I took a one-year sabbatical from blogging. Several times in 2014 I felt the itch to process life lessons or new ideas through public writing, but I refrained for no other reason than I perceived it as a non-essential, and life was full enough.
Today I sit in a quiet house, pre-dawn, the cat just let out for her morning prance in the frigid yard, the kids and their sleep-over friends blanketed across floors and couches following their New Year's Eve parties, dirty dishes still cluttering the counter, a big, prickly pineapple ready for breakfast slicing. I'm soaking in the Vitamin D-glow from my Verilux Happy Light, a perfect gift for a Northerner in winter.
On my side table: Wendell Berry's Jaber Crow, Billy Collin's Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems, John Piper's A Godward Heart, and my fresh, new journal from Gracie. Also reading glasses, the unwelcome addition to the pile.
It is the first day of 2015.
I am feeling optimistic.
I am thinking about ONE guiding word for this year, after a decade of choosing 3 guiding words each year.
It is: Mindfulness.
I am not satisfied with any definitions I have read. They vary depending on your faith disposition, so I will invent my own. Mindfulness means active listening to whoever I'm with, to my own mind and body, and to my God. It rejects distraction. It rejects impulsiveness. It's slow, careful, kind, and thoughtful. It loves it's object of attention and pours forth warmth and good will.
I will be mindful of what nourishes my body and soul, and of how I can nourish others in word and deed. I must remember that new neural pathways of mindfulness must be made through rigorous repetition, because I have let the pathways frazzle and relocate to unhealthy places.
2014 was ripe with new adventures, but I lost the poetry and lyric that has always defined my life. And I was accused regularly of half-hearted attention to my family. Wince.
But, again, I am optimistic.
I am looking out my window now, watching as a straight-edged gray veil is being lifted slowly above the snowy roofs and spidery trees. It's edges are becoming a sun-drenched pink that only the God and maybe Thomas Kinkade can create.
I am visualizing myself closing my laptop when my family awakens and beginning Day 1 of mindfulness.
