SMALL GROUP MINISTRY: UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST WOMEN’S HERITAGE
LET US NOW PRAISE THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE
From Let Us Now Praise Universalist Women, Created by the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society, Originally presented at General Assembly, 1993
Chalice Lighting/Opening Words
For all who came before,
who founded churches and Sunday schools,
who shared their faith through their preaching and teaching,
For all who fought inequity and cruelty,
often at great personal cost,
For all whose faith fueled their work
for a just world,
May the stories of these few inspire us to find more stories,
and to create our own,
Our paths illuminated by this light of Universalism.
By Jacquelyn O’Sullivan
Check in:
Topic/Activity:
Share how a Unitarian Universalist woman, historic, contemporary or in your own congregation or family, has influenced you.
What in that woman’s life honors our faith tradition?
By our very presence in the company of Unitarian Universalists, we are showing the way for others. How are you showing the impact of Unitarian Universalism on your life?
[This can be repeated to name additional women.]
Closing:
There are those who will come after us and create new things on the foundation of the work that we, in our turn, do. As our lives span the years, so do they intercept and interlock with one another that the generations seem not to be separate, but one. In their deeds and actions, their interests and motivations, the women of [the past] are as much a part of us today as they were in the beginning…
Because these things are true, a grave responsibility rests upon each… of us—the responsibility of cherishing the trust which is ours, of fashioning it to serve the purpose of our day and of transmitting it in wholeness to those who follow us.
(Laura Hersey, in Souvenir, published c. 1960, p. 30, adapted)
