Penitential Rite: Paper

https://www.vimeo.com/8811099

You can use either Flash Paper or Dissolving Paper for this. Encourage the writing of confessions onto it with felt pens and then you can place the flash paper into a Balti dish, add a taper & wooosh! It disappears (much like what God does with our sins), or you can use the dissolving paper and drop them into a bowl of water (or even better – the font). Disolving paper dissolves even better when the water moves, so last year I put a jaccuzi blower into the 800-year-old font of S. John the Baptist, Winchester.

Text:

There are many things that we would like to discard
To throw away and have nothing more to do with

There are many things which we feel are not worthy of us
And need to be put aside

Write down something you want deeply to throw away
A behaviour
An action
A word said in haste
A relationship gone bad
A deed undone
An obligation unfulfilled

And give it over to God.

You can pour out your heart to God on the mountaintop
You can painfully trace each step in the darkness of the confessional
You can say the words we know so well without thinking
But have you written him a love letter?
Have you given what you want to throw away to God
Let God deal with your deepest fears and shame.

Write down something you want deeply to throw away
A behaviour
An action
A word said in haste
A relationship gone bad
A deed undone
An obligation unfulfilled

And give it over to God.

There are many things that we would like to discard
To throw away and have nothing more to do with

There are many things which we feel are not worthy of us
And need to be put aside

Put them aside, and give them to God.

For God will transform,
and the shameful past becomes the bright future