Thank you, everyone, for your kind expressions of concern. I am feeling much better and I am also aware that I’ve had it so much easier than many. Today is day 10 for me in COVID terms, and I look forward to returning to the land of interaction. Masked interaction for me for a while.
Happy New Year! Just as the sugar buzz begins to ease, we arrive at the entrance to a new year. January 1 always seems such an arbitrary date for a beginning, at least in the non-calendar scheme of things, but there is some rhyme to inviting introspection and renewed resolve immediately after the intense expectations and interactions of Christmas, which tend to be clarifying. And, of course, the extended length of the nights helps one turn inward.
What’s become – or is becoming – clear to you this holiday season, clear about you?
What truths are rising out of the candle flames and warm smells, the COVID tests and holiday cards, out of the local, state, and world news, out of the evergreen needles on the floor, the crumb-strewn plates, and the crumpled wrapping paper? When all the activity stills for a moment, and you breathe, really breathe, what feels more clear to you now than it did before? What feels more clear about you?
We are about to move from a focus on wonder to a focus on finding our center. In this Sunday’s service, on January 1, we’ll hover at the edge to look back into the year just ending, and forward into the twelve months stretched before us. This spiritual practice of looking both ways before we cross is meant to help us draw awareness and decision out of our own center. Our resolutions, should we choose to make them, best come from here.
As I reflect, I’ll be thinking about my chosen word for the past year, “presence.” As is true most years, I don’t feel that I so much embodied that word, as I was increasingly invited to bring it into my internal conversation, into conversation with my life. “Am I being present right now? Why not? What’s in the way? What would happen if I were fully present.” It’s usually during the next year, while I’m walking with a new word, that the previous year’s conversation begins to bear fruit. So, I’ll choose a new word for the year for 2023, but I’ll be seeking my center by trying to live into being present more of the time. To being presence more of the time. For me, that’s probably a word, and work, for life.
What was your journey with your word for 2022, whether officially chosen or apparent only in retrospect, whether a word new to your journey or a life-long travel companion? As you approach the coming edge, arbitrary as it may be, between what has been and what will be, what do you notice?
In a few weeks I’ll have the luxury of digging into my questions during several months of sabbatical/renewal. May you find chances to do your own deep dive inward, toward your center. Then, may we move into the next part of the journey together both more fully ourselves and knowing ourselves more deeply interconnected.
May 2023 indeed help us realize our center.
With care,
Rev. Kevin