A new year, an invitation to resolutions,
Change, Hope, Health, Prosperity, Wholeness, Intimacy,
yet this is not the first new year,
my track record leads me to question attempting resolution,
How will this year be different?
With each passing year I feel the weight,
More are depending on me now,
The years in front of me are one less,
those behind one more,
My hope is not just that my own eyes might be more at ease with my reflection,
I want good things for them, my wife, my sons, those who I work for & with,
I convince myself at times that it is the needs of my wife, kids, work that are the barriers,
that I am a captive to the momentary need,
that the unfinished is the obstacle to fulfillment of things hoped for,
is it?
The new year brings to the surface longing...
will I allow it to linger
to cause its discomfort
to reflect the incomplete and the untidy,
Sacred Interruption
Ambivalence, holding hope and cynicism. That is how I regard new year's resolution. I am aware of things I want a fresh start with, changes I would love to see take place in and around me, but my track record doesn't bolster my confidence that making new year's resolutions is a worthwhile practice. Maybe my resolve is weaker than most. I can't really think back on a new years resolution that produced the meaningful impact for which I hoped. That could be poor memory too, or simply because the incomplete seems to draw my attention more than the complete. The unresolved resolution is strongest in my memory. I don't know another language, in spite of Rosetta Stone's best efforts. I still eat sweets past 8 o'clock. I don't read quality literature more now than I did in the past. I still can't see my abs. When I sit down to the piano it doesn't sound much different and guitar cords are still foreign to me. The amount of space I give to solitude and reflection seems to be less, not more. How easy it was to make that list! I could go on.
But maybe I should try another list. There surely has been progress toward greater health, intimacy and wholeness in my life. Our house is in better shape. I don't mean we keep it picked up better, but that there have been some projects that have been completed. We have a new roof on our garage and there is more paint and less wallpaper on the walls than there was a year ago.
A lesson from Christmas... inturuption, with us.
Maybe my first resolution this year should be to exercise gratitude more. There are surely many things that have progressed toward greater health, intimacy and wholeness in my life. both because of my efforts and in spite of them.
I lack endurance when it comes to gratitude. Maybe that is something I should resolve to change in the new year...maybe. attentiveness to the incomplete and
------------------ A New Year With Resolution
I don't often make new year's resolutions. It is not that I don't think about them. There are many things I would like to see change in and around me. Those are things of which I am well aware. If I'm honest, at least part of the reason is that I don't want to make public something for which I feel likely to fail. It is just easier to try to blow off the whole tradition.
Yet there is something that nags at me. There is something about new years resolutions that I can't dismiss completely. I have tried to feed new year's resolutions to the skepticism I let run free out back, but something about it just can't be consumed. My skepticism is healthy enough to devour the marketing of weight loss ploys and "you deserve" messaging that is an attempt to vale some corporate interest. It really has no problem ingesting the "you can remake yourself" and "change can be made easy with...." But what survives my skepticism is longing, longing for fresh starts, things made new, transformation. From inside this thing we call new year's resolutions I hear something calling me, it won't go away, it is causing disruption, I can't quite stomach it, it is upsetting.
I dislike disruptions. Maybe more than most, I find them irritating. I can totally lose myself and any momentum I had when I am disrupted. I lose my thoughts mid-sentence when interrupted. I leave sentences half finished all over the place. The reality of which has been reaffirmed to me since my three year old has taken to finishing my sentences when I do not. When he did this I was first impressed and grateful for the assist in finding my way again, though now they are also a reminder of how easily I am derailed. But it's not just sentences. I'll be looking for a wrench and then asked whether I have seen an article in the paper and only return to looking for the tool when my son asks if I have adjusted his training wheels yet. On my way to the bedroom to feed the dog I'll notice that there are shoes out of place and set to organizing them until the dog whines at me. Often I'll just wander hoping for some prompt because I knew I was set on doing something before being distracted, I just can't figure out what it was.
New Year's resolutions are not so different from unfinished sentences, an unfed dog, or training wheels that still aren't adjusted. The only major difference is that being a longer term effort means there are even more opportunities for disruptions to my efforts and fewer people prompting me to return to the task. and the likeoften I get distracted, how easily derailed is my attention. Don't ask me to grab the while I'm washing the dishes. I can either wash dishes or grab the laundar
Backyard disruptions, like back country ones, seem to sneak up. That don't announce themselves in the front yard, on the front porch, too the neighborhood. They happen outside of public view. Jesus's birth was one of those. His was a backyard birth, in a back country town. The very thing that
Subtle disruptions
Not often what comes in the front door that catches us by surprise.
The truth is I do long for the incomplete to be completed the partial to be made whole. I feel the tension of the difference between what is and what can be.
Change doesn't come easy and is usually not on my terms.
Disruption of with us.
marathon, marriage,
God with us
We have as much of God as we want
resolve to answer when my running partner calls, to run when he calls on the days where I ate too much or the weather isn't cooperating, when I have a sore calf I'd rather cater to than stretch, to get up for the morning run we agreed to in spite of the fact I stayed up late. read the wedding vows my spouse gave to me, my wedding vows again, be disrupted by sickness, poorer and death and gratitude for health, richness and life
Resolving
results in greater consumption of some luxury. for some reason tried to let my sketicism about the consume
staying busy dreaming about rearranging the furniture ... what about the foundation. Builder who is with you.
I got disrupted and never finished this blog. Felt fitting. Can you feel the message in the style and in the words. I'll offer it as it is, or it may never be offered at all!
