Happy New Year - may you dwell in possibility

I am past the maudlin sentimentality of nostalgia that I must traverse each New Year's eve season, and ready to look forward to 2011. Listen, it is a good thing to think like this......the New Year is full of possibility. It's like a new page to turn in an interesting book that is your life. And this book is FULL of rich ideas, adventures, poems and vistas. I have but one New Year's resolution, but it is a challenge. I desire to write a "Rule of Life"... (actually, it is a requirement if I am to get through the "novitiate" stage to become a Benedictine Oblate). And, what, you might ask, is a "rule of life?" Well, St. Benedict wrote The Rule of St. Benedict in the 6th century, which was essentially a "how to" manual regarding the business of being a Monk. So, the Blum Rule of Life will be written as a personal guideline for how I desire to live out my day(s). It shall provide a personal framework for stability, intentionality and purpose. I hope to include poems (of others), wisdom (of others) and my own ideas put together in some orderly manner. It will be meaningful to me to get this done. I spend entirely too much of my days drifting with the prevailing current... I am very much drawn to Benedictine spirituality, and I formally complete my "novitiate" status this year and take my "final oblation" in November, God willing.

Anyway, back to dwelling in possibility... I mentioned a few entries back that I have a ritual every Christmas Eve...it is a late night silent time outdoors alone under whatever weather conditions we are receiving. I sit and wait... and listen for the still small voice of God. I have never failed to sense His presence and a hearing from Him. Usually around the time my hands and feet are becoming numb. So here is how I generally hear from God: (you are free to think me delusional). If you saw the movie "A beautiful mind" there were scenes where numbers and messages "lit-up" in the brain of John Nash. It was nicely portrayed with visual screen effects. Well, something similar happens to me when I am sitting out there freezing, (and, occasionally, at other times). Except what lights up in my head is a verse of scripture and/or a "message" of sorts. And, it is not a verse that I necessarily know from memorization, but I suspect we file away far more than we realize, and somehow, in the process, a file is activated in my head and "lights up". For real.

Here is the verse that "lit up" this year in my head.

"Forgetting that which lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on to claim the prize for which I was called heavenward in Christ Jesus." Those are the words...I believe they are fairly close to the wording of a verse in Phillipians. Hence, I fully believe there is a profound message for me to be found in these words which I have been meditating on this past week.

OK...so here is a poem by Emily Dickenson... she just about nails it.



I dwell in Possibility

I dwell in Possibilty -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of Eye -
And for an Everlasting Roof -
The Gambrels of the Sky -

Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide of narrow Hands -
To gather Paradise -