There are many calendars that begin in all different places of what we might consider the calendar year. The Church/Liturgical year has already started, with the beginning of Advent. Chinese New Year won’t be until mid-February. The Jewish calendar began in September (and will end there, this year). It really is arbitrary that it is *this* week that we fit all our reflecting and dreaming into. So, if you find yourself feeling a lot of pressure to fit it all in this week, afraid your year will be somehow less meaningful if you don’t process the last one before entering the new one, or unsure still what your desires or intentions are for 2021… let this be your pass. Maybe instead, you take a particular day of every week this year to reflect, to dream. To notice what has been, and to lean into your hopes for the future. And yet... there is something helpful to the way our culture is set up around this week. Many of us have work (or school) off, this week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. It has become part of our annual rhythms to pause here. To remember. To hope. And that is a great good. So, if you *do* have the space to reflect and dream this week, see if you can lean into it without the pressure to come out the other side with something specific. Just let these last few days of the year be a space for your soul to breathe. Remember you will be waking up in the same life on January 1st that you fall asleep in on December 31st. And if this week isn’t space for that, for you, maybe celebrate your own personal “New Year” at some other point in the coming weeks (or months). There is something so hopeful about starting “new”. A new year, a new morning… “The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.” ― Arnold Bennett

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2020-12-30 15:12:02 UTC