I haven't quite found my footing for the new year yet, but at least I have gathered key tools for the new year: a new journal and a new bullet journal for my To Do lists and notes. Plus, this year I added something new to my toolkit--a journal to record what I've read, along with my To Be Read books and various other notes related to my reading life.
I have done some of the routine entry to a new year tasks. We defrocked the house right after Christmas, earlier than normal for us, and the house is in good order. This morning I cleared my bulletin board at the top of the stairs to the garret, sorted a basket of miscellaneous papers and cards and articles, and unsubscribed to many email notifications.
But I am in a muddle about plans, hopes, directions for the year.
No definitive Word for the Year has entered my heart nor have I created a collage reflecting my intentions for the year. Last year's is still in place near my desk.
I tell myself to be patient, as I continue to re-read my 2019 journals and writing notebooks.
This is the time to sit with the past year as a sacred text; to move into a process of lectio divina with the gifts, the challenges, the themes, the surprises, the learnings of 2019. And that takes time and intention.
Perhaps reading 2019 as sacred text will lead to clear guidance for 2020. Perhaps I will be led to a list of clear steps for the new year, but maybe not. Last year was the Year of Part II--an intention to write the current version of that section of my memoir, and I did that. It seems logical to think that this will be the Year of Part III, the last part, but I don't yet know that.
Instead, other questions appear:
When did I feel spiritual energy?
When did I feel closest to the person I was created to be?
What did I learn about myself in the past year? What worked for me and what didn't?
What regrets am I bringing into this new year and what hopes?
How have I changed physically, mentally, emotionally this year?
As I think about this new year, what are my yearnings?
What baggage can I leave behind? What new space can be created?
Who am I now?
This is quite the inventory, I know, and I don't mean to imply that it is possible to spend an afternoon answering each question with short, succinct sentences. That's not how lectio divina on any sacred text, especially your own life, works. As Mary Margaret Funk in her book, Lectio Matters, says, what's needed is "soft time."
Sometimes soft time is sitting in the early morning in silence or taking a solitary walk. Sometimes soft time comes in the company of others or in those last moments before drifting off to sleep. Or in your dream time.
Soft time is open heart time.
Guidance comes in many ways --and not always in the first week of January. Be gentle with yourself.
Life is not meant to be a series of resolutions
designed to make us something we're not. It's
meant to be a series of explorations which, in the
end, finally brings us home to ourselves.
Joan Chittister
The Art of Life
Monastic Wisdom for Every Day
An Invitation
What is percolating in you at the start of 2020? I would love to know.
This is one thing I've always liked about the beginning of a new year...the organizing, the quiet time, the contemplating. Beautiful, thoughtful post.
ReplyDelete