Its been pretty hard to keep up with the Day Family of late, this year has thrown what feels like a thousand surprises at us, left us in mystery, and led us to ramble our way through the swirl of disruption back to the place we launched out from a year earlier. We are now in Finland, back home in so many senses (we took this photo today.)
We are settling back into old cosy chairs, taking a deep sigh and intent to remain here until we are nudged on. Its fair to say 2020 didn't look as most expected. But for sure, this time last year we were dreaming in different ways for different people, places and had the energy to pursue them. Honestly a year on, those dreams remain, but their form is different, different emphasise, different hearts, faces, with a hundreds of days lived moulding and shaping them, our hearts, our essence, our vision and values for our story. Shaped, for better or worse by narratives lived. And now we have returned, not geographically, though that is true but returning as we must, to a space where we can again can find the essence of ‘self’, of us, that we may be true for whatever is ahead. To bring ourselves, whole selves, back into confidence and back to sense of surety of identity where all the illusions of days past, disappointments, mystery, swirl can fade away.
As Eckhart states 'going into one's own ground and knowing oneself.'
Here we are and will abide until we can be confident in our knowing until we once again engage. We are returning, disengaging from what could have been easy to maintain, to engage into the creative process of discovery, renewal, of casting our cares higher, losing ourselves here to find ourselves, refining strength, and recovering sound. Life can get small, our vision shrink, when we are confined to the narrative of obstacles, fear, pain: we can become small and consumed, but life, life’s story is much bigger, bigger than we allow our perspective to see at times. And so we must open our eyes wide and make space to leave the confinement and stretch out again.
2020, people are going to say much about you as they recount their stories, but let it be said that you ushered in surprise, new beginnings we didn't seek, and resurrection we didn't know we needed. It is here, new chapters are going to start and I will write of the wonders that came from what felt like ashes, the beauty that rose from the mire and the life that erupts when everything feels like its died. From you we will see dreams manifest far more exquisitely than we could have ever prepared for them. Because everything becomes beautiful in its time, and everything has potential, and new beginnings come every morning and one of those days ahead all things will be new.
For it is promised, and echoed, declared, that we must behold for God is, and continues to, do a new thing. Often, we must adjust to apprehend it. We make time to think together, dream together, explore together, discover as one; not of what was or has been but what that new thing is, the things we have not yet known, things that have not yet been. This renewal and new narrative is constantly breaking in, yet to each of us is the invitation to apprehend it. The new day of destiny is conducted each morning, a beautiful breaking in each day of renewal, yet it often gets missed, taken for granted. Yet it is new. In someways we are reengaging in the simplicity of renewal in order to engage in the profound mysteries to come, those we do not yet perceive but hear, the echo of proclamations down the ages to behold it. We ache for renewals, we are somehow fashioned to ‘know’ in our being that we were made for that moment of all things becoming new. We ache and ask and seek renewal; renewal in health, relationships, in zeal, in energies, in gifting, renewals in dreams, hopes, renewal of body, soul, spirit. We groan inwardly with creation for our renewal, this year we have perhaps grown more weary in the waiting, in part as life has ‘locked down’ some of our momentum and caused us to re gaze at the agenda we have perhaps self constructed.
Too often we cruise through, and miss the generosity of renewal that does come in the simplest yet most profound and powerful way each day. Each seasons change, each breath. So we have gathered ourselves and are taking a moment. A moment in the swirl and mystery and surprises of 2020. Taking a moment as the light breaks in to cultivate our truths, our confidence, and most of all re engage with our yes and our surrender. To be renewed is not always an out there experience or transformation, it is an inward encounter, our ache for renewal meeting our Comforter, and there becoming something new, to be as we haven't not yet been, to possess truths we’ve not yet taken, or even heard, to walk ever more like the One we long for. He is our renewal and He is the new thing in every way. Make us new. We grow onwards because we know we are called to apprehend promise, promises; A kingdom that’s at hand and we are called to usher in on earth. The story we live has an ending, and ending we already know, the years and narratives before hand may well surprise us, deal us pains, disappointment, cause us to lose our track, and shroud us in mysteries even at time, yet we live with a confidence. All this, all what is and has been will fade for new will come, and all things will be renewed. We can ever journey to the ending we know is sure, fully surrendered, loose from what’s been, allowing the old to pass away that we may behold the new, as and when in all manner of ways it comes, until the glorious final ‘has come’. And as we do daily we step in the renewal of Gods love and grace, for this is only way.
“Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.”
Isaiah 43:19
“ And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Revelation 21:5