by Rev. Jim Fuller
Perhaps you were at Unity Church us for our annual New Year’s Eve Burning Bowl Service. Or perhaps you participated in some other service or celebration to welcome in the New Year. You may have decided not to carry some of your old habits, thoughts or resentments into 2015. You may have set intentions to build new friendships, self-care routines or spiritual practices into this New Year. These are good practices and will help you enrich your life. But are they enough to produce a truly “New” Year?
Reflecting back on previous years we may notice that while each successive year brought some new things most of what took place in our lives tended to be a repetition of the past. Occasionally something unexpected happens to us or someone close to us and that produces some major change or shift in our life. We refer to those years as years of major life changes and reflecting back we may notice that we grew as a result of the experience. But once the unexpected event ends we usually seek for and settle back into routines that resemble, as much as possible, our previous life.
In her book “The Gift of Change” Marianne Williamson writes: “When I was younger I wanted to be older, and when I got older I wanted to be younger. When I was living in one place I wanted to live in another, and when I was doing one thing I want to be doing something else… It seemed that somehow I wasn’t enough, what I was doing wasn’t enough, and therefore my life was never enough.” She goes on to address the process through which we can move into a deeper transformation of our life. “When we accept ourselves exactly as we are, and where we are, we have more energy to give to life. We are not wasting our time trying to make things different. Any moment that we relax into the deeper ground of our being, giving up all struggle to be anywhere else, we’re in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.” This she notes is the necessary prerequisite for real change to enter. “There is a plan for our lives – God’s plan – and it oversees exactly where we are and where we are going. As soon as we have learned to live most brightly in our present conditions, new and better ones will arrive immediately. But until we learn the lessons of the present, they will simply reappear in new guises, and it will seem that nothing ever changes.”
You will see similar ideas expressed in the writings of Myrtle and Charles Fillmore and many other spiritual teachers. Be present in the Now. Learn to express and extend love and to serve right where you are. Make peace with yourself and your past today. When we are in a troubling situation these words may sound rather trite. But if we practice being really present with our self and our life situations in more ordinary times we will find that we have developed a greater capacity to do this in times of change as well. And as Marianne notes, “As soon as we have learned to live most brightly in our present conditions, new and better ones will arrive immediately.”
God may have a plan for our lives, “Surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11); however, it is up to us to either turn our attention toward this greater good (Greater God) or to continue moving in directions of our own planning. Like Marianne and Jeremiah I believe that there is a greater plan for each of us; after all we are God’s children and therefore naturally gifted. In fact based on my experience I believe that there are many great plans for each of us and that each successive one will show up as we embrace our current situation and “live brightly” within it.
There is a beautiful section in A Course In Miracles that states: “Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, ‘My brother, choose again.’” While we might resist the associations that the word “trials” invokes we can gladly embrace the idea that each new day and each New Year offers us the opportunity to choose again. Will I step up to life as it is showing up for me today? Will I trust that by “living brightly” right where I am, I am actually opening doorways to greater and greater experiences of life? Or will I cling to past thoughts and habits all the while hoping that somehow this year might be “better” than the last?
How “New” will your New Year be? It can be as new as the day you were born. It can be filled with new ways to engage with your present life. It can be a time of new beginnings and a brighter present and future. And when difficult situations arise you can choose to approach with them from a place of compassion and prayerful discernment, to make different choices and thus free yourself from old thoughts and habits that have bound in the past. There are greater plans (think opportunities) for good for each of us. They are always present. It’s part of the loving and orderly working of Creation. Our work is to engage with our present situations with appreciation and enthusiasm, to live brightly; and as we do that our New Year and our new life will begin to open up before us. I offer the following affirmation to help carry you through your New Year.
2015 is a great year for me, for Unity, and for my community.