shall make us afraid.
Arranged from the Hebrew Bible, Micah 4.3-4. Public domain.
Universal prayer for peace
Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth;
Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust;
Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace;
Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
Satish Kumar, 1981. Kumar, who trained as a Jain monk, then as an adult became a peace activist, wrote this prayer for peace based on the Upanishads. People of many different faiths (or of no faith at all) say this prayer at noon each day. Kumar has apparently not claimed copyright on this prayer; it has been widely reprinted, and it appears it can be used freely.
The original of Kumar’s prayer might be the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1st Adhayaya 3rd Brahmana 27 (trans. Max Muller, 1879): “Lead me from the unreal to the real! Lead me from darkness to light! Lead me from death to immortality!”
Reformers
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation.
Susan B. Anthony, “On the Campaign for Divorce Law Reform,” 1860. Public domain.
Let my country awake
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action,
Into that heaven of freedom, my God, let my country awake.
Adapted from Gitanjali 35, Rabindrinath Tagore (1910). Public domain.
Along with Gandhi and others, Tagore was one of the architects of modern India, encouraging people to think beyond Britain’s colonial domination of India; today, we’re beginning to understand how decolonization needs to happen even within the boundaries of a colonial power like the U.S. In this poem, Tagore originally wrote “my Father,” but because he was a progressive in his own day I feel he would understand today’s efforts to use degenderized language to refer to what he called “the One Supreme Being.”
The birthright of every human being
Learned women are sure of an admiring audience, if they can once get a platform on which to stand. But how to get this platform, or how to make it of reasonably easy access is the difficulty.
Plants of great vigor will almost always struggle into blossom, despite impediments. But there should be encouragement, and a free, genial atmosphere for those of more timid sort, fair play for each in its own kind.
Some are like the little, delicate flowers, which love to hide in the dripping mosses by the sides of mountain torrents, or in the shade of tall trees. But others require an open field, a rich and loosened soil, or they never show their proper hues.
What women want is that which is the birthright of every being capable to receive it: the freedom — the religious, the intelligent freedom of the universe — to use its means, to learn its secret as far as nature has enabled them.
Arranged from “The Great Lawsuit” by Margaret Fuller (1843). Public domain. Fuller was a Unitarian and Transcendentalist, and one of the great American intellects of her day.
True reform
Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions, yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle.
The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
Frederick Douglass, from “An address on West India Emancipation,” August 4, 1857. Public domain.
Four freedoms
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in their own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments so that no nation can commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from the “Four Freedoms” speech given January 6, 1941.
Bury me in a free land
Make me a grave where’er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother’s shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no one of their dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call another a slave.
From “Bury Me in a Free Land,” Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Unitarian). Public domain.
XI. Seasons of the year
Due to climate change, seasonal changes may come at different times, or may not happen at all. As I write this in eastern Massachusetts in 2024, we’ve had the warmest winter ever, with very little snow. These days, I’m far less likely to use readings that mention snow.
When trees put on autumnal tints
These days when the trees have put on their autumnal tints are the gala days of the year, when the very foliage of trees is colored like a blossom. Some maples when ripe are yellow or whitish yellow; others reddish yellow; others bright red. The nights are now very still for there is hardly any noise of birds or of insects. The whippoorwill is not heard, nor the mosquito, but only the lisping of some sparrow. There is a great difference between this season and a month ago — as great a difference as between one period of your life and another.
Arranged from Henry David Thoreau’s Journal, October 1, 2, and 5, 1851. Public domain.
The meaning of Christmas
“Merry Christmas!” said Scrooge, “What right have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
“Come, then,” returned Scrooge’s nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? You’re rich enough.”
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”
“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.
“What else can I be,” said Scrooge indignantly, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!”
“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.
“Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”
“I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time,” returned the nephew, “when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
Arranged from the first chapter of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Public domain.
The snow man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens, from Harmonium (1921). Public domain.
Late winter
You can feel it now: the days are longer, the sun higher in the sky at mid-day.
Something begins to emerge from winter: rising sap drips from broken branches and buckets appear on sugar maples; snow melts.
The yellow blossoms of witch hazel; green skunk cabbage in silent marshes; you can see little bits of it.
You can hear it: small birds singing once again in the morning, and at night the owls call out, searching for mates.
Don’t tempt fate by saying winter’s as good as over. It’s not.
But there’s a feeling of hope in the longer days: something new is coming.
Dan Harper (Unitarian Universalist) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (written for central New England in the early 21st century).
Spring and all
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast — a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines —
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches —
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind —
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined —
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance — Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken
William Carlos Williams (Unitarian), title poem from Spring and All (1923). Public domain.
The winter is past
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come;
And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land;
The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
From the Hebrew Bible, The Song of Solomon, 2.11-13. King James Version, adapted. Public domain. In a Mediterranean climate, the end of the winter rains signals the coming of spring; this reading is especially appropriate for spring in Mediterranean climates, such as coastal California.
In the mountains on a summer day
Gently I stir a white feather fan,
With open shirt sitting in a green wood.
I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-trees trickles on my bare head.
Li Bai (or Li Po, 701-762), trans. Arthur Waley (1919). Public domain.
The wheel of the year
From the east, out of the air, the growing brightness of dawn comes each day.
May the rising sun bring me wisdom, may all beings share in the enlightenment I seek.
I await the light of gentle dawn in my dreams, clearing my thoughts for wisdom.
From the south, where summer never ends, comes the warmth that makes earth green and good.
May the work of my hands transform the world for good, as the summer sun ripens fruit and makes it sweet.
I await the fire and passion of summer entering my dreams, guiding me to create a world where all may live in peace.
From the west comes the power of the drenching storm, the surging waves, thunder and lightning, and the sweet waters of the rivers.
May the power of the waters wash away injustice and hatred from my heart.
I await the gentle mists flowing into my dreams, filling my heart with love for all beings.
From the north the groaning winter winds bring death of the old year, preparing the land for birth and new life.
I will draw strength from the darkness of winter, the darkness of the earth where seeds lie dormant, waiting to grow.
Into my dreams shall come mystery and power, and wonders of life and death.
Dan Harper (Unitarian Universalist) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This reading could be used for weekly worship services, or for Unitarian Universalist observations of Neo-pagan quarters and cross-quarters. It works as both a responsive or antiphonal reading, or it could be read by persons or groups in each of the four directions.
XII. Closing words
Look to this day
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth—the glory of action—the splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well-lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Such is the salutation of the dawn.
Anonymous (probably late 19th century American). Public domain. The version above appeared in the April, 1911, newsletter of the Bullfinch Place Church (Unitarian), Boston.
Until the shadows flee away
May the truth that sets us free,
And the hope that never dies,
And the love that casts out fear
Be with us now
Until the dayspring breaks,
And the shadows flee away.
Arranged from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures (John 8.32, Romans, John 4.18, Song of Solomon 2.17). Public domain.
May we go forth
May we go forth to the duties of the week with willing hands and honest minds, with faith in the power of good over evil, willing to take our places in the mutual dependence of humanity; having that illumination which comes from moral conquest; expecting to be forgiven only as we forgive others; working and hoping for the day when the ties of humanity shall hold in their strong embrace every member of the human family, even as the tides of the sea embrace every broken reach of shore that opens its arms to receive.
From Chapel Prayers of George Rudolph Freeman (1898). Public domain. Freeman was a professor at the Meadville, Penna., Unitarian theological school.
Go out into the world in peace
Go out into the world in peace,
Be of good courage,
Hold fast to what is good,
Return to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the fainthearted
Help the suffering;
Be patient with all,
Love all living beings.
From A New Prayer Book (1923), where it was adapted from 2 Thessalonians 5.14-18. Public domain.