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January 1, 2010
New Year's Musings
I love the feel of a brand new year, a new week, a new morning. I even love Monday mornings when a whole new week of opportunities stretches out before me.
As my life seems to speed faster and faster through the months and years, I don't take new beginnings for granted, but am grateful for each opportunity to begin again. As I reflect on this new beginning of a year and a decade , I sense that I'm being asked to venture out with courage and to keep on plugging away with perseverance. Perhaps I am being asked to take some risks I haven't wanted to take in the past. These promptings are coming from within; no one is placing them on me.
This morning, in my early morning quiet time, it seemed as if I had a one-on-one conversation with the deepest soundings of my soul. I thought about how, at the end of the day and the end of my life, I will be asked if I lived fully the life I have been given and how well I have loved. I pondered the idea that I will be asked how well I used the resources that were given to me, and then I hit upon a startling thought. At life's end, I won't be able to give excuses or alibis. I won't be able to hide behind blaming someone else for what I did or did not do, and I won't be able to rationalize or justify my actions or my lack of action, but will stand naked with no defenses hiding the truth of how I used what I was given.
I know I will be asked, in the words of the poet Mary Oliver, what I did with this one wild and precious life I have been given.
I hasten to add that those thoughts were not scary thoughts to me. They did not stir fear or guilt, but a desire to live my life to the fullest one breath at a time. I want to step up to the plate of my life and meet the challenges that are mine. I want to be productive and helpful, creative and contributing in the world that is mine.
When I was graduating from Baylor in 1967, I wrote in my journal in a burst of youthful optimism and longing, "I want to drink life to the dregs -- every drop of it." Though tempered by time, that longing still stirs in the deepest part of my soul.
The poet Stanley Kunitz penned these words at the end of his poem, "The Round", when he was ninety-five, and they inspire me.
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
What about you? What inspires you at this time of beginning again?
What are your hopes and dreams? What risks are you being asked to take?
What is your soul urging you toward in this brand new decade?
Will you make excuses -- or take the challenge?
May the year ahead be filled with grace --
Jeanie
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