A New Year 2012

This year  I am going to try to write reflections for myself much in the Simple Abundance style. I want to write one or two  a month. Last night or early this morning as the new year was in it's first few minutes, I made a ritual of blessing the house and myself and Steve with new flowing water from my favorite park.  After church we went to Lackawanna State Park and gathered a jar of water from a flowing stream, after the sun went down. I found the idea in a book by Caitlin Matthews and her husband on the celebrating of the winter Solstice.  We put the water by the fire and I gathered hemlock from by back yard to put on the mantle with other evergreens.  After midnight, I put some of the water in a crystal bowl and with the hemlock sprinkled water throughout the house in much the same way we do at church to renew our baptismal vows.  As we walked through the house I said blessings for peace, prosperity, love, joy, and compassion.  I asked for an end to fear and anxiety.  Steve walked behind me and had little sprinkles of water on his clothes, so I asked him to sprinkle me and say blessings over me when we had finished with the house.  He said "bless Tammie and all that she does and all that she is".  One of my aspirations this year will be to write about ritual, insight, spirituality one or two times a month.  Part of the discipline of writing that I have felt called to for awhile now.  Other aspirations will be a reading list, including a work of the Dalai Lama , a Course in Miracles, a book by Sarah Ban Brethnact, and a book by an Islamic woman, a progressive that Karrah gave me.