Eternal spirit, holy creator and lover of every soul, may we be aware of your presence amongst us today as every day of your new year. As we survey what lies before us to do – inspire us to enthusiasm, when we are disheartened encourage us, when we weaken support us, when we falter sustain us and when we become trapped in our own limitations, deliver us.

Deliver us from the past which restrains us into a future which liberates our hearts desires, Deliver us from the false impression that we cannot change what we need to change, deliver us from those habits that confine us and which we have resolved to shrug off help us to maintain our resolve to grow and become all that is within us to become.

Eternal spirit, holy creator and lover of every soul – You once brooded over the face of the waters, aware of the great potential of your creation – today we tremble at the threshold of the year; may we be aware of your presence amongst us.

Once again we join together to remember what is good, and celebrate what unites us in the face of adversity, we gather in truth to remember the work of our souls in our meeting place of sanctuary, like many before us we bring our sorrows and regrets, our weaknesses and our failings that we may consider them, and by acknowledging our faults,  allow ourselves to let go of them, to deny their power over us and instead to affirm a greater power, the power of love, of life, of joy and of hope. Amen.

Into this space the shape of the human spirit has grown and gathered to itself new images, new forms, new language with which to make its worship clear and reverence plain. And into this space we come today. We come with humility and also with openess, to acknowledge the presence of something greater than our individual selves and more enduring than our individual life. We come to affirm again that all are welcome; faithful and doubtful, sure and uncertain, the happy, the anxious – all are welcome to join with us as we share an hour in which to have our hopes renewed, our preconceptions challenged, our ideas tested and our spirits refreshed.

May we listen closely for that Word which is for us; may we be wholeheartedly attentive to that music which surrounds us; may our attention be the still centre to hold a sanctuary here for love and truth and the work of our souls; a true space of shared presence in which we may know such quiet together that we can sense also the presence of that Other who is with us always – whether we sense it or not. Amen.

Spirit of life and Love; in which we move and breathe and have our being, let our vision of You be focussed in what we think, say and act; let our devotion be to that idea of You which we feel in our inmost heart and may our worship together remind us to recognise your diversity, your complexity and your subtlety where ever humanity meets.

We are come to share a quiet hour in which to give thanks, to ask for and to offer forgiveness. To have our preconceptions tested and our ideals stretched. To have our hopes renewed and our spirits refreshed. We are come to share time in reflection, contemplation and prayer, we re also here to sing. Lets rise as we are able as we sing our first Song:…