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With tomorrow’s dawn
a new year arrives,
a new millennium by some ways of reckoning,
at least in the way we human ones figure time:
According to God’s time, all dawns are new beginnings,
continual reenactments of that first dawn of Creation,
the birth of that great fireball,
that brought us into being
and blessed us from the first.
The wheel keeps turning; the cycle doesn’t cease;
each moment speaks of newness
and the chance for new beginnings and fresh insights.
Why wait, then, for man-made milestones
every year or ten
to begin again the building of our lives upon this earth?
But wait we do, in our human sort of way.
And so, with tomorrow’s dawn,
better late than never,
let us resolve again
to begin again.
As I start to list the changes needed to make this world anew,
the list grows long, too long.
This list is not unique, I know:
Five billion lists like mine our planet needs
to be born over.
Too many deeds cry out to be done;
It is so much easier merely to despair,
or return to life on the surface of things
where nothing is born
and nothing changes.
But still the question nags:
Where do we begin
to begin again?
May we light the lamp with Faith--
a sense of inner knowing
that miracles can happen,
that life can be made new,
that new realities are always possible.
May we keep it burning with Hope--
a deep knowing that we can, somehow,
live to see these wondrous things come true,
and dare to act to make these things occur.
And may we sense in Love
the fire’s truest, deepest flame:
Tielhard de Chardin once said that when
we had finished all our human building and tinkering and
harnessing,
and had learned to love one another, at last,
we would have taken part
in the second discovery of fire.
It is time. Now
as we set foot
in this first year
of what we hope will not be the last millennium.
It is time. Now.
To start again, at last,
the unleashing of that heavenly fire within us
which brings to birth new being,
and blesses us from the first.
jbs
12/31/89 - 12/31/01
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