Happy New Year! Look FORWARD!!!

After thinking about whether to write about my favorite gadgets from 2008 or a New Year's message which really stands out to me, I'm thinking I'll write the latter first :-) For many of us, this was a really really looooooooong year, wasn't it? And I don't mean just jam-packed full of fun and joviality. It was a hard year in many ways, though it also had its own joys.
It's funny. We journey through Advent in preparation for the joy of Christmas and then bam...New Year's is upon us and we're looking at those Resolutions again, often feeling varieties of failure about the ones we made with such diligence last year(s) and didn't *keep*, or they just didn't stick, or whatever. So here we are on the cusp of a brand spanking new year stuck between the residue of what we didn't accomplish last year and the need to come up with some goals for this new one only hours away ready to pounce upon us.
I'd like to suggest what might be a radical new idea. Instead of creating resolutions of what you "should" or "need" to do, why not instead come up with a few of what you shouldn't? Like a list of New Year's Nonsolutions, or Unsolutions. Then pare them down to a basic concept or two, because you know they really will fall into a couple of categories which are more manageable to consider than a whole bunch of things. A few things you covenant that you WON'T do next year. Things that by NOT doing will benefit you and those you love and the world around you.

What do you think? Personally, it's the direction I'm going to take. Oh this doesn't mean I'm planning to dive off the wagon and go nuts with carbohydrates and totally forget about the idea of exercise. But are you grokking with the slight but really huge difference here? [I love that old term "grok"....if you read science fiction you'll remember that.....it means something even more internal and intense than just *understand* something...if you "grok" something, it means you can practically see/feel it through/within the person you're sharing the idea with because you experience the concept in a real way instead of just intellectually "understanding" it.]

Before we step into the New Year, though, we do need to make peace with the last one, to take responsibility for it and to put it where it really lives: in the PAST. We need to say thank you to the things that have blessed us which we continue to carry as part of ourselves and to say good bye to the things that weren't so good for us whether we were the ones who *did* them or not.
I have recently learned (thanks to the help of a friend) how to imbed a Youtube video directly here. Really listen to this song. You've probably heard it on a couple of TV shows in the background as they're ending. Now the fabulous group "Il Divo" has recorded it in Spanish. But you need to really hear the words in English. It's "Hallelujah" [BTW "Hallelujah" means "praise the Lord" in Hebrew] written some several years ago by Leonard Cohen and then recorded by the late Jeff Buckley. A whole bunch of people have sung it since, but I love this particular performance.
It's a perfect sound track for taking stock of your own personal 2008, making peace, saying "thank you" as well as "good bye" and all the things you need to do before you close the book and look FORWARD into the unyet written 2009.

It's basically the story of David in the Bible. Oh how we can relate. Man did he ever blow it over and over again in huge ways, yet was redeemed and blessed. Sure there were consequences, as there are for us (that's what I mean about taking responsibility before saying goodbye, taking what we needed to learn from 2008 and then moving FORWARD).

Please oh please take the time to click on the link, sit back and listen and drink in the song. I hope it blesses you as much as it does me. I pray that 2009 will bring peace, healing, growth and joy to your lives as well as things of your hearts desires. Really consider that concept of resolutions of "Not Do's" instead of "Should or Will Do's". :-) Happy New Year!