Saturday 31 December 2011

Turning the Pages

The valley in which our little town sits is muted by a veil of misty rain. Everything is hazy and still. The only movement I can see from my window is the swoops and swirls of gulls on the wing. All is silent, all is calm. Tonight will be very different as the streets fill with revellers, all whooping and hollering in drunken song, and the sky will be lit with fireworks in that time honoured need of the human race to mark the passing of the year.

As a pagan, as a Druid, I mark the year as it turns in many ways. Small, yet significant, ways which mark not the end of one long year and the starting of the new, but the highs and lows of the seasons, the hope and the harvest, the sun and the snows, the rains and the four winds and the turning of the tides. I know there is no end of one year, no starting of the new. Nature knows no end, no beginnings, only an ever continuing cycle. A cycle of repetition and change, of life and death and rebirth, but no endings, no beginnings.

And yet the man I am will look back on this last year and will take stock regardless, and start out with new hope, new ideas for the new year. Because I am human and it is our way. We have a need to mark the passage of time, to box up and label the memories, to start a new chapter, to pat ourselves on the back or kick ourselves up the backside- whichever is more appropriate. And hopefully from there we will build on what we have achieved, or learn from our mistakes and move on. 

Happy New Year, may 2012 be full of blessings and may you follow your dreams where ever they may lead you.

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