I remember with gratitude the fruits of the labors of others, which I have shared as a part of the normal experience of daily living.

I remember the beautiful things that I have seen, heard, and felt – some, as a result of definite seeking on my part, and many that came unhearalded into my path, warming my heart and rejoicing my spirit.

I remember the moments of distress that proved to be groundless and those that taught me profoundly about the evilness of evil and the goodness of good.

I remember the new people I have met, from whom I have cought glimpses of the meaning of my own life and the true character of human dignity.

I remember the dreams that haunted me during the year, keeping me ever mindful of goals and hopes which I did not realize but from which I drew inspiration to sustain my life and keep steady my purposes.

I remember the awareness of the spirit of God that sought me out in my aloneness and gave to me a sense of assurance that undercut my despair and confirmed my life with new courage and abiding hope.

Howard Thurman

A new year is approaching;
What does it hold for me?
It may bring joy or sorrow;
Oh, God, what shall it be?

Sometimes my heart is anxious -
I think that I should know
The way into the future -
Each step that I will go.

But You, in Your great wisdom
Must plan for me my all
Lest as Your child I falter
And miss Your perfect call.

Dear Lord, I pray for guidance
In all I say and do,
And then the year upcoming
Will truly honor You!

Mildred M. Smith

As the new year dawns upon us
We seek your forgiveness for the sins of the past.

May our one resolution for this coming year
Be to walk with you from the first day to the last.

Fill each day with a new awareness of your presence
And make us a blessing to those around us.

Joyce Blakney Duerr

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Zora Neale Hurston

And what does January hold?  Clean account books. Bare diaries. Three hundred and sixty-five new days, neatly parceled into weeks, months, seasons.  A chunk of time, of life…those few first notes like an orchestra tuning up before the play begins.

Phyllis Nicholson
Country Bouquet (1947)

Dark past breakfast.  Dusk before supper.  Down flits the snow.  Fragrant wood fires, fresh air, rosy cheeks, flickering candlelight.  Hunt and gather January’s joys – a playful snow walk, a seductive read, a luscious cup of cocoa, a soothing soak.  Then, behind closed doors and frosted windowpanes, peek at the opalescent moon as bare-branched beauties, wrapped in luxurious white cloaks and icy diamante, dazzle for your private pleasure.  So burrow in.  Snuggle deep.  A winter idyll of simple splendor awaits.

Sarah Ban Breathnach
Exerpted from Romancing the Ordinary – A Year of Simple Splendor

Now let us welcome the New Year, full of things that have never been.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

One year ends, another begins.  The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s invocation to us to be open to receiving the New Year’s bountiful blessings challenges me to look deep within – not only in anticipation of all the wonderful new things that have never been before, but in wistfulness for the simple abundance overlooked.  Splendid gifts overlooked because they were hiding beneath Life’s plain brown paper wrappers.

Before Simple Abundance, I obsessed on the perfection of my days rather than on their lush possibility.  Consequently, I didn’t welcome the New Year with as much joy and good cheer as I do now.  Instead, I greeted January with steely will, dogged determination, and a list of resolutions so demanding and daunting I was doomed to fail from the start.  “This year I’ll earn a hundred thousand dollars, write a bestseller, study sculpture, stop smoking, lose thirty pounds, learn to lambada, become fluent in French, build a barn, raise rare sheep, conquer clutter, redecorate the kitchen, hike the Himalayas, and master the stock market,” I used to promise myself.

Was I out of my mind?  In a word: yes.  naturally, by the end of the first week of January I was emotionally exhausted by my unrealistic expectations.  And so, year after year, no matter how hare I tried, my impossible ambitions made me feel like a complete failure, privately and publicly.  Who could live up to that woman’s hallucinations, and who’d want to anyway?

One New Year’s Eve, as I reviewed a decade’s worth of personal diaries recording a litany of unfulfilled longings, I realized that I had woven a subtle but strong pattern of self-defeating behavior into my life.  By always taking on too much at once – and yearning for instant transformation – I was unconsciously engaging in self-sabotage.  What’s more, I realized that my unrealistic annual resolutions were designed less to improve the quality of my life than to lift me out of the banality of my “ordinary” existence as a wife, mother, and journeyman writer.

Truth or dare:  How many times have you prayed for a life “less ordinary” than the one you’re living?  If you’re being honest, you’ll say, “Often.”  Can I challenge you to a dare?  Today, stop praying for anything other than the life you have!  Join me as we tear up that list of resolutions.  You don’t need them anymore.  All you have is all you need.  But more than that, all you have is all you could possibly want.  If you don’t believe it, stick close by me this year and I’ll prove it.

So before we begin the year, with a sense of adventure, give thanks for your most “ordinary” life.  This is how the miracle begins, as we embark with a sense of adventure seeking the splendid in the simple gift of the everyday.

Sarah Ban Breathnach
Excerpted From Romancing the Ordinary – A Year of Simple Splendor

There is something so splendid, so abundant about Life’s “second chances” that arrive each morning.  Perhaps it’s because second chances (or third, fourth, and fifth!) are the golden opportunities we thought too good to be true the first time around.  Now we know better.

Let your New Year begin with a ritual of reverence and reconnection I call Tabula Rasa – a clean slate – which is an evening dedicated to dreaming about the weeks and months to come and how you’d like to savor them.  Revel in them.
Appreciate them.  A sweet New Year’s ritual is to be “at home” to the Future.  Curl up in your favorite chair, listen to some soothing music, sip something festive and bubbly, and slowly light twelve votive candles – one for each new month.  As you light the first candle, ask the month of January, are there any old desires you need to relinquish in order to move on?  Ask February, what new-to-you “ordinary” ritual can you begin integrating into your daily round or week that will be self-nurturing?  Perhaps it’s leave your desk-top clear of clutter at the end of each day, but it could just as well be take a nap on Sunday.  Ask March, what new dream is seeding itself in your imagination?  Be fanciful, curious with your questions.  When you ask each month its question, whatever answer pops up, be it whimsical or practical, act upon the suggestion and notice how you feel later.  Keep a record of your experiment in a journal.

Pretend you’ve never been given the gift of a new year before.  Dame Good Fortune has swept in with her arms full of
presents just for you.  In a little book that I cherish, Ceremonials of Common Days, written by Abbie Graham in 1928, she describes her annual visit this way: “I open the door.  The gorgeous guest from afar sweeps in.  In her hands are her gifts – the gift of hours and farseeing moments, the gift of mornings and evenings, the gift of spring and summer, the gift of autumn and winter. She must have searched the heavens for boons so rare.”

Sarah Ban Breathnach
Excerpted from Romancing the Ordinary – A Year of Simple Splendor

January, the month of new beginnings and cherished memories, beckons.  Come, let winter weave her wondrous spell: cold, crisp, woolen-muffler days, long dark evenings of savory suppers, lively conversations, or solitary joys.  Outside the temperature drops as the snow falls softly.  All of nature is at peace.  We should be, too.  Draw hearthside.  This is the month to dream, to look forward to the year ahead and the journey within.

Sarah Ban Breathnach
Excerpted from Simple Abundance – A Daybook of Comfort and Joy

New Year’s Day.  A fresh start.  A new chapter in life waiting to be written.  New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved.  Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery.

Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand.  Only dreams give birth to change.  What are your hopes for the future as you reflect on the years that have passed?  Gradually, as you become curator of your own contentment, you will learn to embrace the gentle yearnings of your heart.  But this year, instead of resolutions, write down your most private aspirations.  Those longings you have kept tucked away until the time seems right.  Trust that now is the time.  Ask the questions.  The Simple Abundance path brings confidence that the answers will come and we will discover – day by day – how to live them.

Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous new year by believing.  Believe in yourself.  And believe that there is a loving Source – a Sower of Dreams – just waiting to be asked to help you make your dreams come true.

Sarah Ban Breathnach
Excerpted from Simple Abundance – A Daybook of Comfort and Joy