I love all kinds of New Years and birthdays, the way that peoples around the world have begun the New Year: in the autumn at harvest time, in the darkest part of the winter, and in the brightness of early spring. I am interested in living in harmony with cycles of time, finding ways to move more skillfully between times of reflection and action. At the New Year there is a collective invitation to look inward and see what dreams and seeds want to be nurtured in the year ahead, then to move outward with clarity and purpose.

Many years ago when I was an aikido student, we would gather at the ocean’s edge on New Year’s day, doing a brief practice in the sand before running into the water for a quick and very invigorating purification, chanting “Body, Mind, and Spirit,” as we ran. Afterwards we would warm ourselves and celebrate with food by an outdoor fire.

These days my New Year’s practice also emphasizes body, mind, and spirit but it is a little less dramatic. In early December I start to consider Qualities I want to emphasize, cultivate, invite into my life in the new year. Qualities like Diligence or Synthesis, Simplicity or Courage. Gradually I settle on one or two to center on and walk with through the next year. I also keep a bowl with the names of Qualities written on slips of paper on the corner of a bookshelf. After I found out about the Angel cards, I found that they worked well for this purpose with cards like Forgiveness, Truth, Inspiration, Freedom, and Obedience.  Around New Year’s I pick a Quality from the bowl. I love the dialog between the two Qualities—the movement between what I choose and what chooses me, between my conscious intention and what is offered, between the planned and the spontaneous.

This year I was hosting a meeting about a project on the last day of the year, and at the conclusion of the meeting I brought out my bowl of Qualities, and each of us picked one—Inspiration, Obedience, Freedom, Peace, Grace. Doing this together with a group of people who will be working on projects together was especially sweet.

Having contemplated Qualities for over half my life now, I never stop being amazed about how focusing on Qualities offers a lively and gentle way to explore the many aspects of our selves.                                  

In my life as a writer and teacher, I have personified Qualities and imagined dialogs between and among Qualities. I have guided students from elementary school to art school in writing personifications of Qualities and conversations between them. And I have collaborated with dancers, actors and high school students as they have brought different communities of Qualities into performance.

This NewYear’s ritual, however, is not about making art or crafting something to communicate to the world. It is s a conversation between parts of myself, almost a friendship between the wisest part of myself and my everyday personality, with its hesitations and fears. Not a fixed statement or a set of resolutions about health and diet. More like a conversation or dance between my body and a few helpful Qualities, between two Qualities, between my personality and my soul.

Sometimes in the New Year as I’m walking, especially I am walking on a trail or by water, I like to imagine different Qualities in my arms and legs, mind and heart and belly. Clarity in my right hand, Perseverance in my left hand, Kindness in my left knee, Patience in my right ankle.

At times I imagine the Qualities as interior parts of our selves, other times I sense them as companions and allies that accompany us. I dance with Courage and then I am Courage dancing, and then six of us are dancing together, each bringing forward a different aspect of Courage, the Courage to love, the Courage to tell the truth, the Courage to wait, the Courage to accept the unknown, the Courage to accept complexity, the Courage to be simple.

As the year unfolds, I don’t always keep the Qualities I pick for the New Year in focus. Sometimes I forget them or I need to bring in new Qualities midyear. There hasn’t been anything particularly fixed or formal about the practice. It’s just something I’ve been doing so long, like making alphabetical lists of qualities when I’m swimming laps, that I almost take it for granted. And now it seems like something that may be useful to others as well.

In the Town of Qualities, which feels both like a mountain village far from where I live and a dream map of my neighborhood, I imagine that there is a sweetness to daily conversation, a finely developed language of friendship and appreciation of collaboration. It is in this spirit that I like to think about the invitation that the new year brings. An invitation to center on the next step, and to make gentle changes in our lives that bring us closer to our essential selves.

© 2009, j. ruth gendler