To me, one of life’s little pleasures is a brand-new notebook! All those beautiful blank pages just waiting to be filled up … with — Art work? Poems? Journaling? Lists? Or anything else one might choose. Standing on the threshold of a new year provokes the same feeling … a year of days as yet untouched! — a clean slate of opportunity to choose new and different intentions.
What do you wish for YOUR new year?
Poet Mary Oliver poses a question for pondering. She says….
“Listen — are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”
Then she gives advice…
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention Be astonished Tell about it.“
Perhaps instead of expecting ourselves to complete a long list of resolutions for 2023, we might create an intention to do ONE new thing — such as training ourselves to “pay attention and be astonished” and write a sentence or two each day about what astonished you. In the stressful world of today, let the words which John Ruskin wrote to his friend Kate Greenaway in 1885 bless your heart as you begin the new year… (Click here to listen). “I wish for you some new love at lovely things And some new forgetfulness at teasing things Some higher pride in the praising things Some sweeter peace from the hurrying things And some closer fence from the worrying things… And longer stay of time when you are happy And lighter flight of days that are unkind.” And when you listen — as God’s beloved child that you are — close your eyes and imagine that God is singing these words just for you.
