“When anyone lives in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone! The new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5.17)
“Burning the Old Year”
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems
Take out your nice juicy pen and your favorite journal. Write. Write about your year. Write poetry or prose or scribble some notes. When you’re done, toss them in the firepit or burn them in a metal bowl. (Be safe!) May the griefs and trauma of the old year be cleansed by the flames, and your heart open to the hope of a new year.
