New Year’s Day finds me setting out for an early morning ski creating tracks in freshly fallen snow. How fitting I thought, for embarking on the beginning of a new year. If only it were that simple – a fresh clean slate with no remnants from the past ready for our clean tracks as if in fresh snow.
Earlier this morning I was reading Parker Palmer’s post for the New Year and was struck by these lines in a poem he shared:
We stand at a new doorway,
Awaiting that which comes….
Daring to be human creatures,
Vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
‘Awaiting that which comes’ has not been one of my strengths having been more inclined to charge onto a fresh clean slate and make my own mark. Sort of like this morning. So I ponder at this stage of my life how to embrace both of these stances to life – the awaiting part and the desire to rush ahead to make my mark.
Here are some photos from my ski up the Fortune Lake Parkway to Champlain Lookout and back via Ridge Rd.: a shot of Fortune Lake and one of a beaver pond along Ridge Rd.
Also, here is the full poem that Parker Palmer shared as his New Year’s Day poem for living into 2019.
We look with uncertainty
We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.
- Anne Hillman
