terrible years really make you understand the point of a new year. i know nothing much will have changed between dec 31 and jan 1, but we need to be able to partition off everything that’s happened to us, we need a moment to say, ‘that’s done, we’re done with it, it’s over’ and have a little hope that the future will be different. we need to be able to stop and take a breath and sing, in the middle of winter, and prepare ourselves for spring.
“So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug. Let’s lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up and out and around. The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning. Oremus. Let us pray.”
