Making a New Beginning
Each new beginning is a link in a chain which stretches back before we can remember and out into unforeseen potential. Today is a day for making a new beginning.
We celebrate the beginnings which have gone before and anticipate those which are coming next. It was not always a certainty today would actually arrive, whether we would get this far. Now it seems like we have barely started.
Each new beginning seems to bring more questions than answers. Some make us laugh, some make us cry, some show us the frustration of injustice.
Many of us become accustomed to following a regular routine, a habitual set of practices. We like to believe we are becoming stronger as we repeat our steps day after day.
It is easy for us to forget each day can be filled with first steps in new directions.
We prefer to feel comfortable, taking the same steps in the same patterns each day. Some of us forget the joy, the excitement of learning to take steps in a new direction. We seem to enjoy feeling like we are marching when, in reality, life is a dance.
Some of us appear to believe we have found the path, the direction, the way. We do not want to be confused with new beginnings. The answers we have found satisfy us. We are not interested in any more questions.
New beginnings, and the opportunities to make them, fill the world around us, and within us.
Making a new beginning is our way of choosing to explore, to learn something new, to discover. We can dance into the path of all this people marching in a straight line.
What could our next new beginning bring to life?
Where will our next first steps take us?
What Does a New Beginning Look Like?
We begin at the beginning. What happens next depends on our focus and flexibility. Then, with effort and skill, and a lot of help, we accomplish what we set out to do.
We achieve our goal, finish on time and under budget, keep our resolution, set a personal best. Then we meet our commitments, finish the exam, complete our screenplay or our film, graduate, make the sale. We do what we set out to do.
Many of us are focused on accomplishing objectives, meeting goals, checking off the boxes. Few things are as satisfying to me as a job well done. I am willing to work very hard, very strategically, for long hours, to accomplish the goal of getting results.
One thing I have learned is things are rarely ever finished.
Each goals we set, and accomplish, teaches us lessons which give us new challenges. Every task we complete opens doors to give us new opportunities. Each time we do something, or even try to do something, we learn about ourselves and how to do things differently.
I talk with people every week who have set out in life with a plan and expectations, and have achieved what they set out to do. They have not found the meaning they expected to find as the result of meeting their goals. They feel stuck in their own lives, that they have come to an end and have no further to go.
As we work together, they often come to see that each end is a new beginning. They realize that each completed task is a step further on the journey of exploration. We are not racing to the end, we are exploring new ways to begin.
Some of us have forgotten what a new beginning can look like.
We Practice Making New Beginnings
Each moment, each hour, each morning, each day, each week, each month, we make new beginnings.
It is not because we want everything to be perfect. We do not begin again to demonstrate our stubbornness or determination. It is not as if our will power is refusing to stop, refusing to quit. We are not trying, trying again because we have not yet succeeded.
Beginning again, and again, is about learning and growing each time we try. We want to continue growing and apply what we learned when we tried before.
Spiritual life is not a test of endurance. We explore and practice what we discover. When we recognize spiritual life in us and the people around us we begin to see it more clearly. Spiritual life reveals itself to us in more depth.
We pause to rest, to reflect, to recover, to catch our breath. Stopping to look around us, we decide to take another first step. We make a new beginning from a new place.
Our new beginnings feel like fresh starts. We let go of what has happened before, putting the past behind us.
New beginnings can be a challenge and a struggle.
Beginnings are important and new beginnings can be even more significant. Beginning can be exciting and energizing. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Every day on our journey depends with our first step.
Are We Ready for a New Beginning?
We are not ready to begin again just because we are tired of waiting.
Getting ready to start again is more than simply having everything we think we need to take with us.
Some of us need to practice listening to sacred stillness. We want to be open to and in tune with spiritual life.
Others of us might want to do a little more reading and reflecting. The world is filled with bright, shiny objects and we do not want to get distracted. We may need to learn the lessons of our last few steps before we take the next one.
Each of us has our own lessons to learn and skills to practice. Sometimes we can develop practices on the way, and sometimes we need to take some time to rest and listen.
We can help each other, but we also need to grow and learn from our experiences.
A path stretches out before us. We begin again as we take our next step.
Is this a time when we need to stop and give up, and make a new beginning tomorrow?
How will we make a new beginning this morning?
[Image by Gustavo Devito]
Greg Richardson is a spiritual director in Southern California. He is a recovering assistant district attorney and associate university professor and is a lay Oblate with New Camaldoli Hermitage near Big Sur, California. Greg’s website is http://StrategicMonk.com and his email address is StrategicMonk@gmail.com.
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