Although my eyes peer out of the glittery zeros in 2000-shaped glasses, a local tells me it is 1992. Bent on educating me gently, he further informs me it’s not even the new year—those festivities happened two months ago.
I was 28 years old and full of myself. Courtesy of Prince & The Revolution, I had been waiting since 1982 to “party like it’s 1999.” I was clueless about the impact of the Council of Chalcedon or the Gregorian Calendar. And I had certainly never considered that on this night, not everyone was celebrating the entrance into a new millennium.
Admittedly, advancing numbers help us mark time. Calendarizing is a construct that humans use to make sense of the progression of our lives. Yet, there remains something magical about the start of a new cycle. Indeed, for over 4,000 years, our species has been making New Year’s resolutions.
For over a decade, I resolved I would quit drinking. Then smoking. As I got healthier, I resolved to hit my yoga mat every day. To lose 10 pounds and find my abs! To stop eating processed sugar. Some of these resolutions stuck (#soberlife) and others, well, let’s just say I’m a work in progress.
As a self-identified spiritual rebel, I follow an odd liturgical cycle: a mashup of practices, holy days, and sacred texts from around the globe. And yet, this ungapatchka of traditions provides an opportunity for expanding—like the universe itself—with unrelenting curiosity.
This story is from the Jan/Feb 2021 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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This story is from the Jan/Feb 2021 edition of Spirituality & Health.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
Journalist Emily O’Kelly shares some uplifting research on the benefits of sweat bathing, a global healing practice not just limited to Northern climes.
the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.