A New Year, new possibilities: A few tips for your spiritual life

I hope you have had a wonderful New Year’s celebration, or maybe like us you stayed home and shared a good meal and a movie.

I’ve seen a number of items lately on New Year’s Resolutions for the spiritual life and some are quite good. Truthfully, people have been writing advice for how to live a holy life for millennia. You can find advice ranging from the Torah of Hebrew Scriptures to the Rule of Saint Benedict, from Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living to the terrific contemporary books of Henri Nouwen and Joan Chittister. You can take a lifetime to drink deeply of all it.

So consider my advice below as a primer, or merely a reminder of what you already know. Feel free to add a few more tips in the comment section of this post.

Here are a few ideas for renewing your life with the Divine this new year.

Gratitude – Begin each day with gratitude. The simplest and most profound prayer begins with gratitude for a new day, new possibilities. No day will ever be like this one again, with its challenges and opportunities. Today is a gift to you. Open your eyes, look at the sky, and be grateful. Begin each day by saying thanks. Say Grace, silently or aloud, at every meal and give thanks before retiring for the night.

Pray – Set aside a time for regular prayer each day. Get up a little earlier, and find a place where you can sit in the silence for a time. Hear your breath and be grateful. Use a prayer book, or find prayers that work for you. Listen to the spontaneous prayer from your heart, but don’t neglect to listen to the old prayers written by the masters for they contain new meanings and ancient wisdom whenever you read them.

Worship – Go to your faith community, and go regularly, and not just when it is convenient. Give thanks to your creator in community. Sing, pray, and eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Why would you want to do any of this alone? Life is too hard and complicated to do it alone. Listen to the wisdom of others around you, and know that when your prayers run dry others are praying for you. And others need you there.

Give, give, give – Everyone can give something because God has given each one of us something to give. What abundance do you have that you can share with others? Your treasure, your time, your talents are yours to give. Give with abandon, give with compassion, give with gratitude. Giving will set you free. Your giving will change the world like nothing else can.

Expand your horizons – Try something new every day. Look, learn, listen, expand your soul. God’s creation is infinite and all of it is here for you to explore. Read a book, study your Bible, take a hike, see a movie, learn to cook, take a trip to a far away place or just around the block. Open your eyes and ears to God’s presence wherever you go.

Laugh – Life has its challenges, but also joys large and small. Enjoy as much as you can whenever you can. Show your love for all you meet, be kind, soften your rough edges, ask forgiveness when you fall short, and don’t forget to laugh.

Blessings for the New Year: Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience

May this new year bring you many blessings, strength to meet the challenges before you, courage to see the opportunities, and adventures in fascinating places (and a warm beach or two). And may the wisdom of those who have gone ahead surround us with their wisdom and light our path:

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Saint Paul's Letter to the Colossians 3:12-17


As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

How do we know there is such a thing as time?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about Christmases past, friends near and friends far away, and dear friends departed this life. Sometimes it seems as though only yesterday I was going on my first date, taking my first college exam, looking for my first job, filing my first newspaper story, quitting my first job, getting married, moving from this place to that place.

We've been in Virginia almost four years, but it seems like yesterday we arrived (and, yes, there are still a lot of boxes yet to be unpacked). Another New Years Eve arrives in a few days, another year marked gone on the calendar. I behold each day with thanks, for each day is truly an irreplaceable gift. May you have many blessings, abundant health, and beautiful memories in the coming year.

Barbara Crafton penned this the other day about time and Christmas, and I leave it with you today:

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HE'S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS
By Barbara Crafton

How do we know there is no such thing as time, you ask?

Ah -- I can document it for you: cast your mind back to the Christmases of your childhood. Remember the afternoon of the great day -- the wreckage of toys and wrapping paper, the ruin of the Christmas feast still littering the table, the exhausted adults surveying it all listlessly. Remember your lust for the toys you received, remember the carefully-selected gifts you brushed aside, so entranced were you with whatever gift it was that seemed to you to be the star. And remember, then, the despair that clung to the edges of your orgy: it would be a whole year until next Christmas. A YEAR! A YEAR, do you tell me? How on earth would you make it through? A year was as good as a century in those days. A year was an eternity.

Now think of last Christmas. How long ago does it seem? About a month? Me, too.

Time is not constant. It is relative. It speeds up -- and not just the human experience of it, either. Time itself is intimately paired with location. It's why there are time zones -- it's already tomorrow in India. And yet I can pick up the phone and speak with someone there: he will answer right away: real time intersects with elapsed time when I do that. If that's the case in India, on the other side of the modestly-sized earth from where I sit and write this, imagine what time it is on Alpha Centauri.

Did I mention that this train of thought can be confusing?

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
Just when we think we might have overdosed on Nativity scenes, the gospel reading in church this Sunday will feature this austere reminder: that which is, always has been. It IS. Jesus of Nazareth was born in a time and a place, but Jesus the Christ is not contained in a moment. The moments of Christ are all now.

Don't worry if this isn't coming together for you yet. Sit with it for a few decades and it will. When it does, its implications will, too: if there is no such thing as time, nothing is lost. What was still IS. The sad parade of loss we know as history is only a parade on this narrow stage of earthly life. It stretches out only here. The God's-eye view of our life is not linear. It is all now.

He's got the whole world in His hands. Bet you never thought of it as a Christmas song.