At the Source with Rev. Nina Clark

So here we are at the top of a year again. I like to think of it as the top of the year, because when I think of it as the bottom of the year, which could work just as well, I find myself squinting at this image of an arduous climb towards December, with steep inclines and hanging off the side of cliff faces complete with crampons and ropes. No, I prefer an image of me standing on a hill with the vista of the rest of the new year spread out in front of me like an open road.

From this eagle eye vantage point, each month holds intrigue and promise, mystery and adventure. I know that I will pass through each of these months, even though, as we well know, they are all a mental constructs, but since we’re playing the earth game... I know that I will pass through each of these months - but I don’t yet know what they hold in store for me. They are as yet, blank pages, waiting for me to write on them, or live into them.

This starting with the blank page I think is, at least for me, a better way to start the New Year than with a bunch of resolutions. Resolutions feel to me like I’m fixing something that is wrong with me: for example - do more of something I feel that I don’t do enough of. Why? Because I feel bad about myself that I don’t do more of whatever that is. Or, I can resolve to do less of something or stop it all together because I’ll be a better person if I stop doing those things (which implies that I’m not as good as I could or should be…) And starting off from this place of should and not-enoughness tends to result (at least for me) in not being so resolute about those resolutions.

But a blank slate. A pristine page. Unwritten. Months of blank pages rolled out in front of us just begging us to write on them. And we don’t have to plan them all out (we can’t, since life has a way of changing our plans anyway- did any one of us see a pandemic coming?) so perhaps not trying to scribe every detail but instead bringing ourselves more fully present to each day as we move through the year, maybe that is a better way to start a new year or a new day no matter time of year it is.

Starting this way with a blank slate doesn’t tell me that something is wrong with me, but instead calls me into greater expression of the Who that I already am but don’t know fully yet. It allows for adventure and mystery, calls forth curiosity, listening, discovery and delight at my own unfolding and learning.

The question is: Are we being and doing consciously, or unconsciously? Are we dragging around old notebooks filled with all of the fearful reasons of why we can’t, or shouldn’t, or are not enough, or don’t deserve or are filled with lengthy explanations why something can’t be any other way than the way that it is?

How about entertaining this question: What if? Author Vern McLellan writes: “What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”

So let’s bring a fresh sheet of paper and maybe even a brand new pen to this new year. Instead of starting from a consciousness of correction - either adding what we think will make us new and improved or removing that which makes us not so hot right now - what if instead we allow Spirit to reveal to us what and who we already are? What is we allow ourselves to become fully present to the Truth that we are truly unlimited. That by not rewriting our past on today’s blank piece of paper, a road of adventure and mystery and new possibilities open up before us.

Let us choose today, in this moment, that our past will no longer dictate our future.