SMALL GROUP MINISTRY: UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST WOMEN’S HERITAGE
A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE
From A Hundred Years Hence, by Sarah Barber-Braun, Paula Copestick, and Dorothy Emerson, Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society Worship, General Assembly, 1996
Chalice Lighting/Opening Words: “A Hundred Years Hence”, words by Frances Dana Barker Gage (1852), (Read or use with the tune: Milton 11.11.11.11.)
One hundred years hence, what a change will be made
In politics, morals, religion and trade,
In statesmen who wrangle or ride on the fence,
These things will be altered a hundred years hence.
Our laws then will be uncompulsory rules,
Our prisons converted to national schools,
The pleasure of sinning ‘tis all a pretense,
And people will find that, a hundred years hence.
All cheating and fraud will be laid on the shelf,
Men will not get drunk, nor be bound up in self,
But all live together, good neighbors and friends,
As Christian folks ought to, a hundred years hence
Then woman, man’s partner, man’s equal shall stand,
While beauty and harmony govern the land,
To think for oneself will be no offense,
The world will be thinking, a hundred years hence.
Oppression and war will be heard of no more
Nor blood of a slave leave his print on our shore,
Conventions will then be a useless expense,
For we’ll go free-suffrage a hundred years hence.
Instead of speech-making to satisfy wrong,
We’ll all join the chorus to sing Freedom’s song;
And if the Millennium is not a pretense,
We’ll all be good [neighbors] a hundred years hence.
Check-in: How are things for you today?
Topic/Activity:
Reflect on issues and situations that were facing women over a hundred years ago. What issue or situation draws your attention? What is the importance of that issue to you?
What is the status or women around that issue today. If the issue still exists, how is it defined? How does the issue effect you?
We know that what we are doing in the present is helping to create the future. But what is the future we are seeking to bring into being? Name an element of the future you are helping to bring into being.
Closing: From “Male and Female Created He Them” by Frances Dana Barker Gage (1851)
Oh, if all women could be impressed with the importance of their own action, and with one united voice, speak out in their own behalf, in behalf of humanity, they could create a revolution without armies, without bloodshed, that would do more to ameliorate the condition of mankind, to purify, elevate, ennoble humanity, than all that has been done by reformers in the last century.
Likes and Wishes: How was the session for you?
