Burning our Regrets, Safeguarding our Intentions

I have always liked the ceremony of the turning of the year, the one where you reflect on the year just completed, release your regrets, and welcome fresh intentions for the year to come. I often don't get to lead the service just after Christmas, and blessedly so, but this year, I found myself scheduled for December 30. Knowing I would be pretty tired after the extra services at Solstice and Christmas Eve (little suspecting at planning time that Solstice would be snowed out), I planned to take the time that Sunday morning for ceremony, not sermonizing.

It was good. We spent time in silent reflection about the year just past, then in spoken sharing about particularly important life events that people were willing to make public. Then everybody took little slips of paper and wrote, after a further silent reflection, the things they wanted to release to the universe, regrets, missteps, habits, they hoped would be taken from them somehow. I invited them to crumple up the little papers and drop them into a big bowl. As my helper passed the bowl through the congregation, it turned out that the big metal salad bowl from the church kitchen made a wonderful sound as it was struck by the crumpled papers. People threw them in with gusto -- bong!-- even launched them from a distance. They crumpled them tightly for maximum effect. What a great sound to signal release!

We gathered into silence again, accompanied by the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" played on Celtic harp. And as the silence deepened, we reflected on what we wished to invite into our lives, now that whatever that other stuff was had left. There was time to write or draw reminders of those intentions, and then an invitation to safeguard them, put them someplace where they would be seen from time to time, even tape them to the mirror so they would be seen every day. That felt good too.

We sang again, and closed our ceremony. Then some of us went outside to burn those little crumpled papers from the salad bowl. We went downstairs and reported that the "bad stuff" had been released to the universe, news received to general rejoicing.

I'm thinking that simple ceremonies have a place in our church calendar, ceremonies that invite inner work rather than sermons that stimulate thinking and reflection. Not every week, but from time to time.

A Step Toward Marriage Equality

I'm excited! The State of New Hamphshire is about to have legal Civil Unions. That means gay and lesbian couples can have at least some of the rights and responsibilites married heterosexual couples have. It has real practical importance for many -- health insurance as a family has got to be better than health insurance as two individuals -- even though the benefits are limited. To me, the real importance of this step toward "civilizing" same-gender commitments is that it signals a shift in social attitudes. The conferring of legal recognition, however limited, confers the dignity of being recognized before the law. Couples raising children together need not pretend to have some other kind of relationship than the one they have. They can come out of the shadows and be themselves. Families.

All kinds of families need all the help they can get. They get it in our Unitarian Universalist churches, and I'm thrilled that they now get it in some other faiths as well. And now they get a little nudge in the right direction from the State of New Hampshire. Stable, loving relationships are a gift from the Cosmos. They are also the product of deep commitment by the people involved plus acceptance and encouragement by family and frieds, church and community, yes, even State.

So in the early moments of 2008, I plan to be standing on the State House steps blessing and making legal the commitments of as many same-gender couples as come forward to participate. And for those of you who are elsewhere, I invite you to raise a glass to toast this sea-change in New Hampshire. From then on, things will be different for same-gender couples who make commitments to one another here in the Granite State, for those commitments will be made on a firm foundation undergirded with law.

It's not full marriage equality, but it's a start.

A Conference to Remember

I attended the every-other-year conference of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists (ICUU) at the beginning of November, in Oberwesel, Germany, not far from Frankfurt. The organizers had assured us that it was a very lovely site, and indeed it is. We stayed in a youth hostel on top of one of the steep hills beside the Rhine River, right next door to a real medieval castle. We strolled through a village with medieval ramparts that once protected it from marauders. And we sampled wine made from grapes that grow on nearby hills.


But we didn't do much tourist stuff. We were there to confer, to meet other Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists, and to help our tiny worldwide movement grow. We are transforming from a primarily anglophone movement into one that operates in multiple languages. Still, the conference is held in English, and everyone who attends really needs to speak and understand English.


There was solid representation from our English-speaking communities in England, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. Plus, there is an organization of fellowships started by Unitarian Universalist expatriates with congregations around Europe. The biggest groups that don't speak English as their first language are from Transylvania (in Romania) and from Northeastern India, in the Khasi Hills. There are smaller and emerging groups in many places -- Italy, Spain, Mexico, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya, Burundi, Nigeria -- and individual people working to gather congregations in Bolivia, Argentina, and other places.

The practices of Unitarians (mostly they call themselves Unitarians) and Unitarian Universalists around the world vary considerably, as do their circumstances. It is good to be such a diverse group, energizing to be ourselves in conversation with one another.