YOU ARE INVITED to start this new year with joy, hope and wonder. My yoga teacher and friend, Mary Boutieller’s thought-provoking newsletter made me want to share it with you as a way to welcome in the year. With Mary’s blessings, I invite you to read her enlightening reflections.
-Linda Commito
“It’s strange to me how 2024 seemed to fly by as if picked up by the wind and carried into this moment. If it wasn’t for the calendar marking the days, would it still feel as if it were hurdling forward so quickly? Imagine if, one day, calendars completely disappeared. How, then, would we mark the passage of time?
Our ancestors marked time through the change of seasons, the moon’s shifting shape in the night sky, the plants that grew and fed them, the rhythm of births and deaths. We were much more in step with nature’s slower march than today’s fast-paced motion.
Sometimes it seems my soul craves that slower pace: lights out, phones gone, waking up with the sun, trusting our bodies and our innate senses to show us the way. Perhaps I’m just getting older or, I’d like to think, wiser. Or maybe it’s the time of year asking me to slow down, stay warm and listen.
photo by Linda Commito
In her recent newsletter, The Marginalian, Maria Popova said, “We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive.” We watch the television, we stare at our phones, we sleep-walk through our lives, forgetting just how miraculous it is to be alive. Yet, every once in a while, something shakes us out of our stupor. It might be from witnessing the birth of a child, learning about an unexpected illness, or seeing a sunset’s brilliant colors blaze across the sky. These momentary awakenings come when we stand at the center of the Universe and realize we have never been here before. We wake up, we tap in, we ask: “What’s next?”.
If we are lucky, we survive these experiences and allow them to soak into our bones. We don’t push them away and we don’t ask for more. We let a happy moment wash over us and we breathe. We let a sad moment wash over us and we breathe again. We let them in and try to remember why we are here – to live, to love, to be in these bodies at this time having this experience…one moment at a time.
In this new year, things might not always go as planned. Our way of being in the world might be challenged. Things will happen that we cannot control. Yet how we treat those moments is. What if we embraced both the comforts and the challenges in our lives with reverence? What if we remembered that just being here is the miracle, knowing that we have descended from the first stars that lit the known Universe? Could we embrace what’s happening in the moment and allow ourselves to be wholly human and alive?
photo by Linda Commito
We could start small; take baby steps. Maybe we don’t rush toward the next thing before experiencing the current one. Maybe we pause while taking out the trash or doing the dishes to feel our feet on the Earth and our connection to it. Every moment of our lives can be a moment of reflection, of leaning in to the messages and lessons that are out there for us to learn.
And, in paraphrasing a quote from a movie, “Each day we make choices big and small. Let those choices be for good.”
May this new year be filled with love, light and understanding. May our suffering be little and our hearts open to all that is. And may we always remember that we come from nothing less significant than the stars.”
Love and Namaste’,
Mary I. Boutieller
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