NEW BEGINNINGS, by Barbara Fuchsman

Order of Service -- January 1, 2006

Gathering Music

Welcome and Announcements

Prelude

Chalice Lighting: (read together)

Life is a gift to us and through us; let us be open to its flow. Let us be open to sharing our special life-gift with others. We meet in celebration of the life that is given to and through us. Let us, this morning, turn our thoughts to how we can: touch and be touched, love and be loved, forgive and be forgiven, heal and be healed. So that the goodness of our lives can be a shared blessing. by Mary Grigolia

Opening Song: #346 Come, Sing A Song With Me

Story for All Ages: Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message by
Chief Jake Swamp

Song: #58 Ring Out, Wild Bells

Sharing of Appreciations, Joys, and Concerns

Reading: “Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit” by May Sarton

Responsive Reading: #544 “New Year’s Day” by Rebecca Parker

Offertory:

Homily: “New Beginnings” Barbara Fuchsman

Congregational Sharing:

The Seeds of Our Plans, Hopes, and Dreams -- What we intend to sow, and to reap.

COMPOSTING – Letting go of ideas and feelings that are holding us back.

Closing Song: #131 Love Will Guide Us

Closing Words: “And now, may we have faith in life to do wise planting” by

V. Emil Gudmundson

Extinguishing the Chalice (read together):

We extinguish this flame but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we carry in our hearts until we are together again. Although this service is now ended, we know that our service to each other and to life is just beginning again.

Singing: "Shalom Havayreem" #400

*Please rise, as you are able

HOMILY:

Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit

Who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth

As without light nothing flowers. (May Sarton)

New Beginnings

We human beings live by cycles of time. Of course, what these cycles are – how they are described, when they begin and end – these particulars vary a lot from place to place. But time is marked. For example, the Maya and other Middle American peoples, kept elaborate calendars. At the end of important cycles, they, like the ancestors in David Burwasser’s Yule meditation, put out all their house fires and rekindled new fire from a sacred flame. We don’t mark our time with such consistent power, but our calendar, our celebration of the beginning of the New Year at this darkest part of the year, is very old, harking back from before the Roman Empire. Whether we stayed up and greeted the new year with firecrackers or went to bed at 9 p.m., the wheel of the year has turned and taken us with it.

I like the New Year responsive reading by Kathleen McTigue because she brings out so clearly that while everything IS still the same, marking the new year does have meaning. As she says, “The new year can be new ground for the seeds of our dreams.” “The self is not one thing, once made, unaltered,” Nancy Shaffer reminds us in her beautiful poem This Making of a Whole Self. Making and re-making of our whole selves is essential business. The beginning of the new year traditionally has been a time to think about this work, especially about the new beginnings we would like to make in our own lives. At the same time, Nature’s cycles are carrying us in this direction. According to Victoria Bernard (Circle Magazine, Winter 2000),

“This time of year offers a natural opportunity for reflection and introspection. We are grateful for the warmth of our hearths and homes and tend to spend more time indoors. While the cold winds blow outside our windows, we have time to examine the status of our lives and determine what changes we would like to manifest within ourselves during the coming year. As one must clear and fertilize the fields before sowing a crop, so must we prepare the fields of our lives for the seeds we wish to grow. Anything that is no longer useful must be removed, as tender sprouts of new growth do not thrive when choked with weeds. Thoughtful planning in this stage will do much to ensure a rich and bountiful harvest later in the year.”

Remember that to grow and thrive we must be able to let go of things and behaviors that are important to us. But also remember that we cannot simply throw these away. Banished, they return if they are not transformed. As weeds are put into the compost heap and become new, rich soil, so we must let go and allow transformation and change, if our resolutions for the new year are to have any chance of being realized.

Let us take time now for silence and thought.

FIRST: We now each declare in our hearts what we hope to gather from the past, what harvest we can now enjoy, and what new seeds we will each plant in this new year.

SECOND: We now each declare in our hearts, what we hope to leave behind in the new year, the stuff we would send back to the compost heap.

Period of thinking with music

As the baskets of nuts and grapes come to you, husk the nut and take the stems off the grapes. Eat the nuts and grapes as a symbol of hard earned harvest, and put the shell and stems, symbol of what you wish to leave behind to compost and transform, into the bucket. You may resolve silently or share what you plan to sow, reap and compost with your sisters and brothers here.

Helper moves about the circle holding a basket of nuts before each celebrant. A second helper follows with the compost bucket.

Congregational Sharing

We now salute the health, fortune, growth, and wisdom of one another, as here defined by our resolutions.

Closing Words:

And now, may we have faith in life to do wise planting that the generations to come may reap even more abundantly than we. May we be bold in bringing to fruition the golden dreams of human kinship and justice. This we ask that the fields of promise become fields of reality. (V. Emil Gudmundson)

Instructions in Joy by Nancy Shaffer (UU Meditation Manual)

“This Making of a Whole Self”