The following reflection is excerpted from my latest Reflective Art Journal – Crossing the Threshold: New Year, New Beginnings – visit the Abbey Shop to order your copy today filled with reflections and suggestions for a creating a meaningful ritual for entering into the New Year ahead.
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I am fascinated by the human desire for renewal and new beginnings. St. Benedict in his Rule for monasteries writes “always we begin again.” This impulse is the heart of what makes anticipation of the New Year kindle all of our longings for a richer way of being in the world. There is something so very hopeful to me in this fundamental impulse. January 1st brings out our fervent desires for the future and our commitments to change, whatever that change entails. Our inclination is usually a set of “resolutions” aimed at working harder for whatever it is we want or fixing our self-perceived flaws. There is nothing wrong with making resolutions. However they often aim so high without first cultivating the change of heart necessary to prepare space for these new possibilities to take root.
More and more often now people are taking the celebration of New Year’s as a time for reflection on what has gone before and to listen to their longing for what lies ahead. Each year I see retreat centers and other groups offering options for meaningful ritual and practice. While celebrating with friends can be a very joyful thing, the late night party on December 31st with its endless supply of alcohol has become far less satisfying for many. People are hungering for more depth to this time of transition. We are recognizing the opportunity of a threshold.
Doors and thresholds offer us potent symbols of new and unexplored possibilities. They can evoke a sense of powerful potential and both internal and external worlds we have yet to explore. St. Teresa of Avila, the 16th century Carmelite mystic wrote the classic book The Interior Castle in which she likened the soul to a castle made with concentric rooms. As we deepen in the spiritual life, we move further into the interior castle of our souls and discover hidden rooms previously unavailable to us.
New Year’s day as we currently celebrate it is a part of the Gregorian calendar which was proposed in the 16th century as a reform of the Julian calendar and is the most widely used calendar today. It is based on the solar year — the actual length of time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun.
Suggestions for Ways to Celebrate the New Year in Meaningful Ways:
Practice: Preparing
One of the reasons our secular celebration of the New Year is often so disappointing is that we do not take time to prepare ourselves for this time. We begin the year full of resolutions and promises to ourselves to perhaps eat better, exercise more, work less, find more time for friends or for ourselves. But these resolutions often rise up out of our sense of scarcity and the busyness and immediate desires we feel at the surface of our lives. Consider taking some time to prepare – even if only for an hour or two – to really listen for the deeper longings pulsing within you. What emerges from that place of stillness and grounding in your holiness and goodness, rather than from a list of your shortcomings? What new doors are waiting within you to be opened?
Practice: Reconciliation
In Jewish tradition, the New Year begins with the ten Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in autumn. During this time, Jews reflect on those relationships during the past year that need reconciliation, recognizing that the way to move forward in more fullness, is by acknowledging those places where we have failed another person in the past and then making amends. Is there someone you have hurt this past year through your words or actions? Is it possible to ask for their forgiveness? Is there someone who has hurt you this past year through their words or actions? Can you offer them forgiveness?
Practice: Dream-Tending
In Christian tradition, the New Year begins with the season of Advent four weeks before Christmas. There is wisdom in beginning the year during this darkest season, offering us the image of being in the dark and fertile womb of creation anticipating new birth. In the days leading up to your celebration of the New Year, honor the language of nighttime and darkness by recording your dreams. Keep paper and a pen by your bed and before going to sleep ask to receive dreams with wisdom for the year ahead. When you awaken, try to jot down some notes about images and feelings you notice before you get up and lose those threads that connect you to the dream’s story. Honor the way dreams speak in non-linear and intuitive language. As a part of your New Year ritual, consider spending time with your dreams, perhaps making a collage of images that have appeared to you and reflect on what these have to say to you about what lies ahead. Dreams often reveal the hidden rooms of our soul and invite us inside for exploration.
Practice: Walking into the New Year
On New Year's Day take a contemplative walk at a labyrinth if you have one near you, or in a peaceful, wooded place. As you take each step ask yourself how you want to walk in the year ahead. Pay attention to what responses rise up in you and embody this in the pace and movement of your body. As you continue to walk imagine yourself stepping across the threshold of something new and notice how your body feels.
Practice: Doing What You Love
Consider spending New Year’s Day doing all of the things with which you want your year ahead to be filled. Make a list of the five most important and soul-nourishing activities of your life and spend a day savoring these experiences.
May you make friends with newness and know deep within that the God who keeps revealing new things to us, also fills us with hope for a future of peace.
What are your suggestions for a meaningful New Year practice?
** The next Abbey Poetry Party will return on Monday, December 14 **
© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts
My church held a New Year's Eve service last year. It was at 5pm so people could celebrate later if they chose. The church was lit only by candles; it was a deeply reflective and very peaceful service. There were only a handful of us so we all went to the altar and received Communion from each other around it.We're doing the service again this year, and I'm very glad. It was the best NY's Eve I've ever spent…a quiet, spiritual way to greet new possibilities in the new year.
This is such a wonderful post, Christine.
One year on New Year's Eve my husband and I were invited to our assistant rector's home, where a delicious table was spread before us. After a lovely meal together, our hosts introduced us to their annual practice of reading a favorite poem or poems aloud to mark the new year's coming. It was the best New Year's Eve I've had.
I have Crossing the Threshold and it has been such an inspiration! As is this post! Wishing you a warm and festive holiday.
I tend to celebrate the year's ending and new beginning at the Winter Solstice. I have never felt much connection with the Dec 31/Jan 1 dates. They always felt like a contrivance of the calendar.
But, I have always found this time of year, as you say, a most fertile time to dream, gestate, create and give birth to new ideas and projects. I love your suggested practices of walking – a labyrinth if there is one near – or taking a day to savor the things you love and want to draw into the coming year. And, I love the image of crossing a threshold. This year I seem to be even more aware of this energy of renewal and new beginnings.
A wonderful practice I did with my family last year was to think of something that was no longer serving us and write it on paper. After each person wrote down a response, each person one by one, spoke aloud what they would like to release, folded the paper and placed it in a metal bowl. We lit the papers on fire, which reduced to ash, then opened the door to let the winter wind take and scatter the ash, to allow space for the New Year to move into our lives & grace us with its presence.