Source: dontcallmebetty.tumblr.com via Faith Squared on Pinterest

It’s nearly impossible to enter a new year without at least contemplating a resolution or two. A new year is a new beginning…and even though every day has the potential to be a new beginning, there is no denying the symbolic power of January 1st.

New Year’s resolutions are often synonymous with failure and disappointment, because many times a list of resolutions becomes a list of “shoulds.” But if you make them in a way that honors who you are and where you’re at, and include God in the process, you move out of the realm of “should,” and straight into desire and possibility.

And as we like to say here at F2, “Don’t should on yourself.”  :-)

The best way to harness the symbolic power of the New Year is to create a Success Covenant—a contract with God—in which you make clear your desires and intentions for the year, IN WRITING, and then you make clear what you, in turn, will do for God. For all the details on making a Success Covenant, follow this link to Michele’s radio show Living on a Prayer (original episode air date January 3, 2011).

Putting partnership with God at the heart of your plans is the only resolution you ever need to make…on January 1st, or any other day.

We wish you every good thing as this blessed new year unfolds…and in the words of poet John O’Donohue:

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

—A Blessing for the New Year (Beannacht)
To Bless the Space Between Us

If you are reading this via e-mail, click here for the video.