Looking Back on 2020

New Year’s Greetings to you friends! I hope you enjoyed your holiday celebrations, connecting with loved ones wherever and however you could, and getting some much needed rest and renewal after this long, hard year.

I always find the Christmas season a little tiring with all the extra doings, but arrived at Christmas even more exhausted than usual. I think that’s a testament to what we’ve experienced this year between the pandemic, the racial reckoning and the ongoing political rancor around the election. It felt like trying to run a marathon through molasses while catching heavy balls catapulted at us every few feet. Of course we’re tired. No wonder we may want to turn the page on this year.

I have also loved that delicious period of time between Christmas and New Year’s, where it seems like there is a collective slowing down, with more people off and less going on. Over the past few months, I had made an extensive list of things I wanted to get done around the house after Christmas. But when the time came, I didn’t have much energy for more tasks and efforting. (If you detect a theme in this year's writing, you would not be wrong; maybe it's a good thing you still can't visit our house! :))

I did however crave the time to reflect more deeply on the passing of this extraordinary year. So I stopped running, put the balls down, and got still and quiet whenever I could. As I often do, I started reading back through my journals from the previous year. It's taking much longer than usual, because I took to the page much more frequently as a practice in self-care and discernment.

Can I just say I’ve been blown away by the gifts of the year?!? Without a doubt, there is hardship and confusion, stress and anxiety, grief and rage all throughout, like this incessant noise. But it really fades into the background behind this beautiful tune of deeper gratitude and wonder, empathy and compassion, joy and connection in community (even on Zoom!), in nature, in family togetherness, in inner searching. Listing gratitudes, I’ve got three pages of bullet points, and I’m only through mid-April.

How do we measure the value of a year? If we think in terms of ease or simple pleasure, I get that 2020 may not receive high marks. But if we think instead of what makes us more real, more human, more connected (despite the social distance), 2020 afforded some amazing opportunities. Even with the struggles, maybe in part because of them, I felt more fully alive and human, and more in love with my family, life itself, my friends and communities, our nation, and humanity on the whole. Undergirding even the sorrow and rage was an almost desperate passion for us to come through all this and find more common purpose and meaning, create a world more aligned with what truly matters, laid bare by these unprecedented crises.

Like so many memes and posts I've seen, I thought I was ready to say good riddance to 2020. But instead I keep panning through the molasses, delighted to discover chunks of pure gold.

I’m curious, how are you reflecting on the year behind and the year ahead? I remain keenly aware there are profound differences and disparities in how the various crises landed in our bodies, households and communities. I count that awareness as a gift and a call to be more curious and more spacious in holding realities very different than my own. But I’d like to believe that even in the hardest circumstances, there were also moments of profound gift and blessing, of unexpected beauty and meaning. I wonder how we help each other find the beautiful tune amidst all the clatter.

If you too are longing for more prayer, reflection and conversation around the changing of the year, I invite you to join me and others for this Sunday’s Sacred Pause Retreat. These are always rich times to plumb our own experience in deeper ways, to connect with other lovely souls, and to rediscover the God who has been with us through it all. You can read more details below. Whether you’re a regular, a long lost friend or have never been to a Deep Waters group or retreat before, I’d love to share this time with you.

Gratefully,

Kimberly