This Sunday is our annual “Fire Communion.” This is a participatory service, one of our four community-based rituals, in which which we honor that we are each on our individual life journeys, but we do not journey alone.

On Sunday, we will be noting things that we would like to leave behind in 2024, honoring any grief we have carried, and offering courage to one another as we prepare to begin a new year.

Note: part of this ritual involves dipping a piece of flash paper into a flame and tossing it away (optional for everyone – the minister is happy to do this part for you.) If you have a child who wants to participate, you are invited to arrive before the service at 9:30 to experiment with the flash paper.

What are the things that you would like to leave behind in 2024? Of course, we can’t change history, but there may be things in our own lives that we can set to the side so that we aren’t burdened by them in the year to come. As Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “Finish every day and be done with it…You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day for all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays.”