New Year

Crossing the Threshold from 2023 to 2024

/ nagneberg48 / 5 Comments

January 9, 2024

December
January

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a 13th month in the year? One between December and January. A transition month in which to bring a close to tasks related to the previous year along with time to move into the new year. A month that is not attached to either year. A threshold month.

This past weekend I accomplished one of those threshold tasks. I defrocked the house of its Christmas glow, cleaned, and renewed it for these winter months. Major!

December
January

Earlier in the week I re-read my 2023 journals, which is always a beginning of the year ritual. I wrote thank you notes, but have yet to go through the Christmas cards to change addresses, where necessary, and I am sure there are follow-up notes I will want to send after re-reading the letters.

I moved into my new weekly planner and also a new book journal and cleared off my bulletin board, but I haven’t cleaned out any drawers yet, even though my sock drawer is a mess and the kitchen drawers feel cluttered and unorganized. How many jars of outdated spices need to be tossed?

December
January

I have had my first 2024 appointment with my spiritual director and have met with some of my directees, but I have not yet prepared the content for all of the January sessions of the writing group I facilitate. I prefer to be prepared at least a month in advance. Oh well.

I’ve made a list of people I would like to see soon, but have not yet made any dates. Nor have I made a necessary dermatology appointment, but I did have my annual physical in December. Check that off the list!

Well, you get the idea, and you probably have your own tasks that signal the end of one year and the beginning of the next.

I understand how rare it is to have complete closure before a new stage begins. The journey is continuous. Even as we grieve the loss of someone or something in our lives, we peek around the corner to an opening, a beginning, a suggestion, an idea, an entry, a new place on the labyrinth.

December
January

You may recall that my contemplative companion during Advent and Christmas was one of the Wise Men. (See my December 5, 2023 and December 12, 2023 posts) The Wise Men prompt me to think about the gifts I can bring to the world, but they also remind me about the gift of the journey itself.

Wise one,
  you who have come far, ...

Do not cease following that star,
  whose light you have seen at his rising. ...

You will kneel in unfamiliar places,
   you will uncover gifts.

And you will continue to journey, to search,
   to look with love-lit vision.

Under that star
   there will always be home,

always another road,
   and you will never travel alone.
       Steve Garnaas-Holmes, www.unfoldinglight.net


And so I continue to move from 2023 to 2024. One step, one task at a time. One day at a time, and I know I do not travel alone.

One More Thought: My Word of the Year

Last year my word of the year was “beloved,” and oh, how that nurtured me, and I hope enabled me to nurture others. For awhile I thought my word for 2024 would be “dwell,” but I now think it is a pair of words.

           Unfold/Enfold

Stay tuned to read how that knowing unfolds.

To learn more about discovering a word for the year, read https://wordpress.com/post/livingonlifeslabyrinth.com/1593

An Invitation

What has your entry into 2024 been like? I would love to know.

New Year’s Reflections

/ nagneberg48 / 6 Comments

January 2, 2024

At the beginning of each new year, I read my journals from the year just past. What were the highlights? The gifts? How well were intentions met or were they discarded? What themes evolved during the year? And what losses were encountered along the way?

At the beginning of 2023, I was trying to shed a lingering cold, not COVID, but a cold that zapped energy and enthusiasm. I was also feeling deeply the loss of a dear friend who had died at the beginning of December. On that first day in January, 2023, I remembered how we entered 2020 totally oblivious to the pandemic about to strike our lives, and I wrote, “What losses will this year bring, for there will be some. How close to my heart will they be? How major will they be in the way I live my life? Or will I be the loss?”

Typically, I’ve entered the new year with energy for new beginnings, new projects, and eagerness to meet new or continued goals, but in recent years I’ve learned to hold expectations more lightly. Perhaps I am learning how to hold life more lightly, too. And more gratefully.

What does this have to do with the photograph of the tree on our boulevard? Well, one morning right after Christmas, I settled into the snug for morning devotions and when daylight appeared I was stunned to see the trunk of this tree and 13 others on our block wrapped in bright green rings. Soon these diseased trees will be removed. The grief has begun.

I think I am grateful, or at least I am trying to be, that we will lose these trees during the bareness of winter. Perhaps the absence of these trees during the non-leafy, non-green months will help us accept the starkness, the lack of branches arching over the street and the sidewalk. I don’t know when the tree removal people will set to work on our block, but I’m trying to use this time to prepare my heart and soul for this loss–as well as other losses, known and unknown, to come.

How do I prepare?

My day begins in stillness, in silence. These winter days it begins in the dark, as I watch the light begin to make its appearance. I whisper my first prayers of the day. “Thank you for the rest of the night. Thank you for the promise of a new day. Thank you for your presence. May I be aware of your presence in all I do and all I am. May my loved ones be aware of your presence. May all who know the losses that life brings know your presence.”

I read the day’s selection from books I have chosen to accompany the year’s pilgrimage. This year I have chosen Daily Readings with Margaret Silf, along with a book I have read before, Fragments of Your Ancient Name, 365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation by Joyce Rupp.

A new year and another mile of the journey. Three hundred and sixty-five new chances to watch the sun rise on God’s surprises along the way. Three hundred and sixty-five windows of opportunity through which to glimpse the face of God in the rock face of everyday life.

Margaret Silf, p. 3

Your intimate presence startles my soul…

I ask for the simplest of gifts from you…

The blessing of communicating with you.

Joyce Rupp, January 1

Even as I grieve losses of the past, as well as losses tender and new, and feel the flicker of losses yet to be, the amaryllis in the snug reminds me we are each living and dying at the same time. And we are each beloved.

May this new year bring you many blessings. Happy New Year!

An Invitation

What are you bringing into the new year? I would love to know.

Word of the Year: Beloved

/ nagneberg48 / 11 Comments

January 3, 2022

Happy New Year!

Along with defrocking the house and writing thank you notes–neither of which I have done yet–opening a new journal, and rereading the previous year’s journals, receiving a word for the year is a new year’s ritual.

Notice I said, “receiving” and not “choosing.” More about that later.

Last year I didn’t receive my word, “rhythm” until mid-January, but some years I am aware of my new word during Advent. For several years I made a collage to represent the word I received, but one year when a word had not appeared, I made a collage first, hoping it would reveal the word to me. And it did. “Fullness.”

(Left to right: “spaciousness,” “word,” and “fullness”)

This year thinking about a word for the year had not even occurred to me as Christmas approached.

Surprise–on Christmas Day, like the birth we celebrate on that day, my word appeared.

That morning before going to church I read the day’s meditation from Richard Rohr, “We are the beloved.” He quoted Henri Nouwen’s reflection on the word “beloved,”from his book Life of the Beloved. I have a copy of that small book, and I decided to re-read that book in 2023.

I also noted how often in recent months I have said or written to someone, “You are beloved.”

During church I experienced an overwhelming feeling of being beloved myself. First, because of my love for this community and the ways I have felt ongoing love within that community. But also such a clear voice from the Creator God, “You are my Beloved.” I felt that voice and those words reverberating throughout my whole body.

“Don’t forget this feeling, Nancy,” I said to myself. “I wonder if you have received your word.”

Affirmation

Once home the family festivities began, including opening a staggering number of presents. We took our time, taking turns, passing each one around the circle. Oohing and aahing. Grandson Peter immediately tried on the clothes he received–each one from his list. The used wrapping paper mounded on the living room floor. And then I opened one last present; one sent to me by a friend. It felt like a book, which my husband says is a dangerous gift to give me because I read so much, and it is hard to keep up with the books I own or have already read.

I was stunned when I saw the book: You Are The Beloved, Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living, a collection of Henri Nouwen’s words compiled and edited by Gabrielle Earnshaw.

Yes, I have received my word. There was no doubt. Beloved.

January 2 Meditation

In this meditation Nouwen refers to Jesus’s baptism when he hears a voice from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17) and Nouwen says, “Jesus lived his life from that inner place of love.” He also emphasizes how those words are for you and me, too. “Once I have accepted the truth that I am God’s beloved child, unconditionally loved, I can be sent into the world to speak and to act as Jesus did.”

I have no idea how this word will become manifest in my life, and I suspect it will be a challenge, actually as each of my previous words have been, to live the word fully and openly and to accept where the path of that word beckons me.

Looking Back at Previous Words

Asking for a word has been one of my intentional practices for many years. My words have included “devotion,” “sacred yes, sacred no,” “spaciousness,” “fullness,” and last year’s word, “rhythm.”

(Collage using the artwork of Steve Sorman)

What I am beginning to realize is how each of these words continue to live in me. To nourish, challenge, and lead me. I don’t finish with a word, accomplish or outgrow it, but instead the words grow in a kind of active relationship with each other. What does it mean, for example, to maintain “spaciousness” in my life and at the same time welcome “fullness”? I know I will continue to learn the rhythm of sacred yes, sacred no.

Each word call me forth.

Each word deepens me.

Each word is an expression of knowing I am beloved and of holding others in their own belovedness.

Receiving A Word

I have heard people say, “I’ve decided my word for the year is going to be “hope.” Or perhaps, “faith.” Who am I to doubt that the word they’ve chosen is not the word actually delivered, but I encourage you to allow the Spirit to work within you; to open to the mystery.

One of the best guides for this process is Christine Valters Painter in her newsletter Abbey of the Arts. https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2022/12/06/give-me-a-word-2023/

Words of Wisdom

We were made in love, for love, and unto love, and it is out of this love that we act. This deep inner “yes” that is God in me, is already loving God through me.

Richard Rohr

Happy New Year! You are beloved.

An Invitation

I would love to know your word, as you discover it.

Crossing the Threshold into the New Year

/ nagneberg48 / 2 Comments

Welcome to the new year! As with any year, all years, we have no idea what will happen in this new year. We never know. It is always unknown. We certainly had no idea on January 1, 2021 what we would face in the coming months, but one thing we know for sure is that the old year has turned.

Here we are on the threshold of the new year.

What a good time to pull up your chair to silence.

I invite you to close your eyes lightly, not tightly and take a deep cleansing breath. Breathe in and out gently, finding your own rhythm.

Stay in the silent space as long as you wish, and when you are ready open your eyes, glance around you, as if seeing your space for the first time, and read these words:

Divine Gate-Keeper, ever present to my soul,

I approach the threshold of the new year

Aware of my vulnerability and mortality,

Recognizing my dependence on your vigilance.

Your wisdom will direct my inner footsteps

As I face the future’s unmarked terrain.

Your rapt attentiveness assures me

That you will guide my comings and goings.

This day I join my heart with all living beings

As we walk together toward what lies ahead.

Joyce Rupp

Before opening the gate and crossing the threshold fully into the new year, I invite you to pause on the threshold and reflect on the lessons and gifts of the past year. We have an opportunity before we become used to living in 2022, to reflect on the ways 2021 was sacred text for us.

Let your heart speak.

When I think about the new year, I….

As I let go of 2021, I feel…

As I move into 2022, I…

This is a good place to start, but perhaps you want or need to go deeper.

Imagine that you are preparing to walk a labyrinth. You stand on the threshold and see a long winding path in front of you. What do you imagine as you begin the journey. I think about the Wise Men–and I choose to believe there were Wise Women, too, who are still on the journey to the Christ Child. They are bringing gifts, but they will receive gifts, too. They just don’t know what they will be.

Here are some threshold crossing questions to consider as you reflect on the past year?

What do I treasure about 2021?

What have I hidden away?

What griefs and losses, regrets and changes do I need to process?

What have I made visible?

How have I become more of the person God created me to be?

And now as you envision 2022, here are other questions to consider:

What are your yearnings for the new year?

What can I do for God in the coming year?

What can God do for me?

How might the new year offer you space in which to dream, create, act, be?

What is the heart of your new year’s prayer?

Allow the questions to live within you. Sit with one that seems to resonate or one you wish I had not asked. The journey is more than one step, but begins with one step.

You’ll notice I did not mention “resolutions.” I prefer the word “intention,” for intention implies to me a gradual and ongoing unfolding. And that unfolding grows out of reflection and contemplation.

May this be a time of loving presence.

An Invitation: What are you feeling, experiencing, learning as you cross the threshold? I would love to know.

NOTE: You may want to read my new year’s post on my previous blog, Clearing the Space http://clearingthespace.blogspot.com/2020/12/crossing-threshold-into-new-year.html

NOTE: In my Tuesday, January 11 post, I will share my WORD OF THE YEAR and offer strategies for how you can discover your own word of the year.