The first of January is another day dawning, the sun rising as the sun always rises, the earth moving in its rhythms, with or without a certain as the day of new beginning, separating the old from the new. So it is: everything is the same, bound into its history as we ourselves are bound.
Yet we also stand at a threshold, the new year something truly new, still unformed, leaving a stunning power in our hands:
What shall we do with this great gift of Time, this year?
Let us begin by remembering that whatever justice, whatever peace and wholeness might bloom in our world this year, we are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet, the embodiment of all the best visions of our people.
The year can be new ground for the seeds of our dreams. Let us take the step forward, together, onto new ground, planting our dreams well, faithfully, and in joy.I've been looking at one paragraph a week, and there are two left, so next week will be the end of the series. For today,
Let us begin by remembering that whatever justice, whatever peace and wholeness might bloom in our world this year, we are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet, the embodiment of all the best visions of our people.So often we hear people say -- or, perhaps, we, ourselves, say -- that there's so much wrong in the world and just wish someone would do something about it. Does that sound familiar? This can be about something the scale of, say, climate change, or something happening at the local level. Actually, it can be even closer than that -- it's not too uncommon to hear a person bemoaning some problem they're facing and wishing that someone or something could be done about it.
Declaring that "we are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet ..." that are needed to effect change, though, makes waiting for someone else to do something patently foolhardy. A challenge of the decision to engage the life of the spirit is that we will be reminded, over and over again, that "we are the ones we've been waiting for."
That can be overwhelming. I know. So I want to offer something that might just take the edge off a bit. These words by Edward Everett Hale (who, ironically, was so involved in so many things that he was sometimes called Edward Everything Hale):
I am only one,Perhaps here, then, we find an answer to last week's question. What shall we do with this great gift of Time, with our one wild and precious life? Nothing more, yet nothing less, than the something that we can.
Yet still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
Yet still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything,
I must not hesitate to do the something
that I can.
Now the question becomes, what is that something?
Pax tecum,
RevWik
