New Year, New Sweetness

Standing on the threshold...

Dear friends,

“At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.”

John O’Donohue, excerpt from his book: To Bless the Space Between Us

We are crossing the thresholds periodically (on a regularly scheduled time, such as from one year to the next), and at unexpected times, when life ushers into a new experience: we become parents, we get married, we move, we change careers, we lose a loved one, we get older, we learn something new that propels us to a new place. Some thresholds are unexpected; others are planned and known. Life is a mix of both.

As we have now stepped across the threshold of a new year and sinking in now with both feet, I was pondering how I could keep better track of my days. I read a post in the Isolation Journals, and the author writes of seeking sweetness in the year ahead: “By looking for the sweetness, I mean seeking beauty, presence, and peace in every circumstance.”

She was recently diagnosed with a recurrence of a serious kind of cancer, and I found her words hopeful and inspiring in the midst of her difficult journey. I think she nails it when she says, “It’s an ongoing practice—to stay nimble, to accept the constant flux, to find contentment wherever I am.”

So this is what I want to do: to believe and look for the sweetness in the year ahead. To stay nimble—and not numb. To find contentment. The truth is I don’t know what awaits–none of us do. Our days swirl together with honey and ashes, with goodness dripping and with the fiery flames of trials. Both can be–and often are–true at the same time.

Our divisions of time (such as the beginning of a new year) are frontiers. Just as is each new (or recurring) challenge and circumstance. It’s a frontier, with unexpected vistas ahead, and unexpected sweetnesses. It’s a given challenges always await us.

But it’s also a given that so does the sweetness. I can forget this amidst the cloudiness and grays and difficult times.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather live my life like this, remembering the sweetness, and looking for it.

I had dinner with a friend recently, and I shared this thought with her of finding sweetness in the year ahead, and she pointed out to me we were eating at a restaurant called “Sweetgreen” (a place that serves up healthy greens, healthy bowls). Indeed! I hadn’t even realized it. Here we were, talking about finding sweet things in the year, at a restaurant with the word “sweet” in it, and with a sweet friendship to celebrate.

Apparently it was one of those moments where all the stars come together. And you realize it was meant to be, this seeking after what is sweet. We know the sweet and pleasant co-mingle with the painful and heartrending, so knowing this, I want to intentionally look for the sweet.

So, how to remember? How to do this?uns

Well, I found an idea that intrigued me as a practice for this year.

It sounds easy, and it isn’t time-intensive, and yet on a weekly basis, can help remind me of something good that week.

Pick a jar, a mason jar or any old jar will work. At the end of the week, put a slip of paper in the jar as a reminder of something good, sweet, inspiring, beautiful that happened that week. At the end of the year, we’ll have a jarful of slips of paper with those sweet reminders of each week.

If your life is like mine, with full-time work and other obligations, with regular challenges that regularly arise to meet me face-to-face, recording this on a daily basis isn’t something I can commit to - or want to commit to.

I want to remember, but I often have to pick and choose where my time is spent.

So this slip of paper in the jar is the right option for me.

What about you and your plans in the new year? Do you make lists? Resolutions? Intentions? Journal?

Care to join me in putting slips of sweetness in a jar? At the end of the year, we can share our jars (and some little bits of sweetness?)

Ah, that is something to look forward to! Comment below if you are in.

Moving across the threshold with the tiniest bit of an intention to remember what is sweet and good to remember.

All photos in this post courtesy of pexels

Make it a lovely one,