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.