New Year's Eve

Turning of the Year

“Within the circles of our lives

we dance the circles of the years,

the circles of the seasons

within the circles of the years,

the cycles of the moon

within the circles of the seasons,

the circles of our reasons

within the cycles of the moon...”

Wendell Berry (Earth Prayers)

Here we are at the end of another year—New Year's Eve. Many of us experience this day as another opportunity to party hardy, and that's okay. But, before we do, let's take time to reflect. To look at a calendar, with its lines of days and weeks, page by page, months rolling by with activities scribbled in the lines, you would think that life is linear, but it is not. Life is circular. Each ending is a beginning, a new day, a new month, a new year.

Each year of our lives we change, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small. We change and are changed by the year's events. Some of the changes are chosen, some are not. Some get a star, some get an X beside them, good, bad. We're made like that—to assign positive and negative.

“Again, again we come and go,

changed, changing. Hands

join, unjoin in love and fear,

grief and joy. The circles turn,

each giving into each, into all

Only the music keeps us here...”

The positives have to do with our achievements, our newly minted relationships, our new figure, new acquisition, or new position one rung up the ladder. Our negatives, failures or losses, stupid mistakes, missed opportunities. But in the circle of life there is no good or bad, there is only the dance, the music both foreign and familiar. Sometimes slow, sometimes too fast for our feet to keep up. Sometimes delightful, sometimes painful, all one tapestry woven from time. We keep moving, and though we don't always know the steps, we know there are others whose hands will guide us.

“Each by all the others held.

In the hold of hands and eyes

we turn in pairs, that joining

joining each to all again...”

Take time today to reflect. Give thanks for the hands that have guided you through the old years of your life here on Earth, and for the ones that will dance you into the new year ahead. Precious, precious every one.

                                                       In the Spirit,

                                                            Jane