Happy New Year!
Welcome to 2018, and to a new opportunity to create a world of peace, joy and justice.
Each year, as the calendar shifts, we give ourselves a collective opportunity to start fresh, to reimagine ourselves and our world, and to recommit to the things we value. Though this specific timing—January 1 on a calendar that is arbitrary and invented for convenience—doesn’t really represent any material change in the universe, it does represent a collective agreement that we should take a pause and review things.
No matter how 2017 went for you personally, or how you view the collective national/global experience of last year, this is a moment ripe with possibilities. Even if last year was a really rough one—and it was, for many people—we have the ability to pause, reflect, let go of old hurts, anger and resentment and start again. As Rev. Rob Eller Isaacs puts it, in words recorded in our hymnal, we can “begin again in love.” Forgiveness, releasing what is holding us back, and seeking new sources of comfort, guidance, and inspiration—these are all ways we can choose a new way for a new year.
What are you ready to let go of? And what are you ready to call into your life? We started this new year with our annual Janus service, led by Bill Calhoun, and this is a good opportunity to ask these questions and make a new start. And let’s think not just about personal ways we can release and renew, but also ways we can do this as a community.
What do you think Westside is ready to let go of? And what are we ready to call in? What new inspiration, new energy, new hopes and ways of being, would you like to see in your life, and in our community? Let’s work together to make this year a wonderful one.
With hope, gratitude and faith in community.
Rev. Carol