I posted this on my main blog new years eve. Perhaps it will show up there when the error codes get hammered out...
Over the next few days Clara, my wife, and I will be working on our ‘Plan for 2009.’ Our business plans intention is to inspire and motivate us to new levels of prosperity. I will share the result here early in 2009. It will include our goals, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual. In the past I had a few ‘resolutions’ that came true more often than not. In general I never made these public and did not risk much in their creation. We will produce a list of promises about our affairs, how we intend to improve and in what areas we expect to give most of our attention. All areas will be addressed. Personal growth, health, wealth, work times, fun times, balancing it all and the spiritual.
The future looks bright from where I stand and I hope you find the same place as me to generate your next year too. I have learned much this last year and though the experience has been a struggle at times I am pleased with the overall outcome. I hope your New Year is the best one ever and I leave you with a quote that suggests how to proceed.
The year is ending. This means, as always, that we spend a few minutes in reflection. We draw up balance-sheets and make an effort to anticipate what the future may bring. For a moment we become conscious of the strange thing called “time,” which otherwise we simply use without thinking about it. We felt both the melancholy and the consolation of our own transiency. Much that caused us distress, much that weighed us down and seemed to make progress impossible, has now passed and become quite unimportant. As we look back, difficult days are transfigured in memory, and the now almost forgotten distress leaves us more peaceful and confident, more composed in the face of present threats, for these too will pass. The consolation of transiency: Nothing lasts, no matter how important it claims to be. But this consoling thought, which gives patience its character of promise, also has its discouraging and saddening aspect. Nothing lasts, and therefore along with the old year not only difficulties but much that is beautiful has passed away, and the more we move beyond the midpoint of our lives, the more poignantly we feel this change of what was once future and then present into something past. We cannot say to any moment: “Stay a while! You are so lovely!” Anything that is within time comes and then passes away.
Our feelings toward the new year show the same ambivalence as our feelings toward the old year. A new beginning is something precious; it brings hope and possibilities as yet undisclosed. “Every beginning has a magic about it that protects us and helps us live” (Herman Hesse)… What can we as Christians say at this moment of transition? First of all, we can do the very human thing the moment urges upon us: we can use the time of reflection in order to stand aside and widen our vision, thus gaining inner freedom and a patient readiness to move on again.
--Pope Benedict XVI
Have a most happy and fulfilling New Year and I hope to see you here again next year.
Michael & Clara Eisbrener
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