Happy New Year

One of my all-time favorite stories was shared with me by Dr. Arleen Bump the senior minister of the Center for Spiritual Living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Dr. Bump relayed to me an experience she had had at her church directly following Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane had severely damaged her center in Fort Lauderdale, tearing the roof off the building, destroying the beautiful landscaping and flooding the entire interior. The damage was monolithic and the costs to repair were in the hundreds of thousands. On the first day possible after the storm she was picked up by congregants and driven over to the center to witness and inspect her once beautiful church. After parking the car, her and her entourage approached the front door and she stopped before entering. “Don’t you want to go in”, asked the driver of her car. “Yes,” she replied, “I’m just deciding what consciousness is going to enter”.

Well, here we are in a new year. Down come the Christmas decorations and the outdoor lights, the tree once again goes to recycle and all of the stores remove their Christmas specials, it’s that time of year again. Gone are the wreaths and ribbons, the joie de vivre, the Christmas parties, the glow of candlelight and the turkey, cranberries et al. Everything goes back to normal, or does it?
We’ve had quite a year this year; we survived the Mayan calendar, the continuing collapse of Wall Street, the shooting in Aurora, the tragedy in Newtown. Barack Obama was re-elected president of the United States, marriage equality is being contested in the Supreme Court, marijuana was legalized in Washington and Colorado, we still have a presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and still God is in its heaven and all is right with the world. Life continues, our future has never looked either brighter or darker depending on what way we choose to perceive it. Each of us stands at the doorway of this New Year and at midnight tonight we cross an imaginary threshold into a new time. New Year is a milestone of time; it is a moment to reconsider a conscious choice either to release or harbor the past. For each of us it is an opportunity for deep reflection, a time to ponder where we’re at, where we want to go and where we’ve been.
At this moment, I choose to consciously pause and reflect on the year that has passed and the year to come and I find myself with only one question, what consciousness am I going to enter 2013 with? Of course I already know, but as always, the question is more important than the answer.
Happy New Year, may your dreams and expectations be the same. And So It Is!