2017 Invocations (11)
In 2017, the Central Florida Freethought Community offered secular invocations at civic meetings across our region. Each reflection centers on shared human values—compassion, reason, integrity, and service—while respecting freedom of conscience and the separation of religion and government. Below are the invocations from this year.
2017 July 5 - Athena Jeanne Hale, DeLand, FL
23 October 2017 - Winter Park City Council
David Williamson - 353 words
It’s my honor today to join you to offer opening words—often referred to as an invocation or prayer.
But the words I’ve chosen are intended to invoke the shared values that every one of us arrived with today and it is my sincere hope everyone feels included.
Through the millennia we’ve learned the hard lesson that the best way to govern the people is for the people to govern themselves.
Today, in this tradition, we travel from our homes and businesses across the City to participate. Citizens, staff, and those elected; we all converge on this chamber to join as one community, indivisible; united in the shared purpose of service—service to one another—service to those we know—and those we may never meet.
We arrived as individuals; each with unique ideas and experiences, but ALL of us with a need to fulfill.
Citizens request assistance and collaboration with the City. They offer their concerns and we are grateful for their courage to speak and, even more so, for their trust in this process.
The needs they bring will be met by others here—those who have a different need—a need to serve.
This may be the City staff who provide invaluable advice and expertise. We truly appreciate their continued work on our behalf.
Their years of service combined provide many decades of knowledge and experience. Their wise counsel is appreciated more than can be expressed in a few words.
Elected officials listen, deliberate, debate, and decide the path forward for the people of Winter Park and its cherished visitors. We can never offer our thanks enough, for that thankless task.
While we work together here, and this evening after we leave this chamber, let us carry with us this same spirit of service and goodwill.
Today, tomorrow and every day that follows. For together we can accomplish far more than we can on our own.
This is why—and this is how we decided to assemble, to serve, and to govern, ourselves.
It is why our nation’s first and best motto was “Out of many—one. E Pluribus Unum.”
18 September 2017 - Longwood City Council
Paul Truman - 339 words
Thank you Mayor, Commissioners, Staff, and community members for the opportunity to offer opening words for tonight’s meeting.
This is a room in which there are many challenging debates, moments of tension, of frustration, and ideological division. This is also a room where we come to work together and where we have much more in common than we realize or remember during our discourse.
Let us be mindful that this room is filled with our diverse human family with common values and needs. Let us cherish and celebrate our shared capacity for reason and compassion. Our similarities and our ability to recognize the value and worth of our entire community is what moves us forward.
During Hurricane Irma, Florida was tested in how compassionate and wonderful we can be. Through and through, we saw the best that our communities offer. Whether by sanctuary from the worst of the storm to letting folks recharge their cell phones and computers on our generators and in our restaurants, we should all be in awe of the greatness of Longwood’s citizens.
The burden of the storm was not equally carried, so it is important that we take the time in meetings like this to thank the hardworking police officers, firefighters, emergency medical personnel, and every line man Florida currently houses. From the bottom of our hearts, thanks to each and every one of you.
I offer additional thanks to all the city workers and elected officials for doing their best to help Longwood make it through the Hurricane. From executive decisions to Facebook updates, your efforts helped so many make it through the hurricane better prepared and better informed. The civic lesson on how lift stations work was a lesson learned by most.
The City of Longwood’s Mission is: “To foster citizen trust by practicing open, accountable, and responsive government; providing quality core services; promoting long-term prosperity.” Thank you for upholding these virtues during these days as we weathered the storm together and as you deliberate this evening.
Thank you for your time.
9 August 2017- Orlando City Council
David Williamson - 337 words
Good afternoon Mr. Mayor, Commissioners, and Staff.
I was thrilled to learn you proclaimed yesterday Equality Florida Day in celebration of their two decades of social justice work on behalf of LGBTQ Floridians. Congratulations to the volunteers, staff and my fellow supporters of Equality Florida, and to everyone in the city who has made concerted efforts toward full equality. For it is ONLY when we are treated equally by our government, by public charities, and by public accommodations, that we can truly achieve a greatness that can be measured by all.
It’s my honor today to join the city with its continuing efforts at inclusion by offering a secular invocation.
Through the millennia we’ve learned the hard lesson that the best way to govern the people is for the people to govern themselves. Today, in this tradition, we travel from our homes and businesses across the City to participate. Citizens, staff, and those elected; we all converge on this chamber to join as a community, united in the shared purpose of service to one another.
We each arrived today as individuals; all with unique ideas and experiences, but ALL with needs of many types. Citizens request assistance and collaboration with the City. They offer their concerns and we are grateful for their courage to speak and for their trust in this process. And those needs will be met by others—those who have the need to serve.
Staff provides invaluable expertise and we truly appreciate their continued work on our behalf.
Elected officials listen, deliberate, debate, and decide the path forward for the people of Orlando and our cherished visitors. We can never offer our thanks enough for that thankless task.
When we leave this chamber later today, let us carry with us this same spirit of service and goodwill, today, tomorrow and every day that follows. For together we can accomplish far more than we can on our own.
This is why and this is how we decided to assemble, to serve, and to govern, ourselves.
6July 2017 - Volusia County Council
Brandon Haught - 321 words
TThank you Mr. Chairman, council members and citizens,
The recent Independence Day celebrations had me reflecting back on my military service a few decades ago. One aspect of serving in the Marine Corps has always stuck with me: you never leave a fellow Marine behind. When one Marine is in trouble, other Marines are there to help and support. Now, that doesn't mean everyone was the best of friends, but Marines take care of their own regardless.
I served in Oklahoma City in 1995. That was the year of the Federal Building bombing, killing 168 innocent people, including two of my fellow Marines. But it wasn't just the military that came through in a time of great need, it was everyone. The community, the state, the country, the world came together. Never before then had I ever personally witnessed such an outpouring of support and coming together.
Later, I worked here in Volusia County for the Sheriff's Office. I didn't have the honor of serving as a deputy — I was a civilian, but I was comforted by the fact that in the Sheriff s Office everyone took care of everyone else. It could have been helping a deputy in financial distress. It could have been covering a fellow deputy's roof after a hurricane while that deputy was on duty. It could be the response of every law enforcement officer from miles around when there are calls of "shots fired" over the radio. But the bottom line was that they were in it together.
That's the message I want to leave with you today. Everyone has differing personalities and goals and beliefs but we can still all come together to serve the common good. Putting self aside to help others needs to be the overriding objective in any discussion or decision here. It is my sincere hope that we all can achieve and maintain that noble goal.
Thank you for your time on us to protect and defend these values for all of us. Thank you.
27 June 2017 - Seminole County Commission
David Starkweather
[Transcript Unavailable]
22 May 2017 - Casselberry City Commission
Joseph Richardson - 229 words
Mayor and Commissioners,
Thank you for this opportunity to provide a secular invocation for today's meeting.
We have all come here tonight with our various troubles and hopes, desires and frustrations. But right now, I invite you to slow down for just a moment; take a breath and remember your fellow commissioners, city staff and especially the citizens of Casselberry whom you represent.
Remember that they have the same desires as you, the same goals as you. Consider that your fellow commissioners and the citizens you will hear speak tonight are here because they, like you, want Casselberry to be an even better place to live, to work and to play than it already is.
All of us are here to work to make Casselberry better. But it is you who must make the decisions. In that light I’ll offer a quote from Kareem Abdul Jabar who I’m sure you all know was a pro basketball player. He said “Five guys on the court working together can achieve more than five talented individuals who come and go as individuals.”
And that’s exactly what I encourage you to do tonight. Work together as a team with the other commissioners and with the citizens of Casselberry to achieve more than what any of you can do as individuals. Work together to get the job done and to get it done well.
4 May 2017 - Eustis City Council
Joseph Richardson - 324 words
Mayor and Commissioners,
I'm honored and grateful to be here to address you today on behalf of the Central Florida Freethought Community and freethinkers here in Eustis.
This day, in many quarters, Reason is being celebrated. Today is the National Day of Reason which seeks, among other things to "promote the development and application of reason", a worthy goal that is radically inclusive.
It is through reason that, more than 2200 years ago, with nothing more than shadows and a little geometry, Eratosthenes was able to show that the Earth was indeed a sphere and calculate its circumference to within 1%. It is through reason that 300 years ago we began the Enlightenment and struggled our way out of the darkness and superstition of the Middle Ages. Through reason, Einstein made predictions about the cosmos that we are still confirming 100 years later. Through reason, we know that we are intimately connected, not only to every other human, but also to every living thing.
Despite the advances of reason, we are all wrong about something. It is a continuous, life-long effort to be "less wrong" and to use new information and reason to achieve that goal. You have the opportunity to do that again tonight. You will receive new information and make decisions about that information. I urge you to exercise empathy to understand how your constituents feel, to use compassion to consider how your decisions will affect them, and to apply reason in the evaluation all of these things.
I'm particularly glad to see that you're proclaiming Public Service Recognition Week tonight. Public service is often empathy, compassion and reason in action.
So on this, the National Day of Reason, I encourage you to be conscious of your own empathy, compassion and especially reason, be humble in your self-assessment, be judicious in the exercise of your sacred duty as commissioners, and strive always to be "less wrong" through the uninhibited use of reason.
11 April 2017 - Seminole County Commission
David Williamson - 330 words
As we gather this morning, let’s reflect on the things we’ve brought with us to do the important work of the County.
Wisdom is often called for at this time, yet all the knowledge we need is right here in this chamber. Our devoted county commissioners, proud citizens, local business owners and entrepreneurs, and, of course, the dedicated, hard-working county staff. We all bring with us vast knowledge to share and we are each vital to the process of self-governance.
Compassion is essential for effective public service and it’s cultivated through a lifetime of learning about the needs of everyone in the community, especially those who, at first, seem unlike ourselves. When these needs are neglected or ignored we have failed in our duty to serve everyone equally.
Integrity and honesty are earned through life lessons we take from family, friends, strangers, and our personal experiences of these principles in everyone around us whom we admire.
Finally, let’s be continually grateful to one another and ensure those who work on our behalf know how much we appreciate them.
Let’s be especially thankful at this meeting for the service of firefighters and everyone else who will work hard to protect us this dry season. Those women and men of the Seminole County Fire Department, the Florida Forest Service, our local municipal fire departments as well as everyone in public safety who pitch in when we need them; day or night.
As “we the people,” gather this morning with the common goal of improving the lives of stakeholders in Seminole County, including those who will be affected by our decisions for generations to come, let’s take solace in the fact that, on our own we can do this, because of what we’ve learned, how much we care, and because about a half a million county residents are counting on us to get this right. No pressure.
Have a productive meeting and on behalf of all your constituents, thank you for your service!
13 February 2017 - Casselberry City Council
David Williamson - 289 words
Good afternoon Mayor, Commissioners, and, of course, City Staff. On behalf of ALL Casselberry citizens, thank you.
In honor of YOUR service, and of the many city employees and volunteers, most of whom are not here, I want to read a poem by Marge Piercy. It is titled To Be of Use
The people I love the best jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves,
an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo,
with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done,
again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge in the task,
who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands,
crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person
for work that is real.
And on behalf of the Central Florida Freethought Community, thank you for your service and we wish you all the best in your proceedings this afternoon.
9 January 2017 - Winter Park City Council
Joseph Richardson - 248 words
Thank you for inviting the Central Florida Freethought Community to provide the invocation for today's meeting. We're glad to be here and we appreciate being included.
To most people, government meetings can be uninspired affairs. The governmental machinations necessary to reach a community's goals can be tedious. But the intent undergirding these procedings and your participation in them is a noble one that transcends all deliberative actions.
It is in the work you do and in these gatherings that we play out the values developed by organized and civilized socitey and enshrined in our constitution. It is here that citizens have the opportunity to speak directly to you about issues that affect their lives. And it is here that you, as representatives of the government, have the honor and responsibility to listen and adjudicate.
Even though the specific actions of this body on this day may seem prosaic, your efforts advance the goals enumerated in the Preamble to the Constitution: establishing justice, promoting liberty, contributing to the general welfare.
With this context in mind, I encourage and exhort each of you to approach today's deliberations with due reverence and to apply hard data, empathy and compassion to the decisions you face today. Hard data being the evidence that some ideas work and some don't. Empathy and compassion being the recognition that your decisions affect real people in real ways.
For all you do for the citizens of Winter Park and for this opportunity to speak, we thank you.