Happy New Year!!!
hard to believe ... 2005 is actually here. that sounded so strange when i was little - couldn't really think past "party like it's 1999." still can't, really ... our kids are going to think we're so old: "you were born WAY back in the nineteen-hundreds?!??" 
it's a little weird - for the first time since my junior year of college (which was, come to think of it, that almost mythical new year's eve, 1999), i've entered the new year knowing (theoretically of course) where i'd be througout the year and at the next new year's. i'll be in bowling green all year ... isn't that exciting? um ... yeah. it should be calming - and i think deep down it is - but still, it's strange to be able to predict more than five months out. as though that solidarity is tempting fate, and something crazy and terrible will happen to disrupt everything. but if i learned anything during my life in scotland, it was to trust god -- our times are in his hands. not mine. and it's about a bazillion times better that way ... because everything i ever try to plan out and make work under my own power, or worry into submission, or control in any other way, is an inevitable failure ... and then when i am hopeless and helpless and all alone, without strength or means or options of my own, i can do naught but trust and obey. and then abba steps in to remind me that he was in control the whole time, and will always take care of me. big stuff, little stuff, life changes, idiotic details - every time, i discover that my times and life and hopes and dreams and wishes and fears and every step i take - not unlike the sparrows and the lilies of the field - are held close in the palm of a loving god. and THAT is a new year i can enter into with joy!
Psalm 31 says this:
In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge .... into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, O Lord, the God of truth.... I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul. You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place.... i have become like broken pottery ... but i trust in you, O Lord; i say, 'You are my God.' My times are in your hands.... How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you.... Praise be to the Lord, for he has showed his wonderful love to me!
And so -- my challenge to you for the new year is the same as it is for me: be like broken pottery. sometimes we're not even jars of clay, but just the rubble of brokenness. and it is when we accept that helplessness - that our strength and our wisdom and our humanity are not enough to make things right - that the potter is free to transform us.
now i just have to live it.
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i found out last night that i was the only person in the room who knew "all the words" to "Auld Lang Syne."  come on, guys, there are only like eight words to start with ... you can do it! so here's a resolution you can keep: learn the first two stanzas of the most important poem of new year's day. (you can do this!)
"Auld Lang Syne" by Robert Burns
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And auld lang syne?
(see http://www.rabbie-burns.com/the_poems/auldlangsyne.cfm for the rest of it)
I thought everyone knew that ... i guess not ... in which case, it may help you to know that "auld lang syne" simply means "days gone by" (literally, "old long ago") ... so as we go into the new year, we can take the time to remember old friends and old memories ... our own personal "best of 2004" and all that came before.
... which i will do before the day is out. but i'm being called into the other room to begin season two of the west wing with my parents ... and "we're on a bit of a schedule here, dear," so i gotta run!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - and we're back.
SO - a cup o' kindness for the past year's auld acquaintance and auld lang syne ...
in january and february i was working on Dancing at Lughnasa. it was so good ... directing this show was one of the great gifts in my life. caity and jessa and tasha and steph and addy, steven and corey and jonathan - you were perfect. thanks for your trust, for your innocence, for your openness. brent and jenny and katie - you made it happen. we were a good little family -- it was the best of times. and the TCT made me laugh  -- baallybeg says hi...
march and april ... ugh. pirates. (come on, guys - it wasn't actually all that bad ... i hated it too but it was better than we thought it was.) i coulda killed ... a bunch of people. thank god for jenny and steven, who kept me from doing so. and thanks too that all those people didn't kill me - i thought they might have. it was a wild ride ... and kudos to steven and the policemen and the dancing bear and grace for being fabulous - and my cute little pirates. you couldn't dance much but that didn't matter - you were wonderful.
may ... christmas tree out the window! (was that april or may?) ... and there was the banquet, with steven & nathan in their gossamer ... that was fun! and finally, school was OVER. i had senioritis as bad as any of my kids ...
june & july were spent in the park with elliot and ken and the kensters, reading and fighting the mosquitoes and wearing a headset. that was cool. and since my car was dead (at least, that made for a good excuse), i spent most of my free time at brent & jenny's, watching movies and doing laundry and eating chocolate chips & drinking orange juice - - or with jenny at my house, talking all night about faith and god and boys and school and life and dreams and stars and the colour orange ... it was scary and good to have someone know me that well, to be that open ... god is good to give us friends, to teach us how to love and be loved ...
and colorado was GORGEOUS.
in august i went to school. scary. moved ... twice. finally ended up in the right apartment, so that's good. got mono, which was not fun. and started classes and meeting people and church and the first of many escapes from grad school to BW3's  and spent the fall in classes and rehearsal for comedy of errors and going to stratford and hanging out w/ alexis & maya & j & miriam & hey steve & jess & megan & everyone else! the show was COLOURFUL to say the least - and a lot of fun. and then i survived my first finals week of grad school - halleleu-jah!
to auld acquaintaince and old friends ... the girl scouts had it right: "make new friends but keep the old - one is silver and the other gold." thanks for being in my life ... for better or worse, you have made me who i am today, you have changed me for good. i'll drink to that!
Happy New Year! let's make 2005 a good one.
| 
) ... last night i finished a great book called "a plain life," about a man who lived a big-city, no-kids, long-commute life until he and his wife started searching for some sort of faith ... and found a Quaker church... and eventually moved to a quaker / amish community. so he wrote this book about his eight-day walk from southeast ohio to columbus, to officially return his driver's license and become completely dependent upon his horse, walking, and his community for transportation. it's fascinating to hear the Plain Life ideas as told from the perspective of one who chose to be part of that group ... and as i was reading it, i kept thinking that i wanted to live like this, close to the land and a community, having to make important choices and living by faith, not surrounded by noise and technology and all the distracting, disturbing "conveniences" of modernity - but surrounded by family and a land i was invested in - - - a simple life of farming, family, community, and faith, truly living out biblical values like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, self control.... it'll never happen,i'm sure ... but i wish i were bold enough to do that. to step out in faith, into a "foreign" world that demanded hard work of me, in return for a real (not digital or virtual) life. tis a gift to be simple -- to be free.
