New Years Day: December 31st
What Is My Theme for This Coming Year?

Sometimes all the things you've never dealt with come to find you, and you know there is no longer a place to hide; there is only a place to live. You sense, somehow, that love is drawing you. That the one Great Spirit knows exactly where healing must begin. That there is a church within, and your task is to kneel there before the heart of God and finally agree to your life, just as Mary did. Young as she was, she opened to the inner Light.

I think of my friend who awakened one morning hearing God say, "Give me half your heart, and I'll show you half my power. Give me all your heart, and I'll change your life." He was visibly disturbed by the words because he believed them. And Mary, apparently, also believed but did not respond with clenched teeth. Consent transfigured her. Illumined her. Surrender ennobled her as it waits to ennoble us. It's as if an angel stands before us saying, "Here. This is the life being held out to you. This is the very place where the spirit touches you. Here is the altar of your healing."

John Kirvan writes, "We ask too little of life...we forever hesitate, hold back...." Maybe. But then what holds us back? Which fears, which expectations are so compelling that when face to face with the outstretched love of the Divine, we turn away? I think of the moment I sat alone, on the floor of my closet, holding my late husband's bathrobe. His death was fresh, and bewilderment and disorientation held me in a strong grip. Then, in the quiet, a voice asked, "What are you doing with the life you've been given?"

I had never wondered that. I hadn't noticed much of anything. I had just lived day to day. I'd moved through the ether of activities and traditions as if they were life. What was I doing? What was Mary doing? She was busy losing the outer life so she could live the life within. She was kneeling before the heart of God. She was embracing everything that came her way in order to walk the only way that mattered.

Consider choosing a theme for this new year. The Year of Quiet? The Year of Daring? The Year of Healing? The Year of Love? Or maybe, the Year of Consent?


by Paula D'Arcy, Redbird Foundation
from the book: Daybreaks