We’re just a few days into the new year. And if you are a resolution-making person, I expect some of those resolutions may already be slipping away. I have to say for me, that sense of back-to-it has come incredibly quickly this year. Whatever energy comes with a new beginning… well, in many ways it feels as if it has come and gone. And looking out at our world, I’m not surprised. Just look at the dysfunction in Washington as Congress struggles to elect a new Speaker of the House. I assume someone will eventually be elected, but the last few days also point to a couple of years of nothing getting done.
I know from years past that it is easy to quickly fall back into our routines—or maybe sometimes back into our ruts. Breaking free of those can be really hard because they can get so well established. And the reality of our present time is that so many cares of the world continuing to press in. Bearing witness to so many of our neighbors living on the streets. Bearing witness to so much meanness in the world. Bearing witness to so much violence in the world—near to us and so far away. Those ruts may offer a certain comfort. They may at least offer the familiar.
But I want to offer an invitation today. I want to offer a prayer for myself and for all of us to not slip back into everything—including those routines and those ruts—too quickly. I want to invite us to make some space for what might be budding in this new year. There is a gift that comes when we are able to pause, to stop and look around. There is a gift that can come with the turning of the year, however arbitrary that date on the calendar may be.
In that spirit, I recently came across these words by Hafiz, a mystic who lived in the 14th Century. This is a translation of “The Subject Tonight is Love” by Daniel Ladinsky.
All The Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
Blessings in this new year.
Tom