At the Gate of the New Year

Greetings as we await the New Year.

Calendars set off time like fences define space…

and New Year’s Eve sits on the line a bit like a gate. 

I find gates fascinating in their ability to invite or repel.

A friend reflecting on how "as we enter a New Year we do not know what lies ahead," posted a few lines from a poem. Of course we don’t know what's ahead, we never really do, and that can strike one alternately as both exciting and at times repellent. 

And as I experience that it is often easy for me to overlook the obvious, I found myself grateful for her flatly stating that we do not know what lies ahead....and for the lines of poetry she shared; a poem, she says, she likes to read each new year.

At the Gate of the Year

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year

'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.

'And he replied,'Go into the darkness and put your hand

into the hand of God

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

 by Minnie Louise Haskins (1908) *

At the gate of this new year, I wish much for others and 

for myself … may it be a gentle year, healthy, productive, 

joyous and full of step by step 

clarity.

  Happy New Year to You

*This is actually quite a famous poem and if you would like to know more about it and the poet who lived from 1875 to 1957 and had a very varied and interesting career,  there is an excellent brief on her life 

from  the London School of Economics and Political Science.