Dear Spiritual Family,
As the year 2023 is ending and we open the “new chapter” of time called 2024, it’s a good time for some longer-term perspective.
First, William Wadsworth Longfellow wrote: “Great is the art of beginning but greater is the art of ending.” Author Alan Cohen writes in A Daily Dose of Sanity: “As we approach the end of this year, you may look back and decide it was a great year or a tough one for you. None of that matters now. The only thing that matters is that you complete it with style, dignity, and grace. Celebrate the successes and capitalize on the mistakes. Imagine that everything that has happened has worked in your favor, for it has. The most powerful tools for healing, transformation and evolution are appreciation and blessing.”
As you reflect back on your year, can you be gentle with yourself for the times when you had a mis-step or two or ten? Are you willing to feel appreciation, gratitude, and blessings for all that transpired? As we can embrace the Apostle Paul’s teaching, “In all things God works together for good for those who love and seek to serve Him,” we naturally rise in the consciousness of peace and happiness. All is truly well.
Second, we can use the present moments to prayerfully focus on all that we have in our current experience – the “earthly” good, along with rich friendships, our spiritual progress, and the other elements that add to our sense of well-being. At the center of this step, we will find it most helpful to deeply feel God’s Love. It is of course a Gift that “waits” for us at every turn but to meditate deeply on how rich and powerful this Love is, brings us to a state of abiding joy. How better to honor and be blessed by the “essence” of Christmas?
Third, In the words of Thomas Paine, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” And again, from the wisdom of our friend, Alan Cohen: “As you set out on a journey, the direction in which you’re pointed at its outset makes a huge difference as to where and when you arrive at your destination….So it is when you begin a new year. Be clear on where you want to go, and you will get there far more rapidly and efficiently than if you harbor mixed intentions or take actions out of alignment with your true choices.”
Alan asks us to ask ourselves the questions, “What would be the best thing that could happen to me this year? How would I most like to feel?”
As we review this year spent with you through our video and written messages and conversations with many of you in person, by email or text or phone, we are filled with the sweet energy of appreciation and blessing. We are also so grateful for the love you express in your support for our work and for willingly receiving our love. The channels of Heaven are open wide and flowing with so much goodness and abundance!
This New Year is enriched by our collective willingness to end 2023 with a lighter touch, to be centered richly and wholeheartedly in God and to be joyfully expectant of even greater good in the coming days and months of 2024.
We love you,
Rev. Steve and Mary