Joanna Macy (b. 1929) has worked for decades to support the Great Turning, a movement towards life-sustaining cultures and economies. She writes:
When a change wants to happen, it looks for people to act through. How do we know when a change wants to happen? We feel the want inside us. There is a desire, a tugging at us to be involved. But that doesn’t make the change inevitable, because standing in our way are all those who say we’re wasting our time, that it isn’t possible, that it will be too hazardous. For the change to happen through us, we need to counter those voices. A shift can happen within us when we break through a resistance that has been holding us back.
When we see with new eyes, we recognize how every action has significance, how the bigger story of the Great Turning is made up of countless smaller stories of communities, campaigns, and personal actions.… If you were freed from fear and doubt, what would you choose to do for the Great Turning?
Macy and co-author Chris Johnstone offer several practical questions to help identify one’s goals and resources for change:
• If you knew you could not fail, what would you most want to do for the healing of our world?
• What specific goal or project could you realistically aim to achieve in the next twelve months that would contribute to this?
• What resources, inner and outer, do you have that will help you do this? …
• What resources, inner and external, will you need to acquire? What might you need to learn, develop, or obtain?
• How might you stop yourself? What obstacles might you throw in the way?
• How will you overcome these obstacles?
• What step can you take in the next week, no matter how small—making a phone call, sending an email, or scheduling in some reflection time—that will move you toward this goal?
Source: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/radical-resilience-weekly-summary/
“We bless this coming year for the innumerable opportunities for good that will manifest as we open up to their possibility.
We bless You, divine Love for the unknown blessings that are already on their way.
We bless You also for the needed challenges that are already lined up so as to help us grow spirit-wards.
May we open our hearts to all those in need we meet and also those at the other side of the world whom we can assist or support in different ways.
May we treasure the simple fact of being alive and of the possibility of “DAWL” (Doing All With Love), moment by moment, day in, day out: thinking only loving thoughts, speaking words of love, seeing all with the eyes of love, undertaking all in a spirit of love and finally feeling only love.”
https://gentleartofblessing.org/a-blessing-for-new-year/
