New Year’s ReSOULutions

                                      

         

 As often happens when I have holiday time at the turn of the year, I grow tired of the way newspapers and magazines fill space with those Ten Best everything from movies to novels to TV series to football touchdowns.

          But recently, for a change, after another frustrating, shapeless year, we got a load of New Year’s Resolutions, most of them closing with some smart admission about already having given up after a few days, or even hours! (Or, as we used to say, before the ink was dry!)

          But this time I’m prepared to admit that I felt somewhat enriched by what other people were thinking about creative goals for the next twelve months.

          The New York Times soared to the top of my list with some predictable but useful ideas about picking pint-size projects that are actually achievable. Or, rethinking our internal motivation. Or making plans instead of resolutions. Or shortening our list and taking the trouble to write the goals down.

          Even simpler, just cut yourself some slack!

          Then the Times got really smart and handed over to an Anglican priest whose writing I have long admired—Tish Harrison Warren.

          She, in turn, played with the essay’s title and passed the baton on to some of her pastoral friends who would dig deeper than most columnists for what she called reSOULutions!

          But first she explained that for her the chief value of resolutions, however we define them, is not found in our success or failure at keeping them. Instead, they help us reflect on what our lives are like, what we would like them to be like, and what practices might bridge the difference.

          “There is goodness,” she wrote, “in the very process of making resolutions. There is hope in the idea that we can change—that we can keep growing, learning, and trying new things.”

          Also, she felt committed to resolutions that would benefit people’s souls, as individuals, or that would help the “soul” of our nation and our world.

          Among the friends she chatted to, was  Paul Lim, a historian at Vanderbilt University, who said:

          “Make it a bimonthly goal to engage in a conversation with one who is not part of your political, religious, or cultural community, with the intention of learning something from them. Then, watch humility grow, which is a forgotten yet desperately needed virtue in our age of polarization and cancellation.”  

          Another was Andy Couch, author of The Techwise Family, who said that every morning he engages with the off-screen world first. …Wherever I am in the world, I go outside before I look at a screen. … As soon as I step outside, I not only find my senses coming alive, I also find myself feeling smaller—a creature in the midst of creation, rather than the god of a tiny glowing world.”

          And John Inazu, professor of law and religion at Washington University in St. Louis, boldly suggested we might think about our political leaders and pray for the ones we don’t like. “But,” he added, “make them prayers of gratitude: for the things they do well, for the people whose lives they help improve, for the ways they contribute to human flourishing. And if you can’t come up with anything, ask yourself if it’s because they need to change or because you need to change.”

          And my own reSOULutions? In light of the above observations, I’ve resolved to shift toward daily examination of life’s challenges—no lists, no exceptions, no negatives. Just complete honesty. Forward steps. Looking for the soul in every decision. Changing as often as wisdom and human caring dictate.