Prayer for a New Year

An excerpt from Edward Hays' prayer, "New Year's Blessing Prayer for Clocks and Calendars" from his book, Prayers for the Domestic Church:

"Lord...we ask your blessing...upon your gift to us of time.

Bless our clocks and watches, you who kindly direct us to observe the passing of minutes and hours.  May they make us aware of the miracle of each second of life we experience.  May these our ticking servants help us not to miss that which is important, while you keep us from machine-like routine....

Bless our calendars, these ordered lists of days, weeks, and months, of holidays, holydays, fasts and feasts--all our special days of remembering.  May these servants, our calendars...now grace our homes and our lives.  May they remind us of birthdays and other gift-days, as they teach us the secret that all life is meant for celebration and contemplation.

Bless, Lord, this new year, each of its 366 days and nights....Bless us with new moons and full moons....Grant to us, Lord, the new year's gift of a year of love.  Amen."

2012 is looking good so far.  Last year was pretty intense for me, professionally.  A year ago I was asked to be the interim Director of Community Formation for the month of January until they decided what direction they wanted to take the position next.  I had no training because the previous person left in mid-December, so I had to do lots of self-directed learning along the way, and things didn't go as smoothly as I would have preferred (although, being a perfectionist, they rarely do).  By February they had invited me to continue on as the Director of Spiritual Formation in a half-time capacity in addition to my work in the Dean's office.  I was thrilled, since this was one of my main areas of study in seminary.  But again, I had no training, so the last 11 months have been quite an adventure as I learned what the rhythms of the worship and discipleship life looked like on our campus.  Most of the time I was operating in survival mode.  I was accomplishing the items on my job description, but my stores of creativity and imagination were depreciating quickly, so planning and guiding ministries on campus became more and more difficult.  Listening and doing pastoral care, attending meetings, and receiving any sort of feedback grew tedious.  [You with me, pastors?]  Fortunately my spiritual friend and coworker Diane was nearby and was a continuous voice of reason and encouragement, reminding me to return to my "hidden source of calm repose".  And when I went home at night, manspouse was ever present to be a rock, support, and shelter as needed.  Ah, the grace of friends! 

As for this year, I'm looking forward to further developing and supporting spiritual life on campus, now that I've oriented myself to the position and its various tasks.  We had the week off between Christmas and New Year's, and I was able to rest and recover from all of my fall activities.  Between planning for worship services, teaching, supervising four interns and two part-time musicians, training colleagues during times of turnover, singing in a women's holiday ensemble, and doing things at church, I was pretty worn out.  It's good to be back!