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It was an Edinburgh New Year for us with our son and partner. It was good to relax with them – though it wasn’t so relaxing at the Princes Street party. What was moving was New Year’s Day at St John’s Church where we were all invited to confess/dispose of our shame of ’08. Everyone had something to dispose of in the liturgical waste basket – which was then set alight (I bet the Church Council hadn’t discussed that!) and did its dance as the most perfectly formed flame – then drenched in water (?baptism) – and the consequential smoke rising in prayer for a new beginning.
We sang words from Desmond Tutu.
We prayed:
Come Father,
Come Mother,
Come Lord Jesus
Come Holy Spirit of God
Give us for our hallowing
thoughts that pass into prayer
Prayer that passes into love,
and love that passes into action.
And we prayed:
May the blessed sun shine on us and warm each heart till it glows like a great fire, so that strangers and friends may come in and warm themselves. May the light shine out from our eyes, like a candle set in the windows of a house, and may the risen Lord bless us and bless us kindly.
But most of all, we were quiet – enjoying this public space of Edinburgh into which some people had had the care to invite us.
Grits and Grains 