At the edge of the campus of the University of Chicago stands a church which symbolizes the life of Von Ogden Vogt, a minister of the First Unitarian Church of Chicago whose prayers of power were developed as expressions of what he called the Celebration of Life. In his classic Art and Religion, we find descriptions of the structure and process of religious experience. First, there is Vision, a sense of the wonder of the Life always about us. Next comes Humility, an acknowledgement of the imperfections of our lives and our world. Third is Exultation or Praise, as our response to the sacred Power which sustains and inspires our lives. Next comes the Illumination of our situation in the present world. Finally comes Dedication, the act of self-giving which represents religion as our total response to our total world.

Let us focus on just one phase of the celebration of life, a phase which too often is neglected, the act of humility. Dr. Vogt’s prayers of power prepared for public celebrations of life include not only the vision of a more perfect world but an acknowledgement of our own imperfections and experience of powerlessness. The element of personal and corporate confession of our departure from what we recognize as wholesome is deemed a vital part of the Celebration of Life. Consider these prayers which seek to meet this need:

Before the wonders of life we acknowledge our failures to see and to revere; before the sanctities of life we are ashamed of our disrespects and indignities; before the gifts of life we own that we have made choice of lesser goods, and here today seek the gifts of the spirit; before the heroisms of life we would be enlarged to new devotion.

We rejoice this day in the unquenchable and eternal light that lights everyone who comes into the world. In that light we are ashamed of those “reeds within us that have darkened our own souls, and those selfish customs among us that have shadowed the lives and spirits of others We seek Your preeence here not aloe” for our joy today, but to illumine the ways of an our doings until every child shall be brought out of darkness into Your marvelous light.

We turn to You, O Light and Life of an humanity, for in Your light alone may we see the right and find the good. In this a house of light, we remember those whose lives are darkened by the greed and wrong of others. We have not purged the commerce of our times of those harsh ways that hinder the hopes and dreams of many. In this house of peace, we remember wars and rumors of war. We have made but feeble effort to understand the peoples of the world and to foster peace among the nations. In this house of joy, we remember an sorrowing and troubled folk. We would not ourselves be glad except we seek the blessings of abundant life in body and spirit for people everywhere.

We turn aside from an unquiet world, seeking rest for our spirits and light for our thoughts. We bring our work to be sanctified, our wounds to be healed, our sins to be forgiven, our hopes to be renewed, our better selves to be quickened Draw us to Yourself and silence the discords of our wasteful lives. You who are one and in whom all are one, take us out of the loneliness of self and fill us with the fulness of truth and love. You whose greatness is beyond our utmost thought, whose goodness is beyond our highest praise, lift us above our common littleness and our daily imperfections; send us visions of the beauty that is in Your world, of the love that is in You, and of the good that may be in us.