Rituals for a new year?

Posted by Bonnie Bright on January 6, 2011 at 11:19pm

I've been contemplating all this flurry around resolutions that seems to happen so much in the New Year---and is well-forgotten by most of us just a few weeks down the road. I wonder this year, instead, if I can offer a simple ritual that will be more in the "now" and with the only linear goal to be to renew the ritual itself frequently as I move through the weeks and months to come. What to do that will feed my soul and feed the soul of the world? Already when I light incense or burn sage, I mentally send it up as an offering. Is there more I could do, I wonder?

Does anyone else have new rituals they are willing to share?

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Replies

  • Ed Koffenberger January 7, 2011 at 7:49am
    I used to get away from the homestead for a retreat to start the new year. However, I've noticed that when I return home, the sense of renewal stayed at the retreat site. This year I spent more time at my home altar. It seems to have had some effect on my follow through in that I am reminded every day due to my seeing the altar and contining to meditate there.
  • Robert G. Longpré January 6, 2011 at 11:42pm
    There is a ritual that I have been following for quite a few decades, one of what happens physically to end one year in order to open up the "airways" for the new year. Each year, just before the last few hours of the old year, all the Christmas decorations are put away and the living space is cleaned as though one was readying the house for special company. For the past few years, this has extended to getting the house ready for a winter's nap as I take leave of the house and winter for a warmer and sunnier place. These aren't quite rituals, but they could easily become rituals. I know my children are already doing the same in their homes so that their homes also enter the new year without the clutter of the old year.
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