Countryside Church Unitarian Universalist, Palatine, IL
CCUU Covenant Group Session
Another New Year

Pre-Meeting Preparation
At the end of the previous session, or sometime before this session, give to group members the preparation page for this session (attached at the end of this document.) 

Preliminaries 
Report from the service project committee.  

Chalice Lighting and Reading

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
And realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday
A dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
- attributed to Kalidasa, Hindu dramatist and poet

Check-in.  

Transition Meditation/Reading
Help the group move from check-in preliminaries to silence with directed deep breathing, soft words, music, or other meditative techniques. Using the meditation below, allow about 3-5 minutes for meditation after the questions.
 
Visualize yourself standing before a gateway on a hilltop. Your entire life lies out before you and below. Before you step through, pause and review the past; the learning and the joys, the victories and the sorrows—everything it took to bring you here.  

Now narrow the picture you see to 2006.  What were the learnings and joys, the victories and sorrows?

Deep Sharing/Deep Listening
In deep sharing and deep listening, we consider what we’ve seen in our meditation and the questions we worked with in the prework.

Open Discussion Backup Questions
1.	What are you proud of?  What stands out? 

2.	What challenges did you overcome? 

3.	What positive changes did you make in your life? In the lives of others? 

4.	What were some valuable lessons you learned? 

5.	Who helped you make changes or overcome obstacles? Were you able to express your gratitude?

6.	Could these changes or events of 2006 have good implications for your life in 2007? (Note: We aren’t asking you to make resolutions, just to reflect on how things might be different going forward.)

Check-out
Closing Reading/Extinguishing the Chalice
Let this be the time
We wake to life,
Like spring wakes,
in the moment of winter solstice.
- Rev. Rebecca Parker

Participant Preparation for CCUU Session:  Another New Year

Food for Thought

"I once listed all the good things I did over the past year, and then turned them
into resolution form and backdated them. That was a good feeling."
The Rev. Robert Fulghum

We’re entering a new year—a year that will inevitably carry with it a lot of changes and ask us to make transitions.   Whether or not you’re one for making New Year’s resolutions*, in some ways we’re all “looking ahead” with hope for what 2007 will bring.

However, in his book, Transitions, William Bridges suggests to us that we need to make an “ending” before we can move to the new beginning.  So before fully embracing 2007, we invite you to spend time looking back over the past year and focus on what has been positive in your life in 2006. 

1.	What are you proud of?  What stands out? 

2.	What challenges did you overcome? 

3.	What positive changes did you make in your life? In the lives of others? 

4.	What were some valuable lessons you learned? 

5.	Who helped you make changes or overcome obstacles? Were you able to express your gratitude?

6.	Could these changes or events of 2006 have good implications for your life in 2007? (Note: We aren’t asking you to make resolutions, just to reflect on how things might be different going forward.)

* The Babylonians are usually credited with inventing the New Year's resolution about 4,000 years ago. For them, the New Year was a time to throw off, not gather, indulgences. It offered them a clean slate on which to declare—openly, in front of their fellow citizens—their pledge to perform a good deed during the upcoming year. "When you think about it, the Babylonian way was ingenious for its sheer simplicity," says John C. Norcross, a Pennsylvania psychologist and professor at the University of Scranton. "You do something to help society and at the same time help yourself. No fuss, no fear of failure. Just help your neighbor carry some straw or clear a ditch and feel good about yourself."

Background Reading

The things that matter will not crowd and clutter your life. The things that matter will enlarge the orbit of your being until you are large enough to contain all that is worthy of being welcomed.
- Albert Perry
 
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver

I asked a friend what her New Year's resolution would be. She thought very seriously for a while and then replied "Breathing."
- Lionel Wijesiri