What a Year...

What a year for a new year

We need it like we needed life I guess

Last one left us lying in a mess

What a year for a new year

What a night for a sunrise

And we thought the dark would never end

Reaching out to try to find a friend

What a night for a sunrise

For last year’s Christmas CD, “Cool Yule Tunes 2005”*, I included Dan Wilson’s melancholy yet expectant song, “What a Year for a New Year”, for it seemed to encapsulate my feelings about how 2005 was ending for me.

In the last few months of ’05, I had lost a colleague to a tragic death, a romance had ended (and I feared a friendship as well), my job was in the process of being "down-sized", and the funding for an exciting, progressive ministry to which I was being called had fallen through. 2005 truly “left [me] lying in a mess”. But as I stood at the brink of 2006, I was hopeful. Terrified and trembling at that threshold of the unknown. But hopeful, none the less. For even in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty around me (or maybe because of the chaos and uncertainty), I sensed something big and beautiful was in the process of being born within me and through me.

So, here it is, the new year I needed last year is coming to a close. I still don’t know what the “something big and beautiful” is - exactly. But I hear it whisper to me as the chimes outside my bedroom window ring out and remind me of the presence of the Divine moving about all around me. And I catch glimpses of it as I walk the streets of the South Loop and imagine the faith community to be born there. And I feel it stirring within me when I rest in the abundant love that surrounds me.

As 2007 dawns anew, I give thanks for this last year. And I eagerly await discovering what the new year has in store.

What a day for new day

And our star shines like a miracle

And our world is almost beautiful again

What a day for a new day

-Dan Wilson, "What a Year for a New Year"

Thanks for accompanying me on this journey, my friends. I wish you peace and joy and love in 2007.

* note: the “CYT ‘06” CD was not completed in time to arrive before Christmas. I hope to get some Epiphany letters or maybe Groundhog Day letters sent out, but I guess the mix-CD some of my holiday favorites will have to wait until 2007. For those of you who enjoy my quirky mixes, I apologize. I just didn’t get them done.