by Rev. Jody Breton,
Many of us may have celebrated the New Year with tradition, out with the old and in with the new, New Year’s resolutions and setting intentions for 2019. I never liked New Year’s Eve. I was always sad to say goodbye to the previous year. I’ve given this a lot of thought and have asked for higher wisdom to help transform the energy I held around the turning of the year.
There are varying discussions on whether time may be viewed as a linear progression or cyclical pattern. The turning of the Earth and the associated seasons we know as the passing of time is a cyclical pattern, yet we in our modern everyday view have come to think of time as linear. Our ancestors and ancient wisdom keepers have known since—well, since time began—that existence of all of life from creation to death is a continuum influenced by the cycles and rhythms of the Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars and planets.
I feel the rhythm of the Earth and her celestial landscape. It is this connection with the natural flow of the Earth’s cycles that I embrace so dearly. As I move through the cycles of the seasons I embrace the changes and merge into the flow. I love that the Earth in our Northern Hemisphere is at rest right now. During Spring and Summer my energy becomes entrained with that of Gaia as she is full and bursting with life given by the Sun. Fall marks the shortening of days and lengthening of shadows, of our nights and of dreamtime.
The New Year is not the end. The change of each season holds the richness of experience, wisdom, blessings and connection that I have been gifted throughout the previous four seasons, and which I can take with me into the next. I look ahead into the start of a new cycle through the lens of appreciation and gratitude for my life within the larger cycle of time.
I hope that each of you will find richness in all your yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows. Blessings Be~
Jody Breton is a Shamanic Practitioner and Ceremonialist. She was ordained an interfaith minister in 2011 by the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine. She studied Core Shamanism at the Center for Earthlight Healing and with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, beginning in 2012. Jody shares her home and cozy practice space in Freeport with her husband and Sam, their feline ambassador. www.essenceofspiritceremonies.com
Earth/Moon photo: NASA/JPL/USGS
