Krista Tippett’s On Being post for the New Year featured the thoughts of two people whose writing is special to me and whose presence in person both calms the troubled spirit and troubles the complacent mind. Parker Palmer writes:
We look with uncertainty to the year ahead. But if we wrap our lives around life-giving questions — and live our way into their answers a bit more every day — the better world we want and need is more likely to come into being.”
He then frames the questions from the poetic insights of Anne Hillman:
We look with uncertainty beyond the old choices for clear-cut answers to a softer, more permeable aliveness which is every moment at the brink of death; for something new is being born in us if we but let it. We stand at a new doorway, awaiting that which comes… daring to be human creatures, vulnerable to the beauty of existence. Learning to love.
Palmer then asks himself and us five life-giving questions. Which do you choose to answer as you stand before the doorway that beckons this coming year?
How can I let go of my need for fixed answers in favor of aliveness?
What is my next challenge in daring to be human?
How can I open myself to the beauty of nature and human nature?
Who or what do I need to learn to love next? And next? And next?
What is the new creation that wants to be born in and through me?
sacredlead 