New Years Eve
Reflection
As we prepared to welcome the new year twelve months ago, we had no concept of what it would bring. It caught the world by surprise. Its impact was unimaginable. Many who celebrated the new year that night are no longer here to see it end. We are glad to see it go. We long to return to normal, yet, that would be a mistake. The opportunity for change that our shared suffering this year has offered would be lost. We are different now. We know more about one another and our flaws and fragility and just how vulnerable our imagined security was. The normal we knew was not healthy. We can choose it again “dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us.” (A. Roy) Or we can realize that we are in another space now and grasp the opportunity to imagine a different world and fight for it.
Prayer
May we find the wisdom and courage we need in this coming year.
Action
Accept the gift of a new year with gratitude and open your mind and heart
to respond to the new touch of God’s spirit in the days ahead.
Suggested Reading
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11
The coronavirus pandemic has given us a chance to develop new ways of living.
Pope Francis
Celebrate endings—for they precede new beginnings.
Jonathan Huie
Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.
Alan Cohen
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
Arundhati Roy
There will be no return to normality. The pandemic requires us to redesign the economy, rethink our obsession with growth, find ways to protect the most vulnerable, use apps we can trust to trace our contacts, share research and learning, and redesign everything to put people, not profits first.
Enrique Dans
It’s really a matter of life or death that after this, we don’t go back to status quo.
Frank Snowden
This pandemic has changed the way we do life. It has brought things into proper perspective and has shown us what is important in life.
Bernard Haynes
We will also have to ask more fundamental questions about when this crisis is over: how can we solve the ongoing climate crisis? How can we prevent social inequalities in an unforeseen economic recession? How can we prevent another pandemic?
Felix Ringel
You’ll never get bored when you try something new. There’s really no limit to what you can do.
Dr. Seuss
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.
Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg