Barbara A. Woods Washington, M. Div.
“We will open the book. It’s pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and it’s first chapter is New Year’s Day.” Edith Lovejoy Pierce
“One of the simple things that is very good and very positive about a New Year is the fact that one does have another chance, that there is available to the individual the fluid dimension of time that has not been frozen and has passed on into the past. It is liquid, living, vital, quick in the sense of being vital. The individual stands in the midst of a stream of vitality, awareness, and fluidity, and is able, by an act in the present moment, to do for him or for the context in which he is operating, something that nothing else in the world can do. Therefore when we think about the New Year, we think in terms of the sense of alternatives, the sense of options, that are still available to us. It means that all of the options are not frozen, that it is still possible to do something about a situation. Now, this is one of the very simple things.” Howard Thurman
“Ring out The False. Ring in The True”. Alfred Lord Tennyson
“The New Year means for many people a time of the making of resolutions, the time of deciding that the present and the future will be lived more intentionally than in the past, and it is important, this matter of making resolutions, because it organizes the formal intent of the personality in a given direction; it is a commitment of the individual to a performance in the future based upon an intention in the present. And this is very important.
Whether the individual is able to carry out in detail the resolution— whether you are able to fulfill the thing that you intend to do— there is a clear gain in being able to bring together all of one’s self in a point of focus and say that this is the thing that I intend to do tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” Howard Thurman
“Those who gave thee a body furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed it with resolution. Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise, and thou art happy.” Akhenaton.
“The New Year means also the opportunity to make a revision in one’s personal timetable, to look at one’s life objectively, to step aside and see one’s self go by, and to assess, for instance, how one spends one’s time; to see how much of one’s time in a 24 hour period is given to the cultivation of one’s own life, one’s own resources, and the cultivation of those qualities which can improve the self. So often we are involved in so many activities, doing all kinds of things in response to the multitudinous pressure of the variegated demands that are made upon us, that we are somehow unable to make a little corner in our time just for ourselves and for the cultivation of our own resources against the time when we are unable to do so.
In everybody’s life there should be a time out of every day when we take stock of ourselves when we examine in a very personal and intimate way what it is that we are after, what it is that we mean with our lives, and how we are placing the emphasis on the things that we are doing.” Howard Thurman
by email: mustardseedfaith@outlook.com
