For Today - Going On

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. - Hal Borland

It is a beautiful morning -- cold, sunny, frosty.  I awoke with the cat nestled beside me, contented.

I made a beautiful dinner last night that we enjoyed very much.  I watched a movie while M. slept beside me.  He watched maybe 20 minutes on and off of a 149 minute film!  It could have felt lonely but it didn't.  He was warm against me and the film was engrossing, a psychological thriller based on the novel Gone Girl.  After the film, we had tea and dessert and simply talked for a couple hours.  At New Year, we heard fireworks in the neighbourhood and wished each other good wishes, holding hands.  He gives of himself what he can to me.  And I do the same.  At times, and in time, I want more.  In fact, I want more now.  But I trust I am given what I can handle.  And it feels pretty good. 

Yesterday's storms are hard to understand.  This morning's calm is equally hard to understand.  So I give that up.  My understanding is imperfect.  Today's reading talks about how all the New Year (and other time) pledges, resolutions, promises to reform are misguided attempts to be in control.  I think I can see that.  I know they don't work.  As For Today says this morning, "the best time to give up my will, my old ideas, my defects is any time I am ready to grow."

The quote this morning is from American writer / nature writer, Hal Borland (1900-1978), who was, among other things, a staff writer and editorialist at the New York Times.  Some of his other thoughts that resonate with me this New Year's morning are these:

• Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience.  Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
• Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom; but the ultimate wisdom,, which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed.  There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls forth faith rather than reason.
• For all his learning or sophistication, man still instinctively reaches towards that force beyond.  Only arrogance can deny its existence, and the denial falters in the face of evidence on every hand.  In every tuft of grass, in every bird, in every opening bud, there it is.
• There are no limits to either time or distance, except as man himself may make them.  I have but to touch the wind to know these things.
• No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.

The Big Book talks about this kind of growth too:

...all problems will not be solved at once.  Seed has started to sprout in new soil, but growth has only begun.  In spite of your new-found happiness, there will be ups and downs.  Many of the old problems will still be with you.  This is as it should be.

The faith and sincerity ... will be put to the test.  These workouts should be regarded as part of your education, for thus you are learning to live.  You will make mistakes, but if you are in earnest they will not drag you down.  Instead you will capitalize them.  A better way of life will emerge when they are overcome. [Big Book, p.117] 

Seed sprouts.  I am learning to live.  It is mid-winter; all around me the rhythm of life goes on.  And so do I.  Blessed be.