Ashes to Ashes and In-Between

New beginning! Happy 2021!!

From the ashes of 2020 arise the bright and shiny new year. A year of promise ahead for all, she thinks as she rolls out of bed on day two of the new year. January 1^st doesn’t count as the first day of the year as it usually involves recovery from December 31^st. Yes, she wasted another day following an extensive night of celebration, but she thinks, isn’t this what we are supposed to do?

There are a lot of traditions that mark the beginning of a new year, whether that’s the calendar year, or birth year, or mile markers that recognize a year’s passage – birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Perhaps, she thinks, it’s time for new traditions and new goals. Not so much New Years Resolutions (as tradition indicates), but of true changes to mark a new era. A new era to be marked in the next new year as a personal milestone more than a passage of another year. She thinks, yes, that’s what I am gonna do.

She decides, this new era should begin with a new blog.

Welcome to Spilling Marbles.

I am a she of the above. I want to begin a new era in my life. With a lifetime of moments striving for personal gratification (and yes, applied immediately, please) to be exchanged for a growth beyond measurement as experienced in previous times of change.  Out with the bad habits of misspent youthful pursuits, long outgrown but still hanging onto a myth of the past, and in with a changed outlook on the things that have been holding me back. This new era, perfectly timed after a year of quarantine and self-discovery, is ripe with possibility and purpose; youthful gewgaw sent to the landfill of broken history, and replaced with the sanative pursuits of God and man. The ashes of yesteryear clearing the ground for new fires. I am afire, with a still burning ember discovering the fuel required to ignite the flames of varying heights, yet, not to be burned.

I say “a she” because I am not the only she, or he for that matter, thinking about how to spend the fresh new days ahead. You, fellow he and she, have spent the last year coping with the demands of a spinning society somewhat out of control. You, have lost things you could not imagine would have disappeared on that night 366 days ago. This, the year 2021, is a year of reimagining. The ideas await in the ashes of the mind just needing some fodder for growth, a little sanative exercise.

From the start of humanity til today, people have searched for freshness in revolution. This has come to mean more than it ever has before, in our modern lifetimes. I am searching for that human connection to a horizon that shows up every morning and leaves every night, dependable, but elusive. The kindling that supplies energy to the fire. As the fire consumes the wood, it provides warmth and light, but it must be controlled for benefit. For as the fire takes over, it can destroy, and instead of giving joy and comfort, takes away what was. God is that fire. He is the source of all things good. I will be looking for him in the things of the world to fuel the fires of this life. God has provided each person with an imagination, genius, instinct, intellect, talent, perception, and wisdom (just to name a few), and Spilling Marbles is a playground for the thoughts of His kids. Let’s wonder at the world and it’s gifts through the eyes of the God of the universe.

Til the blessed morrow, be well!