HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – The first public prayer at a Huntsville City Council meeting since a controversy involving a Wiccan priest happened without a hiccup Thursday evening.

Debbie Esslinger, an active lay member of Trinity United Methodist Church and volunteer leader with Interfaith Mission Service, urged the mostly full council chambers to "reach across our differences and beyond our comfort zones to discover the common threads in all of us."

Esslinger also quoted Mahatma Gandhi: "Like a bee gathering honey from different flowers, the wise person accepts the essence of the different scriptures and sees only the good in all religions."

The previous council meeting, on June 26, began with a moment of silence instead of an invocation after the city un-invited that night's scheduled speaker, Wiccan priest Blake Kirk. City Attorney Peter Joffrion said Kirk's invitation was rescinded because of phone calls from citizens alarmed about his faith once the agenda was made public.

Kirk had been listed on the agenda as "Priest of the Oak, Ash and Thorn tradition of Wicca."

"We decided to pull back, to do some education maybe, and to introduce him more gently at another time," Joffrion told AL.com following the meeting.

Decisions about who offers the invocation at council meetings are made by Joffrion and the Rev. Frank Broyles, a minister to the community from Faith Presbyterian Church and longtime Interfaith Mission Service leader.

The controversy over Kirk forced council members to revisit whether they want to continue opening meetings with a moment of spoken prayer or inspiration delivered by religious leaders representing a variety of faiths. Broyles told AL.com this week that Council President Mark Russell made it clear that council members want to keep the tradition alive.

"They want the invocation to set the intention that we can work together, even with difference, for the common good," said Broyles. "And, of course, they also said they would like the speakers, as their directions to me put it, 'to be representatives of our community and comply with current legal rulings.'"

In 2012, the Freedom From Religion Foundation threatened to sue Huntsville over its tradition of inviting mostly Christian ministers to offer a public prayer before council meetings.

The city responded by creating a rotating list of religious leaders from different faiths to deliver the invocation. While a variety of Christian ministers have been invited since then, Muslim, New Thought, Baha'i, Hindu and Jewish leaders have also spoken.

Kirk, the Wiccan priest, delivered an invocation without incident at the council's Jan. 23, 2014, meeting.

A Hindu leader is scheduled to offer the prayer at the council's July 24 meeting.