YEAR'S END

Since my teens, I have felt a holy reverence at the passing of the old year and the birth of the new.

As I experience it, seeing the old year go is a bit like saying good-bye to a friend that I knew for awhile. It’s time for that friend to move on.  I know I’ll never see her or him again, but the short time that we spent together will continue to affect me in large and small ways.

I also feel an emptiness as the passing year slips into history. In many ways, the promise that was 2013 lies broken at my feet. The clean, white page of a year ago is now smudged - with sporadic, illegible scribbles marring its once pristine surface. There was so much more to be said, wasn’t there?

Alas, the new me I longed to become is still the same old one. I still weigh the same. I still look the same. I still think and act the same. My book still remains unwritten. And no matter how long I sat beneath the "bodhi tree," I still did not attain enlightenment!

I reflect on the passing year, contemplating the lessons within the mistakes. Then a sacred hush washes over me, cleansing me of regrets for unmet goals and broken promises, replacing them with an expectancy, an inner stirring, a hope that New Year 2014 will be better.

A fresh new page now lies before me, begging for my pen. Perhaps this time I will write more legibly, more poetically, with more integrity, with more patience and love for my fellow humans and with less judgment.

Again, I feel a familiar holy reverence at the passing of the old year and the birth of the new.

May your New Year be filled with the blessings of Love, Peace, and Joy!

Lynn Ross
January 1, 2014

May I add a link to a poem that truly gives holy and timeless meaning to the passing of the old year,
"Ring Out Wild Bells" by Alfred Lord Tennyson