Brave New Year

There exist various tips for composing resolutions for a new year. A fashionable word of advice cautions thinkers to formulate explicit, measurable goals that can be monitored and met. This certainly suits my thought-patterns as a woman of the world of science. And so I set out. Two to five reasonable goals for the year. I dipped into ink, brought tip to paper, and- Oh! Three taps at my door.

A few hushed words between us and then the man at my door departed. As I opened the carefully folded paper, Mr. Guthrie’s resolutions for a brave new 1943 reminded a heart to want more than the clinician’s guide to another year of dusty bones. So, as we do on the old and the new, the man and I cherished our custom. Local and grand. We dream of so much.

1. Move to England (or equivalent)
2. Wait patiently for all things that require waiting
3. Ask more questions to God
4. Discontinue unprofitable behaviours                                                                                                All things are permissible for me, but not all things are good for me to do. I can do anything, but to nothing will I become a slave

5. Write more poetry and prose
6. Take risks
7. Pay off loan
8. Seek to experience what is real and the truth rather than anything fleeting or only perceived
9. Be active
10. Eat well
11. Invite people to talk over food and drink
12. Listen better
13. Speak words of affirmation of purpose and good qualities into people’s lives
14. Be more honest
15. Work out unbelief
16. Create
17. Be an amazing clinician  
18. Be grateful
19. “Take smaller bites of what it is that you want to be”
20. “Learn to listen all over again and have a clean slate of dreaming”