![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2014\/06\/Ancestors-service-06.15.14-1.jpg\" "\\"Ancestors")
<\/a><\/p>\nstrike gong one time loud<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLet us now invite our ancestors to join our service.\u201d<\/p>\n light first candle<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cFathers, Mothers, Grandfathers, Grandmothers, ancestors we knew in this life, we invite you to our service.\u00a0 We thank you for giving us life, for caring for us when we were young and helpless, and for teaching us to stand on our own.\u00a0 We remember you at your best.<\/p>\n If there is an ancestor you would remember, call their name now, silently or aloud.\u201d<\/p>\n <pause for names<\/em>><\/p>\n \u201cBeloved ancestors, accept this offering of food and drink, given with honor and with love.\u201d<\/p>\n pour drink and crumble bread into cauldron<\/em><\/p>\n light second candle<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cGreat great great grandparents, ancestors so old your names are lost to us, we invite you to our service.\u00a0 We live in times very different from yours, but we are not so very different, and a part of you lives on in us.<\/p>\n We cannot call the names of these ancestors because we do not know their names.\u00a0 But think now of that ancestor who first crossed the great ocean, who survived war and plague and famine, who first learned the skills that would create civilization.\u00a0 Remember them now.<\/p>\n <pause 6-8 seconds<\/em>><\/p>\n \u201cBeloved ancestors, accept this offering of food and drink, given with honor and with love.\u201d<\/p>\n pour drink and crumble bread into cauldron<\/em><\/p>\n light third candle<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAncestors of spirit, mighty dead, we invite you to our service.\u00a0 We do not carry your blood but we carry your spirit: your thoughts, your ideas, your dreams.\u00a0 We thank you for inspiring us and enlightening us, and for founding and creating the traditions and institutions that mean so much to us.<\/p>\n As Unitarian Universalists we remember our spiritual ancestors Servitus and David, Channing and Emerson, Murray and Ballou.\u00a0 As Denton UUs we remember Tom and Isabel Miller, Genevieve Scott, Ruth Clark, Jackie Gibbons.<\/p>\n If there is a spiritual ancestor you would remember, call their name now, silently or aloud.\u201d<\/p>\n <pause for names<\/em>><\/p>\n \u201cBeloved ancestors, accept this offering of food and drink, given with honor and with love.\u201d<\/p>\n pour drink and crumble bread into cauldron<\/em><\/p>\n light fourth candle<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAncestors most ancient, you who share few of our genes, you who lived on a very different Earth so long ago we can barely conceive it, we invite you to our service.\u00a0 We thank you for surviving under most difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Australopithecus; long-extinct mammals and even-older vertebrates; smaller and simpler creatures stretching back to the first life: sometimes we struggle to see ourselves in you, but without you we would not be.<\/p>\n Remember these most ancient ancestors, and remember that some of them are also the ancestors of other species alive today.\u00a0 When St. Francis called the wolf his brother, he had no way of knowing just how right he was.<\/p>\n <pause 6-8 seconds<\/em>><\/p>\n \u201cBeloved ancestors, accept this offering of food and drink, given with honor and with love.\u201d<\/p>\n pour drink and crumble bread into cauldron<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLet us now honor our ancestors with an offering of music.\u201d<\/p>\n musician plays \u201cWild Mountain Thyme\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n