New Year – 2025
A new chance at beginnings
like a path of snow without a footprint or a sandy beach with out a track
not even from the seagull or crab.
It is a calendar without a crossed day.
“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us,
new, untouched, full of things that have never been . . .” – Rainer Maria Rilke
So we gather on the eve and wait for the clock to turn over . . . . and for one breath we stand.
How long that breath, that moment, that day , only we know.
And then at the next beat in this fast moving, loud and in-your-face world, with all its tensions,
we walk alone over the sacred uneasy threshold , into where we are overwhelmed
once again with the work that needs to be done, in our relationships, our families and our world.
How long we make that one moment is what in some terms is called statio
Statio is “an ancient mystical practice of pausing intentionally in the in-between to create sacred space.
Statio is the pause that makes a threshold, a moment both of waiting and readiness.
It invites us to cultivate hope, courage and resilience by resting right there in the gap,
to find strength in stillness, to gather ourselves in this space between breaths,
even when exhaustion and doubt tempt us towards fear.” from Waymakers.
For me this 2025 first dawn drew me to set out along the beach near our small get-away on the Central Coast of NSW, to take in the sunrise of the new year.
But it was the surprise of a family of fairy wrens flirting on my paths and in the scrub by the way where they flitted about giving me a delightful exhibition of males and females and a fledgling.
In the background, the ocean, the blue sky’s vast embrace and the pelicans gliding at the entrance fishing the outgoing tide. I had to smile at the poor fish they survived life in the lake, probably for months, they survived the journey down the channel with fishermen on both sides of the bank out to lure them and at the last leg just as they make the ocean the line of smart pelicans scoop them up into their huge beak.
We enter the new year with a broken world, burdens of war in many guises, the reality of misinformation, disinformation and the use of chaos like a river in turmoil becomes muddy the world stirs fear in people and nations’ minds and the power of Oligarchs to set the world’s agenda. The world, now a multicultural village dependents on each other until someone wants more than their fair share and greed shows it ugly head.
And so we have work to do and as a Daoist i am reminded;
Check your balance, mind, body and emotion.
The inner power only comes when you are aligned as one –
your mind ordered,
your feelings at peace
your body aware
then the inner power will gradually arise
like the morning sun
into the core of your being.
Tranquillity in a small piece of the world at peace Black swans and an egret: 1st January 2025
May 2025 bring the peace most of the world craves, hopes for, works for, prays for, wishes for. so we can live in happy carefree groups and bring up our children without fear.
How lucky in one small space,
along Tuggerah Lake
2 spoonbills, a pelican and a white egret
all feeding in peace
day one of 2025
