Tag: newyear

Reading · Spirituality

A New Year Reflection on Hope

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If asked to summarize my feelings about the year just ending, I would admit 2025 did not inspire confidence even as our personal lives were less chaotic and pessimistic than most.  However, just hours into this new year I am struck by the number of references I am finding on the theme of hope. Here are three –

This morning, I discovered an upbeat article in a most unusual source, The New York Times, where author Lauren Jackson urges the reader to move from cynicism to hope.  She cites research conducted by the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma which specifies that hope is “one of the strongest indicators of well-being.  It helps improve the immune system and aids in the recovery from illness.”  Chan Hellman, Director of the Center, goes on to say, “while optimism is the belief that the future will be better, hope is the belief that we have the power to make it so.”

Today’s musical earworm is a favorite winter hymn, Come Sing a Song with Me, included in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal with words and music by Carolyn McDade, ©1976.  And, when we join in song, the chorus predicts: 

And I’ll bring you hope when hope is hard to find, and I’ll bring a song of love and rose in the wintertime.

And to conclude my triad on hope, I will give a nod to fellow bloggers, Bonny, Kat, and Kym who regularly offer poetic inspiration in A Gathering of Poetry every third Thursday of the month.  While I know it is only the first and not the third, it is a Thursday, so I am sharing an original composition by Jane N., age 9.  As we move into 2026, may we skeptical adults take inspiration from the children in our midst.

Hope

Hope winds its way
Through the branches of the bare trees 
Like silk ribbon.
 
It snakes through the villages
 And into the homes of the people. 
It settles into their hearts 
Lighting the way.
 
Hope.

I am enjoying my holiday and starting this new month with a cup of Chocolat Vitale made from Belgium and Swiss chocolate and curled up with my copy of Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver ©2017. 

Happy New Year and may your days be healthy and hopeful. 

Knitting

Celebrating the New Year with a New Sweater

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close up of shoulder and collar of a handknit sweater in silvery gray and maroon checks
handknit sweater in silvery gray and maroon checks
close up the sleeves of a handknit sweater in silvery gray and maroon checks

As I begin typing, it is midnight in Chișinău, Moldova – the most eastern locale I have visited. To celebrate 2026, I am shaking a vintage noise maker and presenting Kleine Cardigan. I began knitting this sweater in February as part of Knit Camp’s first ever virtual travel club and Marie Greene’s annual winter knit-a-long (KAL) workshop.  While I completed the knitting in August, this organic merino project was packed away for our move to Solstice Place. Just today it came off the blocking squares and it is ready to wear in the new year.  The sweater’s repeating check pattern pays homage to the Swiss flag, although I did take the liberty with my colors as the silvery gray and maroon combo will better suit my wardrobe palate.   

Happy knitting and Happy New Year! Or, more appropriately – Viel Spaß beim Stricken und ein frohes neues Jahr!

Writing

A Valentine Twist

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white and blue stamped and sealed envelopes framed by pick roses

The simple Christmas letter. A theme for stand-up comics and it has probably been the subject of an SNL skit or two. It is received with excitement as the chance to catch up but may elicit unintentional groans as it is withdrawn from the envelope, depending upon the letter’s length.

Certainly not of sociological merit to warrant research, but what do we know of its demise? Is it simply the victim of postage rate increases? Or, no longer needed in these TikTok days? A quick comparison of two of my personal lists – the 80-plus addresses comprising the mailing labels in the top drawer of my desk and my social media “friends” (air quotes appropriate) reveals few crossovers.

As I reported earlier, I am not inclined to make New Year’s resolutions but as 2023 slipped into a new January, I promised to try (emphasis on “to try”) and write more in the days ahead. I intended these written expressions to take the form of blog posts but I am now inclined to expand my medium from electronic page to printed paper. What unwritten rule prescribes that the holiday letter must be Yuletide greetings? Better timing might be a Fourth of July letter, a mid-summer missive, amid sparklers, s’mores or, as Nat King Cole croons “…[during] those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer; [to] dust off the sun and moon and sing a song [that is a letter] of cheer.” Or a crazy concoction of Christmas letter and sweet childhood valentines. Cannot you just hear James Bond sophisticated confidence: “Shaken not stirred” so as not to disturb the delicate lacy heart shaped edges?

This oddly timed February letter would be written while still in winter’s hibernating time – before pruning blueberry bushes; before green garlic shoots force themselves through the composting leaves; before lilac bouquets – all while endeavoring to blend holiday greetings and catch-up letter. And, if I start drafting such a composition now, I would still be just days from the previous year so that events of 2023 would not be old news and, paired with plans for the coming months, could update family and friends scattered across two continents. A letter composed in mid-winter stillness rather than frenzied holiday preparations; a greeting without chocolates, without perfume (I am seeing the Versace Eros fragrance commercial in my mind) and without complicating the florist’s second busiest day of the year.

Halfway through January, nearly two-dozen days from New Year’s Eve, I may have landed on an additional resolution – one that is easy to accomplish by mixing time, HP printer ink, and Forever stamps in a cocktail shaker of Valentine’s Day greetings.

Photo credit:  Nur Yilmaz from Prexels

Writing

A New Year’s Resolution

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number 2024 set against a white and gold background

It has been years, even decades since Richard and I made New Year’s resolutions.  We are just not that kind of couple.  If something needs changing, we don’t wait for a noteworthy date, we just do it.  And, if everything is going fine — well — no resolutions are necessary.

This New Year’s Day I feel ready to commit to more writing.  When I began this blog in May 2020 (during the early days of pandemic lockdown) I was simply seeking a creative outlet.  Surprisingly, I discovered I enjoy this artful activity and 206 blog posts later, I feel my writing skills have improved.  During the past few months, writing and posting have been irregular as life happened, Richard’s broken foot and planning Momma’s 100th birthday bash but I promised I would not apologize should posting slack off, so no self-recriminations, only a resolution to write more.

Happy New Year!

Spirituality

“Wrapped in blue cloud cloth…”

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heart shaped antique glass Christmas ornament on tree with three lights (blue, red and yellow)

We celebrated my Mom’s 99th birthday on Thursday.  She still lives in the house my Dad built 60 years ago.  During the past few months, she has undertaken a new task – finding those things she has not used in years and feels she no longer needs.  Nearly every day, when I call her, she proudly describes what she has moved to the small green bedroom (her designated collection point) there to await my next visit when I will deliver these gently used items to the thrift store.

Following her example, I have started de-cluttering our house.  It is amazing just how much stuff is tucked up on closet shelves, hidden in desk drawers, or stashed in the way-back corner of the bottom kitchen cupboard; items that certainly served a purpose or filled a want but which have mostly been forgotten.  It feels good put into practice the three Rs – reduce, recycle, reuse..

My first thoughts about 2023 were tinged with wariness.  After all, this past year was filled with false starts and yet more uncertainty.  Then I began nudging myself toward a change in attitude; if only a shift in semantics.  Rather than looking at the coming tomorrows with trepidation, I am trying to change my language and look at the new year as time of mystery; balancing cautiousness and excitement; looking at the days ahead with a sense of wonder. 

I recently rediscovered a volume of poetry by Langston Hughes, originally published for children, but with lyrical phrases that offer weighty advice to children of all ages.  His poem, “The Dream Keeper” gave me insight as to how I might approach my attitude adjustment.  He wrote:

Bring me all of your dreams, 
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

That phrase “That I may wrap them in a blue cloud cloth” rang true as I gently wrapped my Grandmother’s heart-shaped mercury glass ornament and put it away for another year; carefully handling the fragile heirloom all the while joyously celebrating childhood memories and thoughts of future holidays. 

The poet’s words also reminded me that my hopes for today and tomorrow will need tender protection from “too rough fingers of the world” and that I need to keep that “blue cloud cloth” close at hand so that I might safely wrap my dreams while looking for the wonder and the mystery in the days ahead.

Happy New Year!

Knitting

Project Peace – part 3

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Project Peace Shawl – a 2020 Knit-a-long with Christina Campbell

And with the end of 2020 came the completion of this year’s Project Peace shawl.  I started with three stitches and, just before midnight, I cast off 483 stitches while enjoying Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse sing and dance our way into the New Year. 

December was another Covid month; all our gifts arrived by mail but also sunny drives in rural Wisconsin, the first shovelable snow, and quiet knitting while enjoying Christina Campbell’s daily thoughts on peace.  Her words reflect my sentiments on both knitting and peace:

Knitting... such a simple act, one stitch followed by the next,
lined up in columns of stitches, twisting and turning, 
openings here and there, 
ultimately creating a beautiful fabric to warm the recipient...
     knitting ... one stitch at a time from one continuous fiber...
     knitting does not promise to be easy...
     knitting does not promise to be without mistakes and flaws...
     knitting does not promised to be a constant state of harmony...
     and so it is true with peace.
           Christina Campbell, December 21, 2020