What happens as the New Year 2020 emerges from the compost of the old? Perhaps we look forward with such anticipation because we are crossing a threshold. It is a door opening, and if we cross through, we may never return again. Old habits, old ways of thinking, of imagining and of being begin to fade into the grey. Still ahead of us are bright promises or hopes for what may be coming into view. It’s like that moment in the early morning, when the sky is brightening, brightening, and the sun is beginning to peek up over the horizon, but it isn’t quite daylight yet. Two weeks into the New Year, we are on the precipice, waiting, waiting, until that moment of dawning—whenever that is—comes upon us. It’s a new day, and suddenly we wonder what happened to the old one? Where were we all night, in that crucial transition between one day and the next—between what has been and what is becoming, between who we were just a day ago and who we are today?
At Prairiewoods, we are aware of the great Turning, when we come into consciousness about the transition we are experiencing globally today. We are moving from a hierarchical, dualistic paradigm into a radically inter-dependent paradigm. As we explore the profound inter-connection of all life, we are aware of new life emerging, changing, and growing, which can be painful, awkward, and scary. Resistances and self-absorption may arise when change feels overwhelming. We are hyper-aware of the cycles of life, dying, death, and rebirth that permeate the web of life. We are constantly in some state of transition from what has been to what is becoming. Sometimes, the feeling is unsettling. We just begin to settle in and get used to “the new normal,” the way things are around us, the familiar faces, the stable relationships and predictable outcomes, when—suddenly, or maybe gradually, but have we been paying attention?—it all changes. We may find ourselves grasping, looking backward, trying to remake reality into what has been, when we last felt on solid ground, or safe and comfortable, or in control. Yet, life is a symphony of change, an epic of transition in which diminishment, decay, dying, and death all give way to new life and unbounded energy. It is the way of our universe that births new life into being. It is like falling in Love, or being transformed by Love. It is the nature of Love to go outside itself, to be infused with and to infuse new energy and transform what seemed separate into a more complex, creative wholeness, into a new “We.” What seemed like two just a moment ago is now a new, cohesive whole. We recognize that new energy as somehow completing a circuit, electrifying anything around us, everything we touch. Whatever that unitive energy is, it is the best, most unmooring perhaps, and most ecstatic energy in the universe. It’s the energy that walks us through the door of possibility, of becoming, when we might just as well have stayed where we were.
For our ongoing New Year’s reflection, as we hover on the brink of something totally new, we might ask, “What is it that I’m saying good-bye to, letting go of, releasing for the hope of what may be coming? How big was my ‘We’ last year? What was it like being there (last year), and what do I celebrate, give thanks for, and miss? What must I retire, release, or relinquish in order to move forward into this New Year? What is it like being here, being now, being alive to what is at this moment, this kinetic in-between? How expansive can my ‘We’ become in this New Year? Who/what will help me to expand, to flow with the change that is necessary for life and growth? Now that I am anticipating the ‘New’ Year, what might actually become new?”
—Laura A. Weber, Ph.D., Prairiewoods associate director and retreats coordinator