In threshold places, where endings meet beginnings,
we are invited to listen backwards as we move forward.
What can we learn from the year past –
from how evil played its cards,
or from relationships gained and lost?
What brought you deep delight, when everything was swirling?
To whom were you able to turn to and who challenged you to grow?
Individually and collectively,
none of us are the same.
For some of these changes we weep and for others we rejoice
but from each we carry something forward
– a feeling, a lesson, a memory, a challenge, a call to solidarity…
Collectively, we acknowledge a closing and an opening;
A fresh start that offers only as much meaning as we need from it.
Inviting us not to wage war on ourselves,
but just to pause
and pay attention to our longings.
A new year does not need to mean “a new you.”
You do not need to make demands of yourself
grounded in messages that are only meant
to make you feel inadequate or unlovable.
Your worth is ineffable,
that is a constant that carries from year to year.
Move gently with yourself into [the new year],
speaking instead words of possibility,
committing to that which calls you,
letting yourself be lured by the Sacred
in the direction of your most powerful becoming.
Make only resolutions that will lead to more flourishing of life, yours and others.
Reject individualistic notions of success
and channel your growing
in the directions
of what we can become
of what we can create
of what we can divest from
of what we must claim
of what we must fight
of how we might love
together.
This reflection was originally posted on the enfleshed website: ‘…enfleshed creates and facilitates spiritual resources for Christian-adjacent communities learning and unlearning dominance in belief and practice. As the Spirit, tender and fierce, calls us all to courage, enfleshed hopes to provide sources of deep spiritual nourishment for the work of collective liberation before us.’
