O Holy One, shine upon us this evening and illumine the sometimes dark and hidden places of our knowing and our being, so that we may join in the dance of your celebration. You bless us with this gift-time’ to share our hopes and joys as a community of women, in solidarity with others, who are life givers -- light givers -- and givers of endless possibilities.

Response: May we know that we are light through our purposeful awakenings.

O Erupting Mother Earth, we thank you for your constant birthing of new life -- for your vibrating gifts of color, for the bounteous buddings and leafings in and around us. You show us that dark and cold winters are seasonal and that life is a process of being and becoming, springing forth in abundance. You call us to come into our own wondrous fruition. Response

O Spirit of Life, dance within us, light our hearts so that we may accept the harvest of our plantings, honoring the tears, toil and confusion experienced along the way of becoming the women we are meant to be. Response

Guided Meditation:

This season of spring and new life ignites the possibilities within each of us to germinate and burst forth with magnificent color. What insights or images regarding the springtime meditation would you like to acknowledge and accept? Are there gifts of spring you feel the need to be grateful for? Do you feel a need or call coming from within at this time? Share your insights if you so desire.

Reading (A Sleep of Prisoners by Christopher Fry):

The human heart can go the lengths of God.

Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now.

The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;

The thunder is the thunder of the floes, the thaw, the flood, the Upstart Spring.

Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to face us everywhere,

never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul ever taken.

Affairs are soul-size, the enterprise is exploration into God.

Where are we making for?

It takes so many thousand years to wake, but will you wake for pity's sake?