A New Year Pause to Consider
Meeting the New Year with Yes's and No's
The story of a year. It is not the whole story certainly. Not the story of a lifetime. Just a piece of the whole. I say this to myself as I consider the beginning of this year and the end of the last. Am I late to do this? It is, after all, already 12 days into January. I smile at myself as I write this. Twelve days is barely a dribble into the stream of what this year might be, into the flowing river of my life, into the ocean of time.
I consider, is it ok to know and to not know what I long to turn the page into? Or to recognize the ache in my heart, the feelings and qualities I long for, to recognize even the grief for what has not been, and not quite know how to meet this ache? To simply hold it up as a prayer given?
This time of January is a liminal place—a place of no more and also not yet. January, named after the Greek god Janus, the god of the doorway, offers us a doorway into a receiving place, the threshold of the year ahead. But somehow it’s also not quite the year ahead. It can be disconcerting to move from the flurry of activity at the end of the last year into this quieter place, where this not yet can leave us restless and eager to wrap up loose ends, fill the empty feeling that often accompanies liminal spaces with meaning making, goals, agendas, plans.
I am thinking of the desire that often accompanies January to create a list of resolutions—things to change or goals to meet in the year ahead. Or the desire to “atone” for whatever “sins” we committed in January health-wise—so cleanses, new exercise routines, giving up alcohol, often become means to take back some control.
There is another possibility. As 2025 begins, I find myself in a state of inquiry about my no’s and my yes’s for these coming days; inquiry over the story I wish to be written into me. I find myself grieving some things that didn’t happen this past year and wondering about the parts of the story that might be edited to convey the feelings and experiences I wish to behold.
When I was in grad school working on my Fine Arts degree in poetry, I worked with a writer named Chris Abani. He was masterful, talented—and ruthless. He often edited his students’ poems down to one single line. This is the whole poem, he’d say. The rest can go.
This particular way of “trimming” down to the heart of the work was incredibly frustrating. Yet, his is the teaching I remember best. I remembered this over the summer, learning to garden. At first, I’d throw every seed, every new plant, at the ground, with a very solid more is more philosophy. Invariably, this way taught me how to consider more space, to leave room for plants to take root, and to ruthlessly discern what couldn’t be contained in the plot of earth available to me.
I realize I’m mixing metaphors, but writing and gardening, stories and plants, are quite alike to me. I think most of all, it is in realizing that I am mainly participating in something that has less to do with my attempts at control and more to do with that which God grows in and through me. It’s the same with the unfolding of a year.
So again I return to consider, what are my New Year yes’s? What are my New Year no’s? The ache in me longs for beauty, connection, joy. I wonder over the possibilities that will mean my yes’s reflect this ache. And how might I grow more comfortable with the no’s? Much like the editor removing unnecessary words so the heart of meaning can shine, or the gardener choosing not to overfill the land that’s hers, can I acknowledge the invitation to say no more often this year? The discomfort at this idea leaves me recognizing a small state of panic. What if I hurt someone’s feelings? What if someone gets angry with me or I let them down?
My desire to maintain relationship and to meet the excitement of saying yes can be an obstacle for me. Yet, turning back to look through the doorway and glimpse the year that’s been, I am grieved by some things that didn’t happen or didn’t happen well. And while I don’t regret the way I lived 2024, I do recognize how very much I tried to fit into the small space I’d been given—and what this meant I had to leave out.
And, even as I say this, I also look back on the year behind and can say to myself well done. Isn’t that important too? Indeed. This practice of pausing in the threshold of the new year and considering what I don’t want to miss out on in this coming year, which feelings I wish to experience, what I did that answered a longing within, is a practice of tilling the inner soil, preparing me to become aware of both the good growth available when I say yes to life and the beautiful potential for space within every no.
An Adaptable Yoga practice, from me to you: Yoga with Christa I will return with a second one later today along with some news for paid subscribers.
Finally, join me this fall in Portugal. I couldn’t be more excited about this location on the Algarve Coast. (click on the link to see more)
