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I celebrate three new years. The first one is in September, when, with the excitement of a horse let out of the starting block, I respond to those back-to-school ads, a few falling leaves, and the offers of new classes and workshops. I'm off and running! See Ann start all over again, racing toward the finish line . . .
. . . which comes NOW. The end of December. And the start of the official calendar New Year. New Year's Day, the end of my favorite week of the year. It's time to return to life's hard slogging after the relief of a holiday break. It's the time of resolutions and affirmations and sober second thoughts. The time of lists, sorting, cleaning, and throwing out. The time of do-I-have-the-energy-to-do-this-AGAIN? (And it may not seem like it as the New Year begins, but you always manage, somehow.)
So thank goodness for the real New Year. Nature's New Year. The one where we get drunk on tulips and forsythia, experience hangovers not from alcohol but from contemplating the cruelest month. The Spring New Year entices us back to a grounded communion with the Earth. We recognize the baby beginnings of the year in the gentle puff of a breeze on our newly hatless head. It's here! It's time! We have light, and rain, and warmth, and more light.
Until then, however, we celebrate the calendar New Year as best we can: we notice that each day the light comes earlier and earlier, always an opportunity for joy.
So I send out wishes for a whole year's worth of joyful new years, whether it's this January one, the socially conditioned September one, or the re-awakening of the Earth that begins with the return of spring.
May each day be filled with mindful, prayerful joy.
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