Good Morning and Happy New Year!
I hope you and those closest to you enjoyed quality time together over the last week making new holiday memories. It seems as if time is flying by at warp speed these days. If the flurry consumes you, take time this week to say goodbye to last year and welcome the new year and all it has to offer. It’s truly a time to change the language you’ve been using and invite a new narrative, another voice to help create a new beginning.
One of my favorite writers and Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1948, T. S. Eliot, shared these thoughts about ushering in a new year:
To say it’s been a challenging year would be an understatement. We’ve had to reorganize multiple facets of our lives, and it’s difficult even to remember the beginning of 2020. Life has been unsettling, frantic, frightening, and feeling manic at times. But there have been some lovely blessings amid the chaos.
As we look at the year in retrospect, we can point to many stories surrounded by sadness and even death. Each one of us has been negatively impacted in some way by the events of 2020. It’s easy to recall the negative, but what about the positive things that have occurred. I’ve read so many stories about kindness and compassion, pet adoptions, crayons fashioned in more diverse skin tone colors, and more.
There were the chronicles of a disabled veteran who successfully climbed the Matterhorn, fulfilling a life-long dream, and a Golden Labrador Retriever who, after having been rejected as a guide dog, provided hope for other canines as a blood donor. A young writer in Barcelona purposed to revitalize the art of conversation by hosting space in front of the Arc de Triomf where people could sit and talk with him about various topics. Beluga Whales were transported from a life of captivity to an open-water sanctuary in Iceland.
There were stories of heroism and tales of compassion. Reports surfaced about replacing asphalt with greenery to combat the heat and the lack of water absorption. In Italy, a 96-year-old man graduated from University with honors after being prevented earlier in life due to war and poverty. A climber saved himself and a friend after being buried by an avalanche. Finally, people are receiving food from small restaurant owners, homes are being constructed for the homeless, and a mom, with the help of her young children, sewed and decorated hundreds of masks, distributing them to a local military-base. And the stories continue to surface about beauty in the midst of sadness.
Scripture reminds us about new beginnings in 2 Corinthians 5:17:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
As we look at the quickly approaching New Year of 2021, we have the opportunity to create another voice. One that is positive and affirming, one that has the power to change our standard of life for the better, and one that espouses vision and compassion as foundational. Consider leaving last year’s words…to last year’s language and adopting another voice that will make a new beginning!
Happy New Year!
Be Well & Be Blessed!
Lucinda
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