If there's a light in everybody, send out your ray of sunshine.

“It takes a night to make it dawn and it takes a day to make you yawn, brother. And it takes some old to make you young, it takes some cold to know the sun, it takes the one to have the other.” Life is Wonderful – Jason Mraz

I had originally not planned on doing one of these musings, a look ahead to the New Year, if you will. I have never been big on making New Year’s resolutions because I feel like people usually make silly pronouncements that they either have no intention of or no ability to keep. Some of my favorites are: “I will lose 50 pounds this year…I will curse less…I will not eat junk food for an entire year.” While these are all very noble and hopeful, it is not likely that they will come to pass – and let’s be honest, who doesn’t love the occasional chicken wing or ten?? Instead of these lofty goals and plans, why not make smaller, easier to attain goals? Set up a large number of smaller targets that are easier to attain and you will feel awesome once you reach and achieve them. If we aim for grandiose goals and fail, we usually beat ourselves up over it and can’t help but let negativity creep into our psyche, causing us to move further away from where we want to be. However, if we start small and build up our momentum as we pass by the simple benchmarks, our confidence will grow and before we know it we will have reached that once lofty goal. Little by little, piece by piece, bit by bit. That’s all we can really ask of ourselves.

I am constantly trying to improve and grow as a person, so my small goals of this New Year go a little something like this…

Fill the Jar – One of the gifts I received for Christmas this year was a prayer/blessings jar. It is actually quite the incredible idea when I stop and think about it. Because we are a very sensory and tactile oriented culture, we often forget about the things that are not visibly and physically present in front of us. A perfect example of this is all of the blessings in our lives, also known as everyday miracles or even prayers. The concept of this jar is simple. Whenever you think of something that you are thankful or grateful for, feel blessed by, or would like to pray for, you write it down and put it in the jar. My hope for this New Year is an overflowing jar full of thanks and gratitude. I am extremely blessed with so much goodness in my life that it leaves me in awe…I should never forget that. By writing down my random thoughts of thanks, I will certainly become more in tune and cognizant of these blessings in my everyday life.

Pray More – I know this one may seem funny considering what I do for a living but I feel like there is always room for improvement here. I feel that the more aware I become of all the good in my life, the more I need to be offering up prayers of thanksgiving. Ideally I would like to set aside about 10 minutes every day to do this and to just simply “be.” As is true with most of our lives, I am constantly on the go and packing my schedule full of things to do. I rarely take that much needed “me time” and if I am able to set aside a few minutes each day for “me and G time,” I can only benefit by it. Again, I have so much to pray for and so many people to pray for. I am blessed with so many amazing people in my life and I know that they all need certain things as I do, so hopefully my prayers for them can help in some small way. God knows all their prayers for me have helped.

Love – “Because life's too short anyway, but at least it’s better than average. As long as you got me and I got you, you know we’ll got a lot to go around, I’ll be your friend your other brother, another love to come and comfort you. And I’ll keep reminding, if it’s the only thing that I ever do, I will always love you.” Song for a Friend – Jason Mraz

I like to think I am already pretty good at telling those in my life that I love them but I can always tell them more often. We all love to be loved and want to be wanted. It always feels great to hear that you are loved and it feels even better to tell someone you love them – friends, family, lovers, whomever. Like the song says, I am going to try and remind those in my life that I love them. After all, it is the least I can do for all of their help, love, and support over the years. I honestly have no idea where I would be without them.

Spiritual Direction – Something I desperately need to get back in the habit of attending on a regular basis. For those of you who do not know what a spiritual director is, she/he is basically a person who is your spiritual counselor. Ideally you meet once a month and review all that is going on in your life. They are an amazing asset to have because they represent an impartial third party who can listen to you and offer insight while also challenging you to do more and to grow more. I unfortunately have fallen away from this practice due to a crazy schedule of work and finishing my MAT, but I actually need this direction more now than ever in my life. Campus ministry, like many pastoral roles, is a very time consuming job filled with responding to the wants and needs of your students/community members while also trying to provide quality programming for them. It is a job where I am the one listening, helping, offering support and guidance, and simply presence. But who is the person doing that for me? Who is there to listen to me and support me in my pastoral work? This is by no means a knock on my friends and family because they are ridiculously awesome and supportive. I am talking about a person who understands the ins and outs of what I do and can somehow relate to my professional and pastoral experiences while offering insights into my work. I had an amazing spiritual director before but he is now unbelievably busy himself as he is the new rector of the Jesuit residence in Buffalo and just wrapped up the search for a new President at Canisius College. I guess you could say that I am in the market for a new one.

Read More – I am not talking about reading more for work or school (I do plenty of that now) but more for pleasure. I need to make it a goal to explore more my interests and hobbies through books and the amazing insights they can offer. I firmly believe that we can never learn enough and we can never stop growing intellectually, spiritually, and inter-personally. I will not be putting a number on how many books I want to read but I will commit to reading a little bit every night. I was once in the habit of keeping my current book my bed and reading a little, even 5 pages, before bed each night. It is definitely time that I got back into that habit and read more about: Theology, Higher Education, Politics, The restaurant business, Jason Mraz, Dave Matthews Band, American History, Golf, and The Jesuits just to name a few.

Practice Gratitude – “Oh my, the congregation in my mind, is an assembly selling gratitude and practicin’ their lovin’ of you. Live high, live mighty, live righteously.” Live High – Jason Mraz
No matter what is going on in our lives, what we have or do not have, we can always be gracious toward the people we encounter on a daily basis. Dictionary.com defines “gracious” as being “pleasantly kind, benevolent, and courteous” while also adding “merciful or compassionate.” When we define the word that way, it is a pretty awesome thing for us to aspire to. Can you imagine what our world would be like if we were constantly kind, benevolent, courteous, merciful, and compassionate to each other? That would be an unbelievably amazing place to live and love. Obviously the real world is unfortunately not like that, but we can certainly try and make it a better place by our graciousness and gratitude. Aside from this resulting in more gracious people taking over our world (a la pay it forward), it simply puts us in a better mood and a better frame of mind. Aren’t you always in a better mood when you have pleasant interactions with people? Wouldn’t you like that happiness to creep into your entire being? I know I sure would. Even though this sounds simple, it is incredibly difficult to do and definitely requires the baby steps I spoke of earlier. A reasonable goal for this endeavor would be to do one random act of kindness for someone each day for a week. Then try two per day and so on and so on. We have all heard the quote “give until it hurts” but a wise man once told me “give until it feels good…then the giving will become a regular habit because you want the good feelings to stay.” Awesome.

So there you have it – my first take on the new decade and what I hope to be accomplishing in the following year and for the rest of my life. If it gets too hard and you want to quit on your resolutions or goals, think of the movie Finding Nemo – “just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

Peace and Love.