New Year’s Day: we all slept in, we remained lost in our few-days-without-schedule. Thankful, still, for leftovers as well as recent gifts of pumpkin bread and cheese curds (which, when warm, still squeak perfectly between our teeth.) Our vacation has been good.
I don’t tend towards formal New Year's resolutions. I like my lists, but they have this way of making me crazy, the more detailed they get. Better to create a framework and then allow fluidity within that—it keeps me from getting discouraged and giving up altogether. Besides, I spend a lot of time, already, processing and examining and setting goals. Sitting down to do it formally on this day seems excessive.
But still, let’s mark the day, honor the way it looks back and looks forward.
So at lunch, everybody got two squares of paper. Two minutes of (almost) silence, and then each of us wrote things we would like to say goodbye to on one paper, and things we would like to welcome in or carry with us on the other. We burned our goodbye papers in a bowl outside, and kept our welcome papers to do with as we wish, as long as we hold on to them.
This evening I folded mine into a paper crane. Maybe what I wrote will take wing through the year. The paper I started with was not a perfect square, so it is the clumsiest paper crane I have made in a very long time. I expect there might be an equal amount of clumsiness to bringing these goals into my life, so I’m calling the crane perfect. I’m also calling it a prayer.
I am counting on a ripple effect. I am hoping that the drops I start with will spread outward, gathering strength and brightness as they move. That the effort is not mine alone, and that I am not—ever—alone. These things, too, are folded up in the prayer.
If it flies I cannot take credit, but I can watch, and thank God for the beauty.
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