The poems and readings come from American Civil Religion. I have not tried to find copyright information, though attribution is here, and I think they are in the public domain.
Different members of the Clergy Association and lay members of associated congregations read/led different readings. Text in Italics is for the congregation to read together.
Note that there are no speeches or sermons. This prevents the service from being "hijacked" by any members of the community with a particular axe to grind.
We were disappointed not to have texts from any Native American nor East Asian community represented. There is the possibility of the service becoming too long, but it seemed to work for the community at the time.
by Henry Alford and George J. Elvey
Come, ye thankful people come,
Raise the song of harvest home:
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin.
God, our Maker, doth provide
For our wants to be supplied:
Come to God's own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.
All the world is God's own field,
Fruit unto God's praise to yield:
Wheat and tares together sown,
Unto joy or sorrow grown.
First the blade, and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear:
Lord of harvest, grant that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.
For the Lord our God shall come,
And shall take this harvest home:
From God's field shall in that day
All offenses purge away;
Give God's angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast,
But the fruitful ears to store
In God's garner evermore.
Even so, Lord, quickly come
To Thy final harvest home:
Gather Thou Thy people in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin;
There, forever purified,
In Thy presence to abide:
Come with all Thine angels, come,
Raise the glorious harvest home.
It is good to give thanks to the Eternal,
And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;
To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning,
And Your faithfulness in the night seasons,
With an instrument of ten strings and with the psaltery;
With a solemn sound upon the harp.
For You, O God, have made me glad through Your work;
I will exult in the works of Your hands.
How great are Your works, O God!
Your thoughts are very deep.
The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree;
And grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
Planted in the house or the Creator,
They shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall still bring fourth fruit in old age;
They shall be full of sap and richness;
To declare that Almighty God is upright,
My Rock, in Whom there is no unrighteousness.
(Please rise)
Reader:Praise the Eternal, to Whom our praise is due!
all respond:Praise be the Eternal, to Whom our praise is due, now and forever!
(Please be seated)
From this land so richly blessed, we raise our voice in joyous thanks. To these shores Your children have come from many lands to seek liberty and new hope. All have been pilgrims to this western world. Though they did not always practice the justice they sought, here they found renewed purpose, increased strength, and the opportunity to outgrow old fears and superstitions. For our country, for its freedom promised and attained, the richness of its natural blessing, and the growing harmony of its citizens, we give humble thanks.
O God of justice and right, inspire all who dwell in our beloved land with loyalty to the ideals of its founders. Give us wisdom and strength to labor for its well-being, on the firm foundation of justice and truth. Fill us with the spirit of kindness, generosity, and peace, that this land may be a beacon light to many peoples.
adapted from Joseph Parrish ThompsonThis oldest festival, dating from the heroic age of America, is the best expression of our national spirit.
It combines into one conception productive enterprise, domestic felicity, and religious devotion.
Thanksgiving Day represents the fruits of industry turned to family festivity and sanctified by prayer.
It was instituted by men of culture and women of refinement, who showed themselves willing to suffer persecution, imprisonment, banishment from the comforts of an English home, exile across the sea, cold, hunger, pesitlence, and death for their principles.
Those principles are today the richest treasure and the brightest hope for humanity.
They are the stuff of which heroes were made and by which a nation was nurtured to its maturity.
These three principles are the legacy wihc that heroic age has bequeathed to us, its heirs: self-govenment in the state, freedom for religion, good will toward humanity.
Let us cherish these principles, for in them lie the essence, the beauty, the strength of American institutions, and the warrant of their perpetuity.
For the Eternal your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Eternal your God for the good land that has been given to you.
What shall we then say? If God be for us, who can be against us.
by
Emma LazarusNot like the brazen giant of Greek fame;
by
Arna BontempsI have sown beside all waters in my day.
I scattered seed enough to plant the land
In rows from Canada to Mexico,
But for my reaping only what the hand
Can hold at once is all that I can show.
Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields
My borther's son's are gathering stalk and root,
Small wonder then my children glean in fields
They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.
adapted from
Theodore RooseveltOnce again the season of the year has come when, in accordance with the custom of our ancestors for generations past, we are called upon to give praise and thanksgiving to God.
During the past year we have been free from famine, from pestilence, from war. We are at peace with all the rest of humanity
Our natural resources are abundant, and we have been endowed with adequate knowledge to make good use of these resources.
Ours is the opportunity as a free people to develop to the fullest extent all our powers of body, of mind, and of that which stands above both body and mind -- of character.
Much has been given us from on high, and much will rightly be expected of us in return.
Into our care these resources of nature have been entrusted, and we are not to be pardoned either if we squander and waste them, or yet if we leave them undeveloped, for they must be made fruitful in our hands.
Ever through the ages, at all times and among all peoples, prosperity has been fraught with danger, and it behooves us to beseech the Giver of all things that we may not fall into love of ease and luxury.
That we may not lose our sense of moral responsibility, that we may not forget our duty to God, and to our neighbor.
Our democracy, based upon the principles of orderly liberty, can be perpetuated only if, in the heart of its citizens, there dwells a keen sense of righteousness and justice.
Let us pray that this spirit of righteousness and justice may grow in the hearts of all of us. May our souls be ever inclined toward the virtues that tell for gentleness and tenderness, for loving-kindness and forbearance, one toward another.
For only by love and patience, courage and fortitude can either nation or individual rise to the level of greatness.
Let us then as a people set our faces resolutely against evil, and with broad charity, with kindness and good will toward all, but with unflinching determination to smite down wrong, let us strive with all the strength that is given us for righteousness in public and in private life.
America! America! God shed Your grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea.
O beautiful for heroes proved --
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every grain divine.
adapted from Louis AdamicOn this day of national thanksgiving, we are grateful to God not only for those benefits that have come to us from this land and from our experience in its settlement and development but also for the gifts that the settlers in this country brought with them from the lands of their origin. For we are the children of all the old nations, bound together by all that is good in many heritages.
Those who have here sought a haven and refuge, from the first settlers in Jamestown and in Plymouth to the last shipload of immigrants, came not empty-handed but bearing cultural gifts.
We are grateful for the gifts brought to this country by the sturdy stock that came from old England --
For their gift of the language that we all speak and that unites all of us, for their gift of civic liberty and for the freedom of worship that they planted and fostered in this blessed land. But not from England alone stem those blessings that make us thank You for having cast our lot in this blessed land.
The pattern of America is a blend of culture from many lands, woven of threads from many corners of the world. Diversity itself is the pattern of America, the very stuff and color of its fabric.
To reap the full benefits of that diversity we should seek to know more about the experiences and qualities, hopes and achievements of the many kinds of people who have made America. Not until wave after wave of these facts sweeps over us will the true quality of our American life ring in the American atmosphere, the American consciousness.
Only then will all Americans feel themselves at one with the builders of America in the past and with each other in the present, drawn together knit together by a common stake in America.
Then all over the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian to the Mexican border, Swedish Americans, Russian, German, Italian, Irish, Black, French, Hispanic, Asian, Czech Americans will feel the same warmth and pride in their old yellowing letters and documents which is felt by those descended from the passengers of the Mayflower.
Then will they all feel themselves at home in the history of America, in that interplay, that diversity which is America.
The cultural atmosphere of the United States will then mean new and broader ways of seeing our neighbors and freer and more generous ways of behaving toward them.
It will mean a new solidarity, irrespective of background, one that lets people remain themselves.
It will bring into full play the healthy simultaneous tension and fusion of stubborn creative differences, challenging all groups and individuals to vie with one another in contributing from their own life to the good of all.
Open our eyes, O God, that we may see Your image in all and accept humbly and gratefully the gifts that each race, creed and nationality brings to our American life.
[A collection was made for a local food pantryor other charitable organization.]
[The Offeratory Anthem was something of a "classical" nature,i.e. not from a faith-group's hymnal.
After the ushers have completed taking up the offering
all rise as the offering is brought forward.]
Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining Your reign divine,
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, God were at our side, all glory be Thine.
We all do extol Thee, Thou leader triumphant,
And pray that Thou still our defender wilt be.
Let Thy congregation escape tribulation,
Thy name be ever praised! O God, make us free!
With confession and with humility we repent of our blindness to the division and war in our own hearts and our land, our obsession with money and our pursuit of power, our irrational belief in security through weaponry, and our worship of secular gods.
We are called to be obedient to the Eternal our God, the creator of all humanity and the universe, who loves the whole world, and who invites us to be stewards of the earth and servants of God's people, to be co-workers in a new Creation.
Let us be peacemakers. Let us be called the children of God, speaking boldly with moral conviction, to the nation and to the world, building, with God's grace, a new moral order in the world community; and acting now for world peace, an enterprise of justice, an outcome of love.
So may it be.
by
Irving BerlinGod bless America
From the mountains
To the prairies
To the oceans
White with foam
God bless America
My home sweet home;
God bless America
My home sweet home.
(Please rise and hold hands)
May we feel the graciousness of the exquisite wonders of creation.
May the holiness of creation rise up to greet us and grant us the wholeness, the completeness of peace.