I'm trying something new and luscious this year, sisters, and I invite you to play with me.
Here's the deal: I've had it with resolutions (as in New Year's). I'm all for plans and intentions in the right place and time, but with the world so crazy, and so much falling apart around us, I want to find the most pleasureable way to bring more grace and ease into my life.
And resolutions just don't light me up any more. Kinda been there, done that. Trying to resolve myself into flourishing just doesn't work for me, sisters. So here's how I discovered something better:
For 2 weeks at the end of December, life gave me, not lemons, but snow. Unbelievable amounts of snow 
(front garden pic of bamboo and trees up to their poor necks in it). No cars could get up my street, and even walking down the hill meant taking your life into your hands. I couldn't even get a taxi to come anywhere near our house Christmas morning to take The Wonderful Husband and I to his mum's house for dinner.
So Yours Truly fumed and cried while looking out our front window at a spun out police car that had attempted our street. (I skidded out and offered the two guys coffee, but they weren't in much of a holiday mood either. They just grunted and kicked the tires.)
So, sisters, taking my own advice about saying a big Yes to what you can't change, and finding the gifts that are always there, I followed David to bed. We turned out the lights, pulled up the duvet, and slept through Christmas.
And I got up that evening excited about being snowbound. To a Christmas dinner of leftover chicken and a half a cabbage from the back of the fridg, I realized life had offered me a guilt-free retreat to think about what I most wanted in the new year.
And sisters, right off the bat I knew I didn't want resolutions.
I asked what would tickle my gut instead, and realized I wanted a new year of luscious and irresistable invitations.
Think about it sisters: invitations are a little magical. They invite us to play. They open up new possibilities.
They feel like embarking on an adventure: who knows what will happen if we say Yes?
And so I ditched any notion of resolutions, and played with new year's invitations instead.
And when I asked myself for the most wonderful invitation I could receive in 2009, I got it: Sashaying through my day, and my year, with grace.
The winds of grace are blowing all the time, claims Ramakrishna. All we have to do is raise our sails.
Well, sisters, I'm raising my sails to those holy winds, and going where my deepest liveliness is inviting me to go this year. And the finest way to raise my sails is to learn to sashay at the pace of grace.
Don't know quite what that pace is, 'cause I just got invited. But I've got some ideas:
- Allowing. Being. Resting. Receiving.
- Moving and doing at a pace that allows play, and wonder, and grace, and curiosity.
- Asking for help, both seen and unseen. Lots of help!
- And - here's the biggie for me - Listening. Listening to myself, really Listening with a capital L, not tuning myself out in the scramble to get to The Next Thing. Simply listening to the world unfolding around and within me: birds in the garden, distant traffic on Holman Road, the grief or joy in my belly, the hum of the central heat cranking up. Just Listening. I'm now giving myself 15 minutes in the morning to sit and Listen. To whatever invites its sweet self to be Listened to, whether it's the outside world, or my heart wanting to say something quiet and important, or my intuition giving me a nudge.
- And, finally, giving myself two Pace of Grace days a month, where for 24 hours I simply Listen, and allow my day to unfold, unplanned, from that Listening.
Wow! Life only knows where this adventure, and those awesome grace-full winds will take me this year, sisters. But I've raised anchor. I'm heading out to sea.
And so, sisters, what invitations can you graciously offer yourself this year, invitations to play, thrive, flourish, learn, or love? Invitations you can answer with a whole-hearted Yes?
If you're so inspired, send me your invitations for sharing in this newsletter. What I know in my heart and soul is that we can't thrive alone. We just ain't built that way.
May that spirited wind be full in your gorgeous sails in 2009, sisters, carrying you Home to your own sweet flourishing.
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