January 1st: Starting With Love

From my interfaith Wisdm book-Winter- Seasons of The Soul:

We look with uncertainty beyond the old choices…

We look for clear-cut answers to a softer permeable aliveness…

For something new is being born in us…IF we but let it.

We stand at a new doorway, awaiting that which comes…

Daring to be human creatures who are vulnerable to the beauty

of our existence. Learning to love.

Adapted from Anne Hillman quoted in Prayers for Healing

The greatest accomplishment in life is to be who and what you are. And to be what God wanted you to be when [God] created you. Abbot Thomas Keating OSB Quoted by Br. Wayne Teasdale in his book, The Mystical Hours

I wish to begin this [year] well; to do something in it that is worthy of it and me; to transcend my daily routine; to have my immortality now; in the quality of my daily life. May I dare as I have never done. May I attain to a youth never attained. I am eager to report the glory of the universe; may I be worthy of it, for it is [only] reasonable that we should be more worthy [of life] at the end of each year, than at its beginning.

On Life’s Purpose Henry David Thoreau

Where do we begin? January 1st is an adapted and arbitrary day for our modern calendars and cultural consciousness, yet in following the practical side of mysticism and practice, “we need to start somewhere!” 

We could start with the Roman myth of Janus, the two-faced god who could look both at the past and at the future, or maybe we would adopt or follow the Pagan 8-fold wheel? My preference would be to start at 0 Aries, which is the Spring Equinox.

     What is most crucial in my eyes and in my heart is that we begin at the essential point of our humanness, and at the core value for our lives, which is love. That is our ultimate human purpose, and I believe the first principle, the foundational virtue that our God would ask of us:  To love and be loved.