A New Year’s Blessing

Beginnings and endings are difficult for me-- including the beginning and ending of each year. What intensity of emotion, what weight of reflection, and what pressure I feel to begin or end well. I want these closing and dawning moments to unfold with the reverence, beauty, and formality they deserve. I fear that I will somehow fail to live up to the moment, and so feel overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of beginnings and endings. When I was a little girl, I even felt crippled by the task of writing the first page in a new diary-- felt the burden of expressing myself with a worthy introduction. Not much has changed, hence, this delay in composing Chapel’s first entry of the new year.