Welcome 2009!

Some people scoff and joke about New Years resolutions. They express skepticism at people really keeping "promises" to themselves about exercise programs, quitting smoking or losing weight. Yet there really is some deeper need within many that leads them to pause and give some extra consideration to what they wish to happen in the new year. The end of a year, after the busyness of the holidays, there can finally be a slowing down. It can be a very natural time to evaluate and contemplate.

I found that the entries for January 1st and January 2nd in Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach offered very thoughtful ideas on greeting a new year. I am going to share the excerpts with you here:

January 1

A Transformative Year of Delight and Discovery

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

~ Zora Neale Hurston

New Year's Day. A fresh start. A new chapter in life waiting to be written. New questions to be asked, embrace, and loved. Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self discovery.
Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change. What are your hopes for the future as you reflect on the years that have passed? Gradually, as you become curator for your own contentment you will learn to embrace the gentle yearnings of your heart. But this year, instead of resolutions, write down your most private aspirations. These longings you have kept tucked away until this time seems right. Trust that now is the time. Ask the questions. The Simple Abundance path brings confidence that the answers will come and we will discover - day by day - how to live them.

Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous new year by believing. Believe in yourself. And believe that there is a loving Source -- a Sower of Dreams -- just waiting to be asked to help you make your dreams come true.

January 2

Loving the Questions

You only live once--but if you work it right, once is enough.

~ Joe E. Lewis

How often in the past have you turned away from all that is unresolved in your heart because you feared questioning? But what if you knew that a year from today you could be living the most creative, joyous, and fulfilling life you could imagine? What would it be? What change would you make? How and where would you begin? Do you see why the questions are so important?

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves," the German poet Ranier Maria Rilke urges us. "Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now..."

The answers to your questions will come, but only after you know which ones are worth asking. Wait. Live your questions. Then ask. Become open to the changes that that the answers will inevitably bring. This may take some time, but time is the New Year's bountiful blessing: three-hundred sixty five bright mornings and starlit evenings, fifty-two promising weeks, twelve transformative months full of beautiful possibilities, and four splendid seasons. A simply abundant year to be savored.