Reflections At The Start of a New Year

REFLECTIONS AT THE START OF A NEW YEAR

by Paul Moore

Some years are hard to let go of.  Others, we’re glad to see in the rear-view mirror.  I’m ready for a new year!  2024 had its joys, but it was also a year in which advancing age was painfully (literally) apparent, for me and my wife.

I was born in 1949.  My mother had emigrated from Newfoundland to marry my father and they were just two years into what would be a 70 year marriage, living in a new little house in New Jersey.  There was no way for my grandmother to make the trip from Newfoundland in the winter, and so she corresponded with my mother by mail.  In one of her letters, she enclosed a beautifully printed card with the following message:

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year,

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied,

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into

the hand of God.  That shall be to you better than light

and safer than a known way.”

My father framed that card and it was on the wall above my crib when they brought me home from the hospital.  Battered a bit over the last 75 years, it is on the bookshelf in my den.

It is still the best guidance I can offer, to you and to myself.  However you name your higher power, lean into that power as the delights and perils of another year come info focus!

Wishing you joy and strength in 2025.