Good Wishes for the New Year

As the calendar turns over to a new year, it gives me time to pause and reflect on what I would like this fresh, new time to look and feel like. The slate is clean, the opportunities vast. What will we do with them? In a time when news comes to us instantly and constantly, there seems to be a growing trend toward the negative. Such heightened negativity poured into our minds and hearts can only lead to increased stress, anxiety, divisiveness and a focus on lack and our differences. More than ever, I feel the need to focus my energies on joy, abundance, love, hope and kindness. I choose to see the abundance of blessing, rather than becoming drawn into the depths of fear and unhappiness. If each of us were to devote our hours to kind words, happy thoughts, loving gestures and respectful responses, I believe the world would be a more peaceful place and the turmoil and injustices that plague our society and world might be resolved with more creative, communal solutions. Through our differences of opinion and thought, consensus can be reached. However, the more we focus on our differences, the larger the chasm becomes. The less we see hope, the more we create despair. The more we focus on hatred and violence, the less energy we dedicate to lifting each other up. We live in a time of uncertainty, but those times have always been and likely always will be. What we, as individuals, do with today will have a ripple effect on the shaping of our collective tomorrows. May this new year be one of hope and kindness, where extraordinary joy comes from our ordinary moments and our affirmation of each other becomes the norm.

May Christmas Bring You Happiness

While looking through Christmas decorations and hunting for other mementos recently, I found a greeting card that my maternal grandmother sent to my parents and me some 50 years ago. On the back of the card, in her lovely handwriting with all of the flourishes that cursive writers employed in that era, Grandma Carrie penned the following message to us: "May Christmas bring you happiness, and fill your hearts with song. With all the Blessings large and small. Throughout your holiday and always. With our love." I have looked at that card many times over the years, but it was on that day at that moment that Grandma's message held special and significant meaning for me. For the past few years, I have been marking my days by the blessings I count. I begin and end each day naming three things for which I am grateful, sometimes specific to that day and at other times things for which I can always be grateful. That practice has reshaped how I see my life and the world around me and how I see even the most difficult moments and circumstances possessing their own beauty and blessing. For the past few months, I have been collecting heart-shaped objects, particularly stones, which I have found in my path on my daily walks. They seem to just be waiting for me. Both of these practices of counting my blessings and following my heart along the journey are helping me to see the "Blessings large and small" in my life and they are filling my heart with song. It's easy to get caught up in the consumerism or busyness of the holiday or wrapped up in memories of Christmases past, but the real blessings, the real happiness, the real songs in our heart come from the small, yet significant experiences and kindnesses we encounter all year long. So, my wish for you, dear reader, is the same as my beloved grandmother wrote so many years ago: May Christmas bring you happiness and fill your hearts with song. With all the Blessings large and small. Throughout your holiday and always. Peace. 

Awesome

"Oh Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made," are familiar lyrics from the old-time hymn "How Great Thou Art." I've always loved that hymn for its lyrics because they speak to me and to my appreciation for the beauty of nature. However, they became even richer after reading the cover story of the October 9, 2016 edition of the "Parade" newspaper supplement, an article by Paula Spencer Scott about Awe and the therapeutic effects from feeling it. According to Merriam-Webster, awe is a "strong feeling of fear or respect and also wonder." I don't particularly resonate with the fear aspect of that definition, but I do feel the respect and wonder aspects to my core, particularly when in the magnificence and majesty of nature. On my daily walks, I allow myself to become immersed in my environment, becoming alert to things that pass by too quickly for complete observation when driving. It is then that I see falling leaves swirling in an intricate dance to the ground. I smell the spicy, heady scent of flowering crab trees in the spring. I view the riot of vibrant, cheerful color that a summer garden offers. I get the same sensation of awe when hearing music. There is nothing so wonderful as to listen to the complex, jubilant and amazing Charles-Marie Widor's Toccata from the Fifth Organ Symphony in F, Opus 42, No. 1. I occasionally listen to it just to get that sensation of awe. At a time when we tend to hear more messages from the fear side of awe, which only compounds our stress levels, I feel that our everyday lives hold the potential for wonder. We just have to step outside or listen to a great piece of music, get our eyes off of our handheld devices and move away from our increasing propensity to a sedentary and, sadly, isolating lifestyle. Doing so will open our eyes, ears and hearts to the glorious things all around us. If we could only concentrate on those glorious, wondrous moments a bit more, what an awesome world it would be.

Give and Take

As the alarm went off one recent morning, I realized that waking up at 6:00 a.m. is so different today than it was just a few months ago. Now, it feels as if I'm forcing myself to get up bleary-eyed in the middle of the dark night, rather than enthusiastically jumping out of bed with the sunshine streaming through the bedroom window, the birds singing a cheerful "good morning" and the day welcoming me to get up and go. When glancing at the clock at 7:00 p.m. at this time of year, the darkness envelops me, leaving me with a feeling that the day is done and my pajamas and reading chair are calling to me. Just a few months ago, 7:00 p.m. was considered early evening with at least one, maybe two hours of daylight left, leaving time for so much possibility and an abundance of energy that wouldn't wane until nightfall. The seasons have been shifting and I have been grieving it. One gray Sunday afternoon, I sat quietly just to let myself examine why I felt such profound grief and soon my perspective, my grief over the waning daylight started to change. As I explored the ever-evolving balance of dark and light, I saw that in many ways, it was simply another time of give and take. One must have the darkness in order to appreciate the light. Too much light would rob me of the quiet, introspective and renewing benefits of darkness. Too much darkness and I would lack the energy that the sun and daylight provide. So, with this renewed perspective, as the season shifts from one of abundant daylight to one of increased darkness, I am seeing the blessings in the shift. As much as I am one who loves the energy of the daylight, I am welcoming the arrival of increasing darkness. Both are interdependent and necessary and beautiful and I am content to be bathed in both.

Expanding the Bubble

Summer is just about behind us. That long-awaited season of sunshine, hot temperatures and every imaginable excuse considered acceptable to justify an ice cream cone is unofficially over on Labor Day. Other than the glorious weather, the fragrant flowers, the extended hours of daylight and time dedicated to nothing more productive than reading a good book, what did I gain from this summer? I learned that I need to expand the bubble. I need to embrace the child in me more often. While on my daily walks this summer, I witnessed a little girl singing at the top of her lungs while she watered flowers in front of her home. I laughed along with children who found jumping and splashing in puddles to be exhilarating entertainment. I watched a little boy run like the wind, not because he had a purpose or a particular destination, but because he was simply having fun. And I delighted in a little girl dancing in bubbles as she blew them. I decided I want to expand my own bubble and dance and run and sing and splash just like them. The seriousness of our world has a way of weighing me down, where every day brings news of more divisiveness, more rancor, more tragedy and heartache and senseless violence. We each need to bring light into our own corners of the world and we each need to find and make our own joy. So, as summer steps aside for the arrival of fall this month, I will be focusing on how to expand my bubble to reach out to others with more kindness and compassion and to include more room in my days for laughter, spontaneity and sheer joy.

Made of Light

After watching the days grow longer and the brilliance of the beautiful, full moons (including that amazing "strawberry" moon that shone on the evening of the summer solstice), I have been giving a great deal of thought to light. What I realized was that I believe even stronger that we are made of the light of God. That infinite, ever-shining light provides us with immeasurable opportunities to do good, especially when we share it with others. It reminds me of the lyrics to that wonderful old children's Gospel song, "This little light of mine. I'm going to let it shine." We have the choice to squander our light, misusing it to try to dim the light of others, to overpower another's light with ours or to even dim our own. When we do that, we lose sight of the sacred in others. We don't respect their light. Instead, we see ours as the more powerful source. On the other hand, if we choose to consider our light a blessing and, in turn, take every opportunity to be a blessing to others, I believe our light shines brighter, especially when we cast it to help and lift up another. In addition to my starting and ending my days listing three things for which I am grateful, I have added another reflection upon awakening: "How will I cast my light today?" And upon retiring: "How well did I utilize my light today? How can I do better tomorrow?" This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

Tidying Up

A couple of months ago, a book on display at our local public library found its way into my hands and through the check-out kiosk, The New York Times best-seller, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing" by Marie Kondo (Ten Speed Press, Berkley). The slim volume appealed to my significant desires to travel through this world as lightly as possible. I tend to be more minimalist in my habits, clothing and decorating style. I need very little in the way of possessions in order to be happy and comforted. In fact, I tend to feel happier and more comfortable when I am surrounded by only a few items that have special meaning to me, or as the author Marie Kondo refers, items that "spark joy" in me. In her book, Ms. Kondo recommends that we review each of our belongings, holding each one in our hands and asking if that item sparks joy. If it does, in her viewpoint, it's worth keeping; if not, it is telling you that it wants to be discarded. In my adulthood, I've subscribed to the philosophy that for every thing that comes in, at least one thing must go out. It has been a philosophy that has served my minimalist tendencies well. I've also subscribed to the philosophy that if I keep things tidy, my life feels tidier, as well. In fact, when I'm under stress, one of the first things I want to do is purge physical belongings. The act of clearing out and tidying helps me sort through the stress-inducing issue stirring around and unsettling my mind. As one individual cited in Ms. Kondo's book stated, such clearing and tidying makes way for "unhurried spaciousness." For me, that unhurried spaciousness is all about clarifying my needs from my wants, surrounding myself with only those things that bring light and joy to my life and lightening my burdens, physical and otherwise. After reading Marie Kondo's book, I can now put words to that life-changing magic of tidying up and the deep joy of living in unhurried spaciousness.