Tag: resolutions

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enough joy peace

You Don’t Need To Do It

My dog’s biggest decision/resolution for any day of the week is what toy shall he play with from his two new ones. And each decision is “new every morning”

On a Facebook group I’m part of my QEC practitioner suggested instead of feeling like we are being forced into New year resolutions – that most of us feel guilty about breaking by mid-January – why not QEC a vision of Peace, Joy and Plenty for 2024. This is working with that principle that what we believe will come to pass will come to pass. This isn’t a “pollyanna” “pie in the sky” way of thinking. This isn’t saying that we will be protected from bad things happening. But it is saying that we will ride through them with peace, with deep joy [not the silly giggles but something deep and fundamental] and that we will know we will have plenty/enough of whatever we need to see us through.

All this is what God says to us through the Bible – that “the joy of the Lord is our strength” [Nehemiah 8:10], “my peace I give to you” [John 14:27] and Matthew 6:25-34 which tells us not to worry about anything because God has it all for us. God has what we need in abundance. Though too often we do not see Christians living this out so find it hard to believe. But it is there!

But I realised as I was free writing around this that there is an order to have this happens. I felt that one couldn’t just dive into believing there is plenty/enough/an abundance because it is so hard to believe. It is why we have to QEC things and put in new beliefs so we can start on that journey.

  • But that QEC journey starts, I think, with us having peace with our past, with our upbringing, with our mistakes.
  • From this place comes deep joy that we are such amazing people, even if that has been lost in things that have been said to us as children.
  • Then once we are at this place of deep joy and gratitude, then we can believe we have plenty for what lies ahead each and every single day.

To succeed with this we need to be like those who go to Alcoholics Anonymous believe, that what we have this for each day and we rejoice in the dailiness of it and not have to stake it up for longer than today.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
…
Amen.

The Serenity Prayer

Note the “living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at at time” or as Lamentations 3:23 says God’s blessings are “new every morning” because “great is your faithfulness”

By not trying to put it in resolutions – that we aren’t doing at the moment anyway and so won’t stick to because there are reasons why we didn’t start now – but listening to our hearts and going day by day doing our best to live in peace, from which follows joy and gratitude, givings us the hope of living in plenty/enough then we can move in harmony with ourselves, with God, with The Universe, and with each other.

Categories
imbolc Threshold

Imbolc

Daffodils in my local park. Photographed by me March 2022

February 1st is Imbolc. Often seen as the start of Spring. It comes exactly between the winter equinox and the spring solstice. It is known as a quarter day. In the church calendar it is known as Candlemas the time to get candles blessed but also when the light is coming.

It has been noticeable on my morning dog walks that the sky is lightening, that there is a something in the air. Things have changed. The Met Office is still “promising” us a cold snap later in the month, but the air does feel different. The dawn chorus is more vibrant. This morning there was a large flock of geese flying out across the sea honking away. I can feel the urge to spring clean, to start a new things. Being me of course that means that after promising myself in January that I would only sign up for one thing at a time I now have three things I have signed up for and 2-3 others on the back burner, simmering. I can feel I want to get on and do things. Whereas at New year I wanted to hibernate. We were meant to be going to see our mothers on the 2nd weekend in January but my husband had a bit of a cold and instead of me pushing him onwards I advocated a hibernation weekend. I do think we both benefited from it. But now that the lighter days are coming I am ready to start planning.

So it got me to wondering why we don’t pick Imbolc, Candlemass, Brigid’s day, 1st February, as the day when we make resolutions for the year. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels more like it. That heaviness of Christmas has gone. That need to be doing has gone. I know people who have done Veganuary and Dry January and so are feeling lighter, fresher, healthier. Now is the time to start thinking of those things we’d like to do during the year.

No I’m not going to now start advocating goals and resolutions, as I said before [sorry can’t find that post to be able to tag it]. But I am as the sun starts to show itself more often, as the light is fresher, I am going to start doing what many did on 1st January, and am going to start looking at what I would like to achieve this year.

I’m also in that strange limbo land. My friend with the cancer died last week but there still hasn’t been a date announced for her funeral. I should know today. But for now all I can do is hold my plans lightly, not put anything firmly in my diary, and also trust. Though I also think threshold time is a good time to plan. One is stood between two worlds not yet able to step into the next. I can write my wish list on the walls of the chamber I wait in.

Though of course maybe that is why people do this in that space between Christmas and the New Year? That is a threshold time too.

Categories
2022 new year

Tis The Season Of The Resolution

My dog Renly playing with his new dog toy, Max, my son's dog relaxing on the couch, Damson my cat attacking a paper bag which contains a catnip toy. All taken by Diane Woodrow over the Christmas holidays
Renly with a new toy, Max relaxing on the couch and Damson playing in a bag all taken by myself over Christmas 2021

It is that time of year again, when everyone feels obliged to make “New year resolutions” as if what they had been doing for the past 12 months wasn’t good enough. There is the talk of going on a diet – and the various diet aids are being pushed like made on adverts on various medias. [yet no one says that the winter is the worst time to start a diet because your body naturally wants to hold on to its body fat to keep warm. Start your diet at Easter when your metabolism is more in tune to it] to exercise more [again a similar one to the dieting. It is dark and dreary still at this time of year. To run before work means getting up in the dark. Again wait till the days start to get longer and then enjoy the whole thing], to write more, to be more ….. [add your own] And most of these resolutions are broken before the end of January. Most of this is to do with doing things that you think you ought to rather than the things you want to.

It is why I’ve put the pictures of the animals at the top of this post and Hobbe’s thoughts at the end. All three animals are all doing what they are best at – being themselves, and not caring who is looking. Why do we not all resolve to be more ourselves? More genuine to who we really are? Or even – radical thought – spend time trying to find out who we really are.

So much of how we behave, even down to this desire to do resolutions, around wanting to be what other people think we should do. So we work harder to be appreciated more; lose weight so others will look at us more kindly; get another book published to justify the time we spend writing [ok that’s a personal one!!!]

Instead of making plans and resolutions this year I have put some things I’d like to so in my diary, some projects I do have to get finished, and some ideas I’d like to pursue. But really what I am going to try my best to do for 2022 is “wing it and see what happens“. And after the last couple of years we’ve had as a nation I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea for many more to feel that way?

Categories
accepting grief kindness resolutions uncertain

Change in Friendship

dscn0828I realised yesterday that I am grieving the loss of a friend. Not one who had died but one that was moving away. Since I moved to this town this person has been key in who I am and what I do here in my church life. She has spurred me on, stood by me when I’ve stepped out, filled in the gaps when they’ve needed filling. She isn’t the only but she has been one of the strong pillars that have given me the encouragement I have needed to step out. She is now doing, what I have done many times before, and is moving to another town.

I must be totally honest and say I am grieving. It isn’t the same as when someone has died, but it is a profound sadness. Things will not be the same. And if I am honest, I am not sure if I am brave enough to step out and do things without her. There is a team and it hasn’t just been me and her. Each of us has our role and our part but the part she filled will not be filled by anyone else. At least not in the team that is there. Things will shift. DSCN0826 (1)Things will change.

When I gave up a voluntary position recently I was sad and grouchy, similar to this. A wise friend told me to remember that, even though I chose to give up the role, I was grieving its loss. So even though I know that this friend is doing the right thing by moving I will still mourn her not being here any more.

One of my new year resolutions was to be kind to myself. I need to keep revisiting this. In fact I need to keep revisiting a lot of my resolutions – like the no meat, no dairy, no alcohol. All of which I have “failed” but I will keep going back to giving them another go but maybe not with that whole vigor of “a whole month of …” With each of the giving ups I have to keep revisiting and trying for just today. The same goes with the whole thing of being kind to myself. I need to remember that I am grieving and that I did struggle with the party for my friend last night because I didn’t want to be there.

sunset hands love woman
Photo by Stokpic on Pexels.com

So I will be kind and admit I’m grieving for the loss and change. Don’t tell me she is only an email away. It still means she won’t be at the next prayer day/in the next discussion for the next play/etc. The friendship will have change. And I will have to go through my stages of grief. And if at times it means I’m grumpy and out of sorts then I must be kind to me and let it be

 

Categories
accepting Airbnb being me belief deciding faith God hope life new year peace perspective plans resolutions

Good Morning 2017

… and what do you have in store for us this year?

1
Ok so not the view out of my study window but its a nice picture 🙂 

As I look out my study window things don’t look much different to yesterday. All us early risers are still up and doing our thing, cars are moving, the sky is still dark at 7.15. I expect there will be a littering of fireworks shells and empty bottles around and about. My family and I will be on very different time scales as when I got up to go to the bathroom at 2.30am lights were still on downstairs. By then I’d been asleep for at least 3 hours.

Yesterday I did spend some time wrapping 2016 up and tying it with a ribbon to know that some of it will ooze out into this coming year. There is no clear cut. We’ve got Airbnb bookings already for this year. I’m waiting on replies for workshops. There will be hurts and joys from years gone by that will move into this new year. A new year isn’t like a new baby where the canvass is blank and ready to write on – although new calendars and diaries give us that impression. It is just the turning of a page.

It can be good to think of resolutions on how we will live our year, but then it is also good to do that every day, week, month. Around the start of each month I take a blank calendar new-year-resolution-images-2017page, put all my set things on it and then take my list of things I’d like to do and find out how I can fit them in; things like an artist’s date to write somewhere different, some study time, catch up with people time. And I also reassess if I stuck to my writing goals on the month before. I cannot say that I will leave it all until the end of the year to do this or it may never happen. But also I do not condemn myself if I do not do as I would have like – whether new year resolutions or my plan for the coming week.

Going back to my question for 2017 – what does it have in store for us? No one knows. We watched Charlie Booker’s Wipe 2016 the other evening which started with him saying “good riddance to 2015. That wasn’t a great year. Let’s hope 2016 is better” and then he goes on to say that in fact 2016 seems a lot worse – esp for us here in the West. 2017 could be even worse for the world in general, or it could be better, or it could be a mix of both.

I had an odd comment to my Facebook Happy New Year message. Someone said “Hope 2017 is better than the last 5 years have been for you.” I’m not sure if they meant it for me or for someone else because in reality the last 5 years have had some really tough and really horrid times in them but they have also had some really great times in them. I could series-cropchoose to focus on the awful or to focus on the awesome or actually look at them as a whole and say “we made it through” which often is my response. In fact for me there have been many years in my life time that have been horrendous with smaller smatterings of awesome than we’ve had in the last 5, but I’m hear and I’m still standing and I’ll looking forward to what is to come.

Some of my favourite things for this coming year are:

This from Sally McClung who’s husband Floyd has been very sick for a very long time. She posted this on 30th December –

“I remembered a definition of peace that I heard Floyd give in one of his sermons. Peace does not mean the absence of trouble, but the presence of what is good – God is good! We can rest in His goodness even in the midst of trouble, of storms.
Various forms of peace are mentioned 429 times in the Bible, so the Lord certainly understood that “peace” would be an issue, a need in our lives. Our actions, our attitudes may influence peace, but true peace comes only from God.
“Great peace have those who love your law.” Psalm 119:165
“You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because He trusts in You.” Isaiah 26:3
“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6,7
“The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, and peace.” Galatians 5:22
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” John 14:27″

And this old faithful poem

The Gate Of The Year

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”fenland20gate20linocut2018cm20x2029cm
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

So I’ll still make my resolutions and put in some plans but will hold them lightly. I will look for that good that leads to peace of mind in all that goes on rather than expecting things not to be troubled. I will put my hand in God’s and let Him lead me into the darkness of this coming year. And if by the end of 2017 I trust God more and can see beauty and goodness in more things, situations and people then I think I will have made it.86216-find-peace-in-your-heart

So I pray peace in hearts for 2017