Small Group Ministry Session #26: Mother Wove
#26 Small Group Ministry Session on “Mother Wove” from New Year’s Day
Written by Rev. Jude Geiger, MRE, First Unitarian,Brooklyn
Based on a Sermon by Rev. Jude preached at First UU on 1/1/12 found here: https://revwho.com/2012/01/01/mother-wove/
Welcome & Opening Chalice Lighting (Please read aloud) by Rev. Jude
Enter this year with a sense of new life. Enter this hour with the sense of possibility. May our days come to know gladness, May our dreams expand beyond our own vision, May our hearts open to those in need of our love, Even if they may simply be ourselves.
Statement of Purpose: To nurture our spirits and deepen our friendships.
Brief Check-In: Share your name and something you have left behind to be here.
Covenant Reflection
Reading: A Prayer for a New Year by Rev. Jude
Spirit of New Beginnings, God of Endings, and Mother of Transforming and Abundant Love,
Gift us with a broader view. Grant us the courage to learn from the mistakes of the year past, To honor our travails, and love ourselves despite what we could not let go of. Help us to find a new sense of possibility in the coming year.
May we come to understand our journey as the series of changes that they are, and not as a cascade of doors banging closed. Not as limit and barrier, but as impermanence, openings, and hope. Remind us to take the time, in these longer nights, and shorter days to reflect on matters of the heart.
Stir in us intuitions of the spirit, and quiet our busy minds, So that we find more room, to live into our lives, and not our thoughts. Let us not dwell overlong in the musings of fear and worry, May we not fixate in the hells of “what if” and “if only.”
Mother of Hope, help us to focus on the Heaven in this world, that is within our power to create.
May we give gifts of service and care, compassion and forgiveness, and material things are needed, clothing and food when it is in our power to help.
May we make of this year a new year, not a return to the repetitions of the old. And may it be for gladness.
Discussion Questions:
Where have you encountered the Holy in the past month? What images of the feminine divine do you find in your own life? Which are absent? What can you do, yourself, to reclaim them?
Closing: “Jewish Prayer” #507 from Singing the Living Tradition
Grant us the ability to find joy and strength, not in the strident call to arms, but in stretching out our arms to grasp our fellow creatures in the striving for justice and truth.
RevWho 
One Response to “Small Group Ministry Session #26: Mother Wove”
I appreciate this call to live boldly in community. I will pray to find more of the feminine divine in myself.