Hag Stone Journal

New Year

New Year

014
December 23 to December 29
In This Issue: Journal Prompt, Meditation, Home, Outdoors, Community ,Body, Magic, Poem, Craft, Cookery, Moon Phases, Activism, Recommendations, Next Week

Almost every culture around the world celebrates the New Year on December 31st, and the themes are consistent from Brazil to Finland: out with the old and in with the new. At that moment when the old year becomes the new, fireworks explode in the sky in almost every city and town, celebrating the rebirth of the world. Different locales also celebrate their own unique traditions, from eating twelve grapes at midnight to wearing yellow underwear, but all the traditions are meant to affect the future– to cast a spell, if you will, to bring health, wealth, happiness, true love, positive growth, and dreams come true in the coming year. The New Year is a time of wishes. All across the globe, as the clock strikes midnight in their lands, people are holding their dearest intentions in their hearts and preparing themselves to step into the unlimited possibility of the new year.

Leading up to the new year, we are drawn to take stock of the old year. What were our highlights and what were our lowest points? We sift through the past, searching to learn from our mistakes and build on our strengths.

We also check in with our path. What are our goals? What are our values? What, if anything, has changed over the last year? Are we in alignment to meet our highest goals?

The week leading up to New Year is an auspicious time to do this work. The calendar flips to a new year and we are given another chance, a fresh new day to create the life we want to live.

 


By Heather Gray

Journal Prompt

Let’s engage in a New Year journaling visualization. Imagine three ways you would like your life to be in the coming year. They could be tangible things like:
“I want to travel to Paris.”

“I want my home to be a peaceful sanctuary.”

“I want to start gardening.”

 

Or they could be intangible, like:

“I want to be happier.”

“I want to have more self-confidence.”

“I want to be part of a strong and supportive community.”

Once you have your three ways, think of ONE small action you could take this week. For example:

“I want to travel to Paris.” – Look up what you would like to see in Paris. Or look up how many vacation days you can take. Or look up the price of airline tickets.

“I want my home to be a peaceful sanctuary.” – Make a pinterest board of inspirational photos. Or pick one small area and clear out what isn’t peaceful. Or make a list of what “peaceful sanctuary” means to you – scented candles, soft fabrics, decluttered, etc.

“I want to start gardening.” – Look up the plant hardiness zone for your areas. Or find out when you can start planting and what you can plant first. Or pick a site for your garden.

“I want to be happier.” – Do one thing that makes you happy. Or next time you are doing something, check in with yourself and see if you feel happy. If not, could you allow yourself to be?

“I want to have more self-confidence.” – Make a list of what you would do if you had more self-confidence. Take ONE small step towards doing one of those things. Or identify self-confidence role models.

“I want to be part of a strong and supportive community.” – Make a list of who is already in your community. Or identify what communities you are already part of. Do ONE thing to strengthen your bond with one of your communities.

Sometimes we make big New Year’s resolutions and then feel discouraged when we didn’t achieve them. We can get turned off of making New Year’s resolutions if we didn’t lose those ten pounds or didn’t finish writing that book or didn’t find true love. But we can’t really control life like that.

What we can do is take small actions that bring us closer to the life we want to live. With each small step, we are bringing what we want into our life right now. Take one action and then identify the next, and then the next. Focus on realistic day to day movements; they will get you where you are headed.

Meditation

New Year’s Eve Meditation:

Stand tall, with your feet firmly planted on the ground, spine erect, head held high.

Inhale. Exhale. As you exhale, release the old year. It is in the past. You can’t change it. You can only learn from it. So let it go. Release.

Inhale. Exhale and release. Let it go. You have a whole new year ahead of you.

Inhale. Exhale and release. You need to make space for the new. Release the old. Shake it out like you are cleaning a rug.

Inhale. Exhale and release. Shake your hands. Shake your elbows. Shake your arms.

Inhale. Exhale and release. Shake your hips. Shake your booty.

Inhale. Exhale and release. Shake your left leg and foot.

Inhale. Exhale and release. Shake your right leg and foot.

Deep breath in. Explosive breath out. Blow out the old year.

Deep breath in. Breath in the New Year. exhale.

Inhale. Opportunity. Possibility. Power. Exhale.

Inhale. Alignment. Grace. Love. Exhale.

Inhale. Peace. Exhale. Peace.

 

Cookery

Our traditional New Year’s Eve dinner is a three-course fondue feast. My daughter’s favorite part is the chocolate dessert course, of course, but my favorite is the cheese course. You don’t need a fondue pot to make this delicious cheese fondue. You could use a double boiler or instant pot/crockpot. This recipe makes 4-6 servings.

Ingredients:

1 garlic clove, halved

⅔ cup dry white wine, like pinot grigio

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon curry paste

8 oz of Gruyère cheese

8 oz of Cheddar cheese

1.5 teaspoon cornstarch

3 tablespoons dry sherry

Bread (unsliced loaf with a crust, like a French baguette) cut into bite-sized pieces

  1. Slice bread into bite sized pieces and let them get a little stale while you cook the fondue.
  2. Shred the cheeses.
  3. Rub the inside of your cooking pot with the cut garlic clove.
  4. Add the wine and lemon juice to the pot and cook until bubbling.
  5. Turn heat down, and stir in the curry paste.
  6. Gradually stir in the shredded cheeses.
  7. In another bowl, whisk the cornstarch with sherry, then add to the pot of cheese. Continue stirring for three minutes, until the mixture is thick and smooth. Do not allow the mixture to boil.

 

We just dip bread into our cheese fondue, but some people dip cauliflower, little sausages, breadsticks, and apples.

Craft

Put aside a block of time, as the new year approaches, to go through your photos, your camera, and your social media, and identify the highlights of your year. We are going to make a collage of some of your favorite memories of 2018.

If you are doing this digitally, put your favorite and best photos into an album and then narrow down your top nine. (Nine pictures makes a nice 3×3 square, but you could go bigger.). Then use a free collage-making site online, like BeFunky. Upload your photos to the website and create your collage. With BeFunky, you can add different colored borders and text, and even create a collage that you can use as your facebook cover.

If you are using actual photos, you can creatively organize the photos into a collage, adding some scrapbooking elements with titles and the year, and then frame the collage.


I often also make a Year in Review video that we watch on New Year’s Eve, as well as my nine photograph collage.

 

Home

We want to start the new year with space to welcome all the possibilities, opportunities, and adventures coming our way. Decluttering our home can be a symbolic ritual of releasing the old and welcoming the new.

Grab two trash bags, and, walking from room to room in your house, put things that should be somewhere else in one bag and thing that can be thrown away into the other. When the bags are filled, or you have decluttered for 15 minutes, stop.

Deal with the bag of items that need to be put back in their homes. If they don’t have a home, make one. You don’t want to leave this bag hanging over you as you start the new year. You can do this now and it will feel good when it is done.

When you are finished putting things away where they belong, you can deal with the trash bag. You guessed it: throw the trash bag into the trash.

If you feel like 15 minutes won’t make a dent in the amount of decluttering you would like to do, try doing 15 minutes once a day for the week leading up to New Year’s Eve. And if having a less cluttered home is supportive of your life goals, consider adding this 15 minute activity to your week.

Body

Think about how you can develop a more loving relationship with your body in the coming year.

What makes your body feel good? What makes you feel good about your body? Make a list of six nice treats for your body and add them to your 2019 calendar. In six months, reevaluate and add six more. For example:

Things that make my body feel good:

Hot bath with bubbles and candles

Massage

Yoga

 

Things that make me feel good about my body:

Clothes that fit me.

Going for a long walk.

Hugging my body and telling it I love it and that I am grateful for everything about it. (I really do this.)

There are plenty of other ways to show love to your body. Some cost money, like getting a pedicure or new running shoes (did you know you should replace your shoes every 3-6 months to maintain foot support?) and some are free like sleeping in, or going to bed early, or getting a massage from your partner.

There are also small ways that you can show love for your body on a daily basis, like picking out some pleasantly scented soap to use in the bathroom, drinking a cup of your favorite hot tea, getting up from the computer and stretching every couple hours, listening to a guided relaxation meditation (there are many on YouTube), dancing wildly to loud music in your own home, climbing into a bed made with fresh clean sheets, placing lavender sachets throughout the house, floating in water, savoring a meal, and exercising.

Your body doesn’t need to be punished or guilted. You don’t need to hate it or berate it. I believe in choosing love from all other options, including loving my body. I am grateful for all that I can do because of it. It doesn’t have to be perfect to deserve love. It never has to be perfect. Loving my body is a gift to myself, and it is one way I show gratitude for my life.

Outdoors

In Hag Stone Journal, I always try to connect to what is going on outside– what is happening seasonally. I want to connect us to the weather, the moon, and other natural cycles.

I wrote in the Wander issue about the health benefits of spending time amongst the trees . I have found that being outdoors– under the sun, in the trees, and on the earth– opens me to the magic and sacred that permeates our natural world.

One of my goals for 2019 is to go on a very long hike. My dream is to hike for a whole day, or days, through Scotland. I want to see some magic standing stones with my own eyes, walk the lands of The Cailleach, and breathe the Scottish air into my lungs and soul.

What outdoor dreams and goals do you want to add to your 2019 calendar? Spend a week at the beach? Learn to paddle board? Watch the sunrise? Walk your first portion of the Appalachian trail?

Nature is a gift to us. We are never done receiving it. You open it by stepping outside and being where you are.

Moon Phases

December 29th is the second quarter moon

Magic

This is a magic spell for the New Year, to be performed on the 31st or the 1st.

For this spell you will need:

Candle

Lighter or matches

Incense

The answers to your journal prompt: “Imagine three ways you would like your life to be in the coming year,” written on small slips of paper

A cauldron or pot you can safely burn paper in

Light incense and wave it around your altar to “clear” it. You can use a candle to do this if you don’t have incense; wave the candle and let the smoke move around the altar.

Light a candle. Say a prayer of gratitude for the year: for all your challenges that have helped you become even more of who you are, and for all the moments that flowed and shined with grace. Take a moment to feel the gratitude in your heart, and then blow out the candle. Watch the smoke as it disappears.

 

Hold the candle in both hands. (The same candle as before. You could use a different candle, but I like the symbolism of using the same candle. It is a new year, but we are the same person, and we will bring all our gifts, talents, and resources with us into 2019.)

Now bring forward and hold, each in turn, your answers to the journal prompt: “Imagine three ways you would like your life to be in the coming year.” Really visualize what you would like your life to be like in these three ways.

Light the candle, feeling the immense power of your will and divine grace moving from your body to the lighting of the flame. Take up one slip of paper with one of the ways you would like your life to be in the coming year. Focus on this intention. Feel it as if it has come to pass. Light the slip of paper in the candle and then place it into the cauldron or pot. Say “So may it be”, or some other similar phrase or prayer.

Take up the next slip of paper and repeat the focus and intention. Light it and burn it in the pot. “So may it be.” Repeat the process for a third time. Then blow out the candle.

So may it be.

The song Auld Lang Syne was written by the National Poet of Scotland, Robert Burns. The phrase “auld lang syne” which can be translated as “long long ago” or “old times”, predates Rabbie Burns’s poem. Auld Lang Syne is known and sung throughout the English speaking world on New Year’s Eve. It is a call to remember and honor old friendships and times past.

Burns’s Original Poem: Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my jo,

for auld lang syne,

we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup!

and surely I’ll be mine!

And we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my jo,

for auld lang syne,

we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,

and pou’d the gowans fine;

But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,

sin’ auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my jo,

for auld lang syne,

we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,

frae morning sun till dine;

But seas between us braid hae roar’d

sin’ auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my jo,

for auld lang syne,

we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!

and gie’s a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll tak’ a right gude-willie waught,

for auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my jo,

for auld lang syne,

we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

 

Listen to Auld Lang Syne sung in Scots here. 

Community

I recently received an email from my neighborhood community organization. The email was titled: “The best way to build a community is to be part of it.” It was an article about our neighborhood Christmas parade, extolling the benefits of social participation and civic engagement.

Community is one of the things that makes our lives meaningful, and the way that you create community is to show up for it. Unless you live on a remote island, you do have community around you. From a book club at the local independent bookstore, to a women’s bowling league, to a church choir, there are many organizations that want and need what you have to give.

Let’s do some research. First, identify times in your life where you have been in a community and what it was specifically that you were able to give and what was given to you. Secondly, look in your community for ways to give. Thirdly, if you feel like you would like your community to be stronger and more vibrant, make a plan for how you will add community engagement to your life. You don’t want to have to stretch yourself too thin in what is for many of us already a very busy world. But community is a reciprocal blessing. You give and you are given to in return.

Activism

What kind of activism do you want to do this year? What excites you?

Look back on all the activist work you have done over your life. Make a list of it. For example:

Marching, food pantry, working with students, donating school supplies, bake sale, crafting for a cause, facilitating a workshop, hosting a write a postcard to your representative party, calling representatives, serving meals, working in a community garden, picking up trash at a park or river, running a 5k for charity, mentoring, giving an extra big tip to your server, etc.

Think about what you liked about those activities. You are allowed to enjoy your activism, especially if it means you will want to do it again and again. You don’t have to be sad or angry to make a difference. You are allowed to be happy and bring the gift of a happy heart to your activism.

Think about what forms of activism call to you, and make a plan to engage in meaningful activism in the coming year. You may want to join an established group, but, if you can’t find one that works for you, you can start your own and invite some friends to join you.

When I taught a Science of Happiness course, one of the things that I learned and taught is that true happiness includes altruism. We all want to feel our lives have meaning, and giving is an essential path to that.

Recommendations

I would like to recommend some feel-good tv shows. (After years of great but dark shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Westworld, I really feel the need for well-acted and moving portrayals of human kindness.)

Detectorists is a small British show about two men and their hobby of metal detecting. It may not sound like the type of show that would get reviews like “Astonishing tour de force of writing, directing and acting”, and “Like the ordinary lives it magnifies, Detectorists has the air of seeming to be small and immense at once, to be about hardly anything and almost everything. It is full of space and packed with life”, or win a BAFTA for best scripted television comedy, but Detectorists is a surprising gem that I am glad I found. There are three seasons of Detectorists, and six episodes per season.

The Durrells in Corfu is another gentle British comedy. The Durrells is an adaptation of the famous British naturalist Gerald Durrell’s autobiography, My Family and Other Animals, of when he lived on the idyllic Greek island of Corfu in the late 1930s. This version of the story puts Gerald’s mother, Louisa, front and center, and explores themes of creativity, love, and family. This very popular show in England was exported to the U.S. as a Masterpiece Theater program, where it has also garnered positive reviews: “This sunny and touching yarn feels like just what we need in these angst-ridden days.” “Even though it fits smack in with the style of most PBS dramas, this dramedy is full of really sharp jokes and an entire community of hilariously quirky characters.” The Durrells in Corfu has three seasons out, with the fourth and final season airing in England in 2019.

Anne with an E is a Canadian show, a gorgeous and heartfelt adaptation of the Canadian favorite, Anne of Green Gables. This Anne is a period piece, but is updated with a more modern sense of feminism. Anne Shirley is a kind of “patron saint” of Hag Stone Journal. She really sees the magic abundant in the world, but she is more likely to create trouble than the sacred. I love Anne and all the citizens of Avonlea. Many reviewers agree: “Rather than ruining the series, they give the context for why Anne would be filled with gratitude for the beauties of nature, basic human decency and having a family to call her own.” “There are so many walls being built and so much fear growing in the world right now and Anne offers us a reminder that it’s okay to stay positive, be kind, and to dream, no matter how tough life gets– which is inspiration we all need.” There are two seasons of Anne with an E available, with 17 episodes overall, and a third series is in the works.

Next Week

Next week we will explore the magical concept of Danish hygge ( pronounced “hoo-ga”).