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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
December 31, 2017
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. We whisper these things into flash paper and burn them together, scattering the ashes to the wind.
Reading
Burning the Old Year
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.
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