Today I wrote the date. January 10th but it isn’t. It is the 11th already. We are slipping into the middle of the month and I still don’t know what day it is. Twice already today I have had to stop and ask myself, “Is today Friday? No, only Thursday.” January does this to me every year. It is the hangover from Christmas and that week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day when we, as someone cleverly described it, “constantly wear our pajamas, eat shortbread and wonder what day of the week it is.” This time of year, beginning with Christmas Eve is dizzying when everything takes on a air of celebration, or at the very least mystery, and nothing operates as ‘normal’.
I happen to like thresholds. I like new chapters, fresh calendars, blank books, turning the page. I relish a new start and fresh beginning and yes, I even like Resolutions. Oh, I seldom keep them but I like to think about them. But here it is on day 11 of a new year and I am still deciding what my resolution will be. I did pay for and download an app that would encourage me to do yoga daily. It has tried but I have failed at that (yep, already by Day 11). I did clean off my desk but I did that by putting most of the stuff from my desk onto my book shelves. Now I have to clean the stuff off my book shelves to where … my desk?!?!
One of the best spiritual gifts of this time of year is the celebration of Epiphany. It is the season of light, of stardust, of visions and insight. It is when we find something we have been looking for. I have been looking for … hmmm … I paused in my writing here. What have I been looking for? I have been looking for peace. Peace with who I am and peace with my future. I am looking for a shred of hope that there might be peace in the world, this troubled and violent world we live in. And in my post-Christmas haze of wondering what day it is, I have been longing for a sense of completeness. I don’t know how one makes a resolution to find that, to solve that, to meet that longing.
One of my favourite preachers is Nadia Bolz-Weber. I subscribe to her writing so every week or so a sermon or essay of hers drops into my Inbox. Her most recent was about the Baptism of Jesus. In it she talks about being loved by God. She quotes these words from the passage about Jesus’ baptism, “This is my son, the beloved, with who, I am well pleased.” And she imagines how it would be to own those words. Those words that God says to us, to you, to me, “You are my beloved. With you I am well please.” ‘You are my beloved.” God says that to you. To me.
The problem with most New Year’s Resolutions is that they cause us to begin the year focusing on what is wrong with us…. I want to lose weight. I want to read more books. I want to floss my teeth every day. I want to exercise more. What if our New Year’s Resolutions were more like, I want to feel God’s love; or, I want to sit and soak up God’s complete and overwhelming care and compassion for me? What if instead of aiming for self-improvement we aimed for openness to what and who we already are – beloved children of the Source of our Being, the very One who “knit us together in our mother’s womb”?
That longing for peace and completeness is there for me … if only I could stop worrying about what day it is and just greet the day and all it offers, suffused with God’s love.
Resolutions – whenever they are made, can be a curse and a blessing all rolled into one experience. I believe that being happy in our own skin is one we should and indeed can strive for. If we are not successful in that endeavour, we will never be truly happy in anything else we try. Does not mean we do not tweak things along the way – but deep inner contentment will allow us to achieve all those exterior goals that are on our “list”. Being mind-full within our souls will let us absorb all God’s love and care giving. As for remembering the current day, I use the basic tools of both my paper and electronic calendars to keep me on schedule.