For all who have enriched our lives, whom we have loved and known, for saints alive among us still by whom our faith is honed, we thank you, God, who came and comes through women, children, men, to share the highs and lows of life: God for us, now as then. For all who with disarming love have led us to explore the risk of reasoning and doubt, new realms not known before, we thank you, God, who came and comes to free us from our past, from ghettos of rigid mind, from truths unfit to last. For all whose laughter has unnerved tradition gone awry, who with incisive gentleness pursue each human 'why?', we thank you, God, who came and comes to those who probe and ask, who seek to know the mind of Christ and take the church to task. Now for each other and ourselves we pray that, healed of fear, we may relive the love of Christ, prepared in hope to err. Then leave us, God, who comes and goes, in human-ness to grow, to care for people, tend the earth, the only earth we know!