Happy New Year 2023!

My New Year posts tend to be similar, having some combination of last or first sunset or sunrise photos, and reflections on endings and beginnings, and a wish for a happy new year. New Year 2023 will be no different…

Last sunset – December 31, 2022

New Year’s Eve Fireworks

First Sunrise – January 1, 2023

And Afterwards…

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are special because we deem them so…a recognised meeting point of the old and the new. An opportunity to let go and to start afresh. Yet they are really no different from any other day in that regard…when the moon – in whatever phase – sets…

…and the sun rises on another day…

…when birds, sitting in trees, sing heartily…

…when sunlight streams across hills….

Each day offers the opportunity for reviewing where we are and whether there are things we would like to do differently going forward. We don’t have to wait till the end of the year.

So, Happy New Year! And Happy New Day!

P.S. All photos were taken from my roof…a spot that holds a special place in my heart! 🙂

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And 2022 Begins…

It’s a ritual I have grown to enjoy in recent years…going up on my roof and watching some combination of the sun or moon rising or setting on New Year’s Eve and again on New Year’s Day. Often I am drinking a cup of tea as I watch and reflect.

On December 31, 2021, I watched the sun set…on a particularly challenging year…

That night from the roof, I watched fireworks, as I have for many years now. There were a lot this year, far more than last year, when we had a 10 p.m. Covid curfew and stricter gathering restrictions. This year the curfew was 1 a.m.

Having gone to bed late, I set my alarm to make sure that I woke up to catch sunrise New Year’s morning. I made a cup of tea and climbed the stairs to the roof, in search of the sun. Instead I found the thinnest of crescent moons under a low bank of red clouds! It was an immense and beautiful surprise and felt like such a gift!

I watched as the sky lightened and the moon faded…a fainter and fainter line of light, which I could only see because I knew it was there and I knew where to look…

Eventually the moon disappeared from sight and the sun came up from over the hill…shining through an ackee tree…

I’ve been thinking a lot about things we might see, if we knew they were there and knew where to look. Like the doves sitting in that ackee tree, in the picture above…

Happy New Year!

It’s Still a New Year…

It’s not too late to wish you a happy new year, even though the year is already more than two weeks old. Even though it feels much older, given all that has happened so far…personally, nationally, globally. So, Happy New Year!

I watched the last setting moon for 2020 from my roof, on the morning of December 31, 2020…

I watched the New Year’s fireworks from my roof, as I have now for many years. There were far fewer of them this year, as the Covid-19 restrictions included a curfew from 10pm, a ban on parties and a limit to the size of gatherings…

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I watched the first sunrise of 2021 later that morning…

This time last year there was no way I could have imagined how much life would have changed in the coming year, the changes brought by the pandemic being the most notable and unpredictable. Sitting here now, I am very aware that I haven’t a clue what things will be like a year from now. That is essentially the case each year, but the reality of 2020 has brought that into stark focus.

I remember a speech at the college graduation of one of my children years ago, in which the speaker said that the two most important qualities we could wish for our children in the times they were living in were adaptability and resilience. So true. And for us all. May the qualities of adaptabilty and resilience be yours in the coming year and the years beyond!

Happy New Year 2019!

It’s a week since the New Year began. I had planned to do this post last week to welcome the new year. I had intended to write a much longer, more reflective post, but I didn’t. So here are the two photos I was going to use to illustrate that more interesting post that I didn’t write.

Sunset, December 31, 2018

Sunrise, January 1, 2019

Happy New Year!

 

Last Sunrise, First Sunrise

On Sunday morning, I sat on my roof watching the last sunrise for 2017. My tea for that morning was tumeric and ginger, sweetened with Belcour honey, from hives my brother and sister-in-law have in the Blue Mountains. There was very little cloud cover, providing a rather minimalist early sunrise sky.Later the sun came up over the hills……outlining them in differing shades of grey.The next day I was up on the roof again, to watch the first sunrise for 2018. Tea was peppermint…with Belcour honey. It was a very different morning, overcast, with heavy banks of grey clouds.But the sun came up. As it always does. With unremarkable regularity.

These divisions…such as the old year into the new year…are arbitrary but useful structures for us, reminding us of the passage of time and ordering our lives to some extent. I enjoy these formal endings and beginnings and some of the rituals associated with them. Not all, mind you. But what I am growing to love more and more are the rhythms of nature. As I view them from my roof…because I am not a great outdoor person, hiking or cycling or similar activities. I am the person who sits on her roof, observing the movement of the sun, moon and stars, the daily flight of birds through this space, the trees blossoming and other such things. It is amazing what I can see when I sit still for a while….

On the 4th day of 2018, it’s not too late to wish you a Happy New Year!

350 Words Or Less: The New Year Begins

It is an artificial designation…that one day the old year ends and the next day the new year begins. But it serves a useful purpose in the calendar, Gregorian or otherwise. It provides a moment for reflection on the year past and contemplation of the year to come.

Where I was for the last sunrise of 2016, the sky was almost cloudless, and the sun came up over the hills with a bright golden glow. I greeted it with Lorna Goodison’s “The Chant of Light” from her poem “Ceremony for the Banishment of the King of Swords” in the collection “Heartease”, part of which reads:

We have light.

Only who gave it

can put it out

We have light

diffusing dark

cancelling doubt…

We have light

You see

We have light.

Sunrise on the first day of 2017 was very different. There was heavy cloud in the sky, and I couldn’t see the sun itself as it rose above the hills, only its light reflected on the clouds.

The New Year designation reminds that we have a chance to begin again. Not from scratch. Not with a slate wiped clean. But that we can renew efforts, that we can make different choices, that we can review and set new intentions. (I still remember the voice of the first GPS system I experienced in a car, almost 10 years ago. When you veered from the set route, the GPS voice took a moment to set the new route, all the time saying “Recalibrating….Recalibrating.”) While appreciating the New Year’s opportunity for recalibrating, however, it’s good to remember that this opportunity exists at every point in the year. One of my favourite affirmative statements is: The point of power is always in the present moment.

Happy New Year!