Christmas card and New Year's Resolution

I painted this simple evergreen tree with the intention that it would be my Christmas card this year. I didn't get cards printed. I didn't get cards mailed. This is how my wishes for a very Merry Christmas are going out this year to family and friends.....sending them out through this blog.....belated, but very warm, heart-felt wishes for love, joy, and peace to each of you to fill your hearts, families and homes with blessings of ever-present good.

Another intention of writing a Christmas letter that was going to be sent with this card also didn't happen. I admire those that have the ability to encapsulate a year's events into a few paragraphs. I keep thinking I'll try my hand at it one of these years, but now here we are, another year gone and the only Christmas letter I have written are in thoughts only. Well, and this blog...can this serve as my letter?

New Year's Resolutions have never been a part of my life. Sometimes they're fun to think about what could be done better next time, but most often as I hear how they frequently turn into guilt thoughts, I find myself avoiding making resolutions in the first place.


This year is different. I have found a resolution that I love and that I can renew and keep each and every day for 2010 and beyond.

On New Year's Day, I sat reading a Hargreave's article entitled "New Year". I was sitting in the bright sunlight, looking out towards awe inspiring and magnificent mountains. These inspiring views uplifted me in ways that words cannot do justice. Hargreave's reminder of reviewing the past year with the idea of beginning a new year humanly with promises for future good be replaced by a "day with the Lord" present idea message that spoke to and moved me. This is the day the Lord hath made, be glad, rejoice, give thanks. This is the only day. Mrs. Eddy defines day as "the irradiance of Life; light, the spiritual idea of Truth and Love" (S&H 584)

In the Bible in Isaiah, we read, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." Hargreaves asks where we are identifying our own thoughts about ourselves. With the "thee"? Or is it with the "light"? Are we discovering the Life that is God? Are we not to leave behind even the highest human concept of anything and see the unfolding of Mind, Life, God that's revealing itself? Are we not to leave behind all problems, limitations, sad experiences, mistakes, regrets....all records of dreams and part of the "thee" idea and unknown to light? As this "spiritual and divine Principle of man dawns upon human thought and leads to 'where the young child was', even to the birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual sense of being and of what Life includes" (S&H 191), wonderful things appear to happen as a result of this dawning. Things appearing that represent clearer views of the wonder that already exists and is ever present to spiritual discernment. This new day, this new year, this new outlook from which all good exists and is reflected right here, right now. This is what I wish to celebrate.


This is my New Year's resolution....in the words of the Psalmist, "Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law" (Ps. 119)