New Path

I am connected to the accepted ways of welcoming in the New Year. I check the experts who pick the best books of the previous year and find several books I want to read. Then I wonder at some of the picks--favorites of reviewers, darlings to the critics. Too many critics accept the mantle of selecting the best, the “push the envelope style”, the author, the musician, the poet, the football player to keep in your sight.

I read the news analysts who both look back and project forward. They remind me of the horrors of war, the broken truces, the genocides, the religious strife, what leaders are in and who has been ousted. They offer possibilities for the following year--we'll continue to flounder economically, we'll make a slow recovery. Our social agenda will be mired in the fear of moving too quickly, our social agenda will be on a springboard ready to usher in a new tomorrow. And they will unfurl a list of accomplishments, of bravery, of brilliance.

The Globe lists those who died. This, again, is a selective list. Your grandfather won't make this list. Perhaps your grandfather made the list. My grandfather painted the interior of houses.

Yesterday I went to the American Heritage Museum to see Sherman's portraits of Ellis Island immigrants. Portraits without names. Some have handwritten notes. "This family went to North Dakota" "Tattooed stowaway. Deported." Only Emma Goldman's portrait has a name "Emma Goldman, anarchist, deported." Did any of those people make a list? —maybe their children or grandchildren.

Have you made your New Year's list? If no one reminded us to create resolutions, if no one suggested that the new year, like the first day of school, meant new beginnings, if we didn't believe in new beginnings, would we make lists of resolutions?

When I taught learning disabled students they brought their new notebooks to school the first day. One student said, "It only takes a day for my book to look like last year's book. The teacher talks and I try to take notes and I'm lost." New just doesn't happen without some intervention, instruction, grace.

My list of resolutions— influenced by what is around me, by my flights of desire, and the myriad possibilities in the universe. Many items on the list will plummet to the ground because, to quote C.K. Chesterton, they were too hard and I gave up. A few will take root--everything must have some roots to succeed.

Every year I have a food wish--eat healthy foods, abjure excessive sugar, and lose five pounds.

Send out two pieces a month. Hallow the time when I write,

Write more poems. Love words for their acrobatic nuances, their connection to time, and their bridge to the past. Read broadly, expansively. Put down a book that doesn't ring true for me. Forget the critic.

Stanley Kunitz says of poetry, "The craft that I admire most manifests itself...as a form of spiritual testimony."

I signed up for a drawing course. Usually I don't put in the effort to progress beyond a shaded apple--put in the effort, move, finally to where my sketches say something.

Keep up with my online teaching.

Be open to change. Grow as a spiritual person. What does God want me to be doing? That doesn't mean a supine position waiting for some intergalactic message. It means be open to the universe and the small still voice that can't be heard if I'm surrounded by the cacophony of my own business.

But I still can't help listing:

I want to walk and hear the earth inhale and exhale --but I'll accept the days when concrete is under my feet.

I want to read a book a day, but realize that impossibility, so I'll read as many as I can and put down a book if it doesn't resonate.

I want to climb a high mountain and stand on the top--but I'll accept the lower mountain and relish the sweat poring down my back.

I want to wander in new places

I want what I do to be meaningful

I want to continue to love and be loved