Reflections on 2023

The Resources

Well friends, we are approaching the final gathering of the year, and as we do I want to take some time to reflect on the year together. The above image seems apt to my own journey this year…and there are some very particular events and encounters that stand out to me as I consider what the landscape – inner and outer – has offered, how it has changed as I have meandered my way through, and where I find myself now.

So, for our last intentional conversation time this year, I was thinking it could be good to tell the story of the year that has been with some generalities and some particulars. To help you focus, I offer two suggestions.

Firstly, I invite you to consider with me:

• What has your journey been like this year?
• What are three words you would use to describe it?
• What colours have predominated?
• What was the texture of this year for you?
• What are some of the major landmarks of the past 12 months – those significant places of change or recognition, of loss or delight?
• How have you grown, or where have you shrunk or become more defended?
• What changes in your perspective or understanding do you notice as you reflect back?
• And what is the overall tenor of feeling as you review the year?

Secondly, I invite you to find up to three things…

…that symbolise or otherwise represent the significant/focal/pivotal moments or movements of the past year, and to bring these to our gathering to provide a shape and some prompts for your story telling.

You might make something, find something, buy something, write something. It might be a song, a poem, an image, an object…

You will need to take some time to give this enough space for your soul to speak…to listen for the deeper movements that have been at play beneath the surface of the day to day.

You may find it helpful to begin by asking: Where am I now? When did this now begin? What has brought me here?

You can still choose what you want to share, and how you want to tell the story, of course, and we will practice listening with ears, and with presence.

As always, I am grateful for the many ways my life is enriched by this group, this space for reflection and the opportunity to offer some of the treasures I have come across in my wandering and wonderings.

In all this, here’s the question I am continually circling.