Burning Bowl Service

Chris Jimmerson
January 4, 2015

We greet the new year with our annual Burning Bowl service! It is good to begin the new year by clearing out old regrets and resentments. We toss those things into the fire and get a fresh start.

Call to Worship

by Sylvia L. Howe

We bid you welcome on this first Sunday of the new year.

Like Janus we gather with part of us looking backward
and part of us looking forward.

We gather on the edge of the new year
saddened by our losses,
cherishing our joys,
aware of our failures,
mindful of days gone by.

We gather on the cusp of this new year
eager to begin anew,
hopeful for what lies ahead,
promising to make changes,
anticipating tomorrows and tomorrows.

We invite you to join our celebration of life,
knowing that life includes good and bad,
endings and beginnings.

We bid you welcome!

Reading

For The New Year
by Barbara Rohde

We gather together at the beginning of a new time.
We stand on the edge of a wilderness that is a true wilderness.
No one has entered it before us.
Yet there is also that in us which causes us to face the unknown territory –cautiously and anxiously.
Now, in this place, we take time out of time, to look back,
to see where we have been and what we have been,
to reflect upon what we have learned thus far on our journey.
We gather together to remind each other to seek for our True North,
and to encourage — to place courage in – one another.
When we leave this place, we must each find our true path.
We must walk alone.
But now and then we may meet.
When we meet, may we offer each other the bread of our being.
And oh, my brothers, and oh, my sisters, if you hear me
plunging wildly, despairingly, through the thicket, call out to me.
Calm me.
And if you find me sleeping in the snow, awaken me,
lest my heart turn to ice.
And if you hear my music, praising the mornings of the world,
then in that other time, in the blackness of my night,
sing it back to me.

Sermon

In one of the first few classes I took in seminary, the instructors led us through this exercise called, “The Big Assumption”. “Big Assumptions” are beliefs we hold about ourselves that may be outside of our explicit awareness of them:

– Messages we got as kids

– Unconscious expectations or evaluations of ourselves that we absorb through our culture

– Internalized judgments we can get from friends, family and others in our lives.

The exercise we went through to discover our big assumptions involved identifying a key life goal that was a struggle for us. Then, they led us through a process that helped us to determine:

1. What we were doing or not doing that was undermining our goal,

2. What hidden, competing commitments were causing us to behave in this way,

3. What underlying, big assumption was leading to these hidden commitments

To get started, they gave as an example involving someone who says, “I am committed to stand up for myself more often when people make unreasonable demands of me, but instead I say ‘yes’ to people even when I know I am too busy, and I take on projects when others are really responsible for doing them”. That’s the goal and what they are doing that undermines it.

The hidden, competing commitments in this case might be, “I try to avoid conflict. I try to get others to think well of me”. The big assumption might be something like, “If I didn’t do these things, no one would like me”. It might simply be, “I don’t deserve respect”.

After we did the exercise ourselves, we went around the room, and those who were willing to do so shared the assumptions they had unearthed. It was a revealing and powerful experience. People, sometimes near tears, said things like:

“I don’t deserve to be loved.”

“I’ll never be attractive enough.”

“I’ll never be a good enough parent to my daughter”

Our instructors told us that they had done this same exercise in a number of our churches with both religious leaders and lay people, and the results were always very similar. The assumptions almost always involved some version of “not enough” and “don’t deserve”.

“I’ll never be successful enough. I don’t deserve to be”.

“I’ll never do well enough to satisfy my parents”.

“I’ll never have enough house, the right car, the expensive stuff my television keeps telling me I am supposed to acquire”.

If we consider some of the messages we are all constantly receiving, it’s easy to see how such assumptions could develop.

For me, it was simply, “I’m not good enough.”

Looking back on it now, it’s not surprising that I might have had that assumption. Growing up as a gay kid in a small, conservative town, I got a lot of that message.

As a minister in formation, the value for me in identifying it was that this assumption could lead to a kind of perfectionism: reluctance to admitting to vulnerability. I had to do the work of letting the assumption go, because a big part of doing ministry is to accept and even embrace vulnerability – to model appropriately expressing vulnerability – to create a sacred space where others may feel more comfortable doing so too.

Brene Brown, a researcher in the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, has studied people who have a strong sense of purpose and meaning in life, who feel worthy of being loved and have a sense of belonging. What she has found is that one of the things they share in common is that they not only accept their vulnerability, they believe that their vulnerability is part of what makes them beautiful.

The real problem with the big assumption is, it’s a lie.

You are enough. You are worthy – you are deserving – just as you are, imperfections and vulnerabilities included.

That doesn’t mean we stop working to more fully become our best selves. It just helps us be in a place where we already know a deep sense our own inherent worth and dignity.

In a moment, we are going to light our burning bowl to begin our annual ritual about letting go of the things that hold us back, so I invite you now to think about about something you would like to let go. Is there a big assumption you have discovered today that you would like to release?

If not, maybe there a habit or something you’ve been doing that works against you, or a competing commitment you’d like to let go. Maybe letting these go will reveal an assumption underneath them.

Here are some examples of what you might want to let go: – What other people think of you.

– Hoping to finally win an argument with Mom, Dad, a spouse, partner, brother, sister.

– The need to win arguments at all.

– Fixing other people.

– Trying to control things that can’t be controlled.

– Needing to be the perfect spouse, parent, son, daughter, partner, friend or whatever occupational role you fill.

– Any sound file that keeps running in your head saying, “not enough”, “don’t deserve”

One of the values of ritual is that it allows us to embody our thoughts and intentions, to make them concrete. It allows us to hold them in a much deeper place inside – or to release something from that same deep place.

What will you release during our burning bowl ritual this year? We begin with a poem.

“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”.

We will now light our burning bowl.

(— We ritually burn our slips of paper —)

May your life, your spirit be unburdened of that which you have burned here today. May you experience a lightness and a joy from having released it from a place deep within. May you move into the New Year with a deep and an abiding sense that you are enough. Inherently, you have worth.

Benediction

Now that you have let go of the things that needed releasing, hold on to the knowledge that you carry a spark of the divine within you.

Carry with you the love and sense of community we share in this sacred place.

Carry with you a mind open to continuous revelation, a heart strong enough to break wide open and a peace that passes all understanding.

All blessings go with you until we gather here again. Amen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 15 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.