A New Year is nothing really new; after all I have experienced 78! Nonetheless, a New Year can be packed with a great variety of meanings for an individual. An ordinary exercise like changing the number from 2013 to 2014 can start something significant, or it may represent only more of the same. In one way or another the New Year does point to change, on one hand merely changing a number to another, and on the other hand whatever meaning beyond this that a person chooses to give to it.
In this short article I plan to write about a significant experience that I had in the beginning of this New Year, not on January 1st, but on Tuesday, the seventh day of January. It is my account of what happened, what I experienced and the meaning I give to it.
At around 6:00 am I was in prayer in the lovely home of the parents of a friend I met when I was invited to attend a retreat in this home. Of the five people present for this retreat I was the only one awake early in the morning before sunrise. Shortly after 7:00 am I was startled to see the darkness ablaze with colors of red and burgundy and magenta on the distant mountains. I rushed quietly from the living room to get my camera located in the bedroom where I slept during the night. By the time I returned and I got into position to begin photographing what was happening, the colors on the mountains changed from what I first saw; in fact the colors were constantly changing very rapidly before my eyes. Though I like the photo I am sharing here, it really does not do justice to what I first saw and what was occurring as I watched the development of the sunrise. This photo gives the appearance of gold, yet what I first saw were subtle pastel colors. I feel I need to emphasize that it was still dark, and only the mountains were covered with colorful light.
Why did I give the photograph the title "New Beginnings"?
Obviously the photo was taken at sunrise, the beginning of a new day, on the seventh day of the first month of a New Year. But more than this, it represents a statement of my spiritual life. I was attending a retreat with new friends that I had only just met the day before, and we quickly became close friends. We were together to pray ... to pray to God, our Father, for a new blessing of His Great Love – the Divine Love.
As I mentioned, I was in prayer when I saw this phenomenon of color on the mountains. Because of the timing (near the end of my time in prayer) I immediately gave it meaning. I received the sunrise color as a blessing on my prayers and desires. I felt that I was a participant in an event much larger and bigger than me, and that the sunrise experienced at a particular moment was a ‘message’ from Heaven itself that the world is being bathed with light and love. Yes, it is true that many people did not see this phenomenon, simply because they were still in bed sleeping. I am confident, however, that I was not and am not the only human awake that saw this magnificent sunrise. For me personally it was an experience much greater than beholding a beautiful sunrise. The moment marked a new beginning for myself and other individuals awake to the presence of God's Love and called to embrace the experience of Divine Love and allow this Love to continue its transforming power to bring about new and surprising changes in our world.
Love – the Divine Love - is the answer. It is the agent and action of change if we allow it. Divine Love does not compel or force us to experience change. Though it surrounds and envelops us all, this Love never comes into our life to actuate change and development and progress. It waits on us to choose to receive it, allow its transforming power in our life; it waits for us to surrender to it, embrace it and cooperate with its potentiality within our soul. No great and lasting change really occurs without our choice and decision. We are beings with Free Will and yet our fullest and most complete potentiality and possibilities only exist in a living partnership with the Divine Love of our Creator.
This is the meaning I see in the variety of beautiful colors that appeared at sunrise and that I experienced at the moment at the end of my prayer time on Tuesday, the seventh of January in the New Year 2014. It is for me a hallmark moment signaling New Beginnings.
~ Joseph