January Twenty-Twenty-Three

 

"As we open the door to welcome a new year, 

We bless each other.

May we welcome this year with openness, acceptance, and kindness--

For each other, for our neighbors, and for ourselves.

May we cultivate real love,

Creating little pockets of home wherever we are…

May we choose the community’s good over self-giving love. 

May we listen more intently and lovingly, and serve one another better.

Give us opportunities to practice the hope we long to embody.

May ignorance, fear, hatred, and violence towards the other cease. 

Instead let communication, connection, communion, and celebration enlighten these spaces.

Expand our sense of home so that we find and create belonging well…

Bless us as we fully show up for our lives.
May we fall in love with our own becoming, and
listen more to our own souls when we're in pain…

May we embrace uncertainty and mystery 

while grounding ourselves in love and connection on every level. 

And may we know we - every single one of us - are Beloved…

Giver of endless grace, tune our hearts to hear the truth of your sufficiency and our enoughness.

May we be blessed to accept our challenges with grace and dignity.

Thank you, author of the Earth, for writing on our hearts 

the shared moments and lonely ones in this past year. 

Help us to lean into our secrets, hopes, loves, and pain more in the coming year than we have in the past one…

May laughter come as easily as tears,

joy as profound as our sorrow,

May we pursue play and wonder in the midst of the rhythms of the day to day

 and find the dance within each moment…

May we explore new pathways of healing,

Even in the midst of the wilderness of uncertainty. 

May we be given companions and true friends in our journey.

Give us enough light to see the next step and the next and the next.

As we cross this new threshold,

May we be met with love." 

 -Sarah Bessey