By Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman
Happy New Year to each of you!
Like many people who posted their end of year thoughts and resolutions online, part of me is harboring a secret hope for an uneventful new year full of completely precedented events. A hope that we might live in uninteresting times. Alas, that ship seems to have sailed.
Every January it is true that we enter a new year in which anything could happen. But somehow it feels more true than ever this year, in ways both daunting and exciting.
The world is filled with war, outrage, and political division. The world is also filled with acts of relentless courage, compassion, and hope.
Our congregation is small, and aging. Our congregation is also filled with commitment, creativity and generosity. We are both fragile and vital. Over the next couple of months we will work together to foster that vitality and bolster that fragility. Beginning with a council retreat on January 27th and continuing with congregation wide conversations, we will dream together of who we can yet become while celebrating all the good that already is. I was thinking of all the richness in our life together when I ran across this poem by Kate Bowler:
If New Year's resolutions worked…..
I would be rescued from familiar self-hatred.
I would be convinced of the goodness of unfinished days.
Stop looking for hidden secrets to health
or formulas to mental mastery.
I would never wonder about the lives of beautiful people.
I would believe a compliment the first time.
I might accept the infiniteness of knowledge
without feeling like I should have bottled it by now.
I would say, look backwards not forwards,
weren't you already brave?
Already kind?
Already good?
See? It's there. It's there.
You're already home.
May we continue and grow in goodness, kindness and courage.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay