Have a little faith

A hearty welcome to 2010!


I love the blank page of a new year just waiting to have stories written upon it.

It's that newness, that unknown that makes us want to resolve to do better, to do differently, to be different. And it's easy to make a laundry list of things we want to improve upon with the fresh start of a new year - change habits, alter behaviour, etc and I confess to having reams of resolutions in years past. The last couple of years I have made to do lists rather than resolutions but this year I'm going to do something different; rather than lists or resolutions I'm picking a theme that I hope will guide my actions in this year.

For me, 2010 is the year of faith.

Faith in myself.

Faith in those around me.

Faith that good will eventually triumph over evil.

Faith that what we do to and for each other matters.

Faith in the Divine - however it is expressed.

Faith is often described as the belief in things unseen but it also can be the belief in things seen and experienced. Many believe that faith is a passive state rather than an active state - it requires a level of trust to just let go and believe. But for faith - any kind of faith - to be truly effective it must be active, it must practiced and it must evolve in response to the circumstances in which it exists.

This is what 2010 will be for me - the active practice of faith.

This year also marks a milestone birthday for me - one that I welcome and relish and I have spent several months ruminating over the way or ways I'd like to mark it. A very wise friend often reminds me that our birthday is the first day we made a contribution to the world and with that in mind I've come up with a number of activities that I would like to do to mark this birthday - some are frivolous and some are serious and over the course of this year, I'll be writing about them here.

I hope you'll join me throughout the year - either in person or here in this space.