Happy New Year!!!

New Year's Day has always seemed sacred to me. A time to review the last year of life and think about the one ahead. How will I spend my  days, my hours, the moments that I'm blessed with? It seems a big responsibility and I want to get it right. I don't want to let the hours and days, the weeks and months slip by without purpose and meaning. How can I fully experience life? Where do I focus my attention? The ordinary lists that I've composed year after year that always include a healthy diet, regular exercise, daily prayer and meditation,learning something new, expressing myself creatively, serving others; these continue to be my intentions, but I find myself overwhelmed with the image of a new canvas, this big clean canvas. I want to paint a lovely picture. More importantly I want to dive in with abandon, go wild with new colors and splash it on the canvas without worrying about how it looks, or if it's good enough. Can I let it BE? Can I let myself be? 

I ran across a blog called, ON BEING with Krista Tippett. I love it. It's full of wonderful, intelligent, inspiring stories and articles. I hope you check it out. (onbeing.org). There I read a poem from Mary Oliver (one of my favorite poets):

"No one of us can provide all of the light we need. But every one of us can shed some kind of light. Every day we can ask ourselves, "What kind of light can I provide today?"

Isn't that a great question? It's really pretty simple. We do our best. We pay attention. We are present. AND we notice the ordinary, every day gifts and give thanks! Which brings to mind one of my favorite books that I read last year; "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp. She dares us to LIVE FULLY right where we are!! Her book is  so beautifully written I cried as I read it, a practical guide to living a life of JOY by being THANKFUL in all things. She kept a running list, which now numbers over 4,000 gifts, made up of the easily overlooked small stuff of life, the graces, the "love gifts" that are waiting to be noticed. 

She expresses so beautifully some of my private concerns, fears I've never been able to articulate; 

" ....Which road through this brief land? What is all most important? How to live the fullest life here that delivers into the full life ever after?...Desperately feeling along today for a way to live through this fleeting blink of a life. How do we live fully so we are ready to die?"

Continuing excerpts from her book;  

"The answer; Giving thanks in everything. Learn how to be thankful and happy, whether hands full or hands empty; a secret worth spending a life on learning. Stop. Pay attention. Notice. Give thanks.

Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing... Through all the haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away. Hurry always empties a soul.

I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment... Weigh down this moment in time with attention full, and the whole of time's river slows, slows, slows. Wherever you are, be all there.

This is where God is. In the present. I AM. His very name. It's not the gifts that fulfill, but the holiness of the space.

This full attention slows time and I live the full of the moment, right to outer edges. When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In His embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still and ... holy.

I keep my eyes wide open. I move slow. I sense the wonder of each moment. It's ridiculous how much joy a moment can hold."