The New Year will arrive tonight in the glow of a full moon. It like the year closing, has reached completion. Round and gravid with light, it pours out the gift of its labors for all to see, a luminous reminder of the purpose and beauty of our lives as the year slips away. This year is over, but the moon's work and ours, goes on. Ahead of us in the night stretches a vast sky of opportunity, waiting with the stars, for our light. Shine on.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

Beautiful are the youth

whose rich emotions flash and burn,

whose lithe bodies filled with energy and grace

sway in their happy dance of life;

and beautiful likewise are the mature

who have learned compassion and patience,

charity and wisdom,

though they be rarer far than beautiful youth.

But most beautiful and most rare is a gracious old age

which has drawn from life the skill to take its varied strands:

the harsh advance of age, the pang of grief,

the passing of dear friends, the loss of strength,

and with fresh insight weave them

into a rich and gracious pattern all its own.

This is the greatest skill of all,

to take the bitter with the sweet and make it beautiful,

to take the whole of life in all its moods,

its strengths and weaknesses,

and of the whole make one great and celestial harmony.

Robert Terry Weston