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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 6, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org
We begin the year by thinking about elements in our lives which are doing us a disservice, and what possibilities might become open to us if we let them go. We whisper these things into flash paper and burn them together, scattering the ashes to the wind.
Call to Worship
“We Hold a Place for You”
By Chris Jimmerson
Come into this sacred space.
Bring with you your joys, your hopes – all that you love; that which you hold holy.
Come into this, our beloved community.
Bring with you also your imperfections, your secret fears and unspoken hurts – those things that you still hold but that you yearn to release.
Come onto this hallowed ground.
Bringing too, your wildest imaginings of what, together, we might create or create more of in our world.
Come, we hold a place for you in this our hour of worship.
Reading
“Burning the Old Year”
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
Sermon
This is the story of a woman, whom I’ll call Eve, though that is not her real name.
Eve sought grief counseling: after losing her husband to Lou Gerhig’s disease.
Eve and her husband were devout Catholics and were married in their Catholic church. They were very much in love. The marriage was a happv one. Eve described her husband as a good father and a wonderful spouse.
After he developed the disease, she took care of him as it progressed which became difficult, as it is a cruel and degenerative disease. As he became more disabled, he resisted becoming more and more dependent, and they sometimes fought.
Still, every night, they would lie in bed with their hands clasped so that their wedding rings touched together, and they would repeat their wedding vows to one another.
Until his very last day, their love for and devotion to one another remained strong.
When she sought counseling, it had been six years since his death.
Eve told the counselor that she knew she needed to move on with her life. to start dating again, “But I can’t take my wedding ring off,” she said. “I can’t date wearing mv wedding ring, and I can’t take it off.”
Intellectually, she knew she had honored her commitment to her husband. Emotionally and spiritually. she could not let go of her belief that marriage is for life, which the wedding ring symbolized so strongly for her.
The counselor worked with her priest to put together a “reverse wedding” ritual for her.
At the same church were they had originally been married, with many of the same family and friends who had attended their wedding, the priest called her up to the altar.
He asked her. “Were vou faithful in good times and in bad?”
“Yes,” Eve replied.
“In sickness and in health?”
“I was,” she replied.
The priest led her through the rest of her wedding vows, but in past tense, and she affirmed in front of the loving witnesses who had gathered that she had loved, honored and been faithful to her husband.
Then the priest said, “May I have the ring, please?”
And Eve took it off and handed it to him.
They had her ring and her husband’s ring interlocked and then affixed to the front of their wedding photo.
Eve later described finally taking the ring off to her counselor by saying, “It came off as if by magic.”
This story illustrates so perfectly the power of ritual.
Like Eve, sometimes we can know intellectually that we need to let something go, and yet it can be so difficult to move past it emotionally – spiritually.
Ritual allows us to embody our thoughts and intentions. It allows us to hold them in a much deeper place inside – or to release something from that same deep place – from our hearts and souls, not just our minds.
That’s why we have made it our tradition here at the church, to begin each New Year by conducting a burning bowl ritual- each of us reflects upon something that we are carrying that may be holding us back – something we would like to let go because it may be keeping us from fully living out our life goals and values – reaching out with love to manifest more of what we would like to see in our world.
Then, we whisper whatever it is into the pieces of flash paper you were given as you came in and toss them into the flame in our bowl and watch it burn away before our very eyes.
Here are some examples of what we might want to let go:
- Trying to control things that can’t be controlled.
- Making other people do right
- What other people think of you
- Taking over other people’s problems
- Helping when you weren’t asked to help
- Having the same old conversation over and over
Burning Bowl Ritual
May your life, your spirit be unburdened of that which you have burned here today. May you experience a lightness and a joy. So unburdened, may your heart reach out in love to help build the beloved community. Amen.
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