Dear All,
A very happy New Year to you! We hope you have had a good week & feel positive about the new year beginning.
We have found a couple of reflections that may be interesting for you as you step out into 2022.
Our blessing today is ‘Dona Nobis Pacem’ from The Song & the Silence. Let us pray that 2022 will be a year where peace grows – peace within ourselves & amongst those to whom we are close. May it spread in the way the attachment describes the interconnectedness of the trees in the Redwood Forests. The more we realise our interconnectedness with all humanity & with the rest of creation, the more chance there is for the gift of peace, offered to us by the Christ Child, to spread.
With our love & prayer
Evening Prayer begins again tomorrow – gospel reflection at 5.30 followed by Evening Prayer.
A New Year’s Blessing
from enfleshed
In threshold places, where endings meet beginnings,
we listen backwards as we move forward.
What can we learn from the year past –
from how evil played its cards,
or from relationships gained and lost?
What brought you deep delight, when everything was swirling?
To whom were you able to turn to and who challenged you to grow?
Individually and collectively,
none of us are the same.
For some of these changes we weep and for others we rejoice
but from each we carry something forward
– a feeling, a lesson, a memory, a challenge, a call to solidarity…
Collectively, we acknowledge a closing and an opening;
A fresh start that offers only as much meaning as we need from it.
Inviting us not to wage war on ourselves,
but just to pause,
pay attention to our longings and our pain,
and what we might learn from them
about how we wish to live.
A new year does not need to mean “a new you.”
You do not need to make demands of yourself
grounded in messages that are only meant
to make you feel inadequate or unlovable.
Your worth is ineffable,
that is a constant that carries from year to year.
Move gently with yourself into 2022,
speaking instead words of possibility,
committing to that which calls you,
letting yourself be lured by the Sacred
in the direction of your most powerful becoming.
Make only resolutions that will lead to more flourishing of life, yours and others.
Reject individualistic notions of success (or “failure”)
and channel your growing
in the directions
of what we can create
of what we can divest from
of what we can abolish
of what we must claim
of what we must fight
of what we can become.
Beginning
John O’Donahue
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
New Year Blessings 2022
At this beautiful time of New Year, as we say goodbye to 2021 and usher in 2022, let us pledge to give birth to a New Dream and inspire ourselves to live green, more eco-friendly lives, in every moment and in every minute of our lives. The choices we make in our everyday life impact the kind of world we are building now and for the future. Hence, living “green” reminds us to live like Mother Nature, interconnected, alive, growing, changing and sharing with one another.
The Redwood forests in California are hundreds of years old. These gorgeous and often-times mammoth trees grow hundreds of feet tall, so you would assume that their roots must be deeply rooted into the ground in order to support such huge, strong growth. Yet, the roots of the redwood tree are actually not deep at all. Rather, their support comes from the fact that they are interconnected with the roots of the trees around them. In this way, the entire forest is held up by every tree being connected to those next to it. A signal from one tree can pass through an entire large forest by the intricate network of interlinking roots .This is the same in our lives. When we feel we are isolated and alone in this world, when we feel our actions don’t matter, we don’t realize that every action, every choice and even every thought is connected, deeply to the world in which we live. Our own actions, choices and habits are the seeds which create our world.
So at this time of the New Year, let us resolve to bring into our lives the strong connection of the Redwood Trees. Let us realize that our own growth and our own roots are sustaining and nourishing the community and the world around us.