All cultures have rituals. One of the liberating outcomes of worshipping in a progressive faith community is the freedom to create new rituals as well as adapt old ones.
As author Elizabeth Gilbert says in Eat, Pray, Love:
This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising…
Rituals bind our communities together and confirm our belonging. What are the rituals that hold the most meaning for you?
Leader: God is the heart of life.
All: And we are the heartbeat.
Leader: May your hearts be filled with thanks and praise and songs of joy.
Calling the Circle
Lighting the altar candles, white candle in the center:
Mother of all life, soul of our being, center of all our longing,
who shines for all and flows through all,
Be with us, guide us, now and always.
Light a candle as each line is spoken:
This candle is for the 150 loving, caring members of Sausalito Presbyterian Church.
This candle is for the people in our church who suffer from illness or disability.
