I don’t compress my desires into a “word of the year” but I do ask the spirit of the new year what it wants from me. I also talk with it about what is whispering, rumbling, sparking in my heart; what I would love to create, in partnership with it.

Spirit of 2020, come, play with me. Let’s dance around the campfire together! Let’s surprise and delight each other, cooking up new stories with our bodies, with our hearts, with the palms of our hands open and radiant.

Let’s waltz into a new adventure, eyes brimming, hearts flung wide, smoke in our hair, wind on our skin, singing yes, yes and yes.

Stir in your seasonings, beloved 2020. A pinch or three of your own particular herbs, a fistful of aromatic spices. Enrich the broth that I’ve become, simmered over the campfire of life these seventy-plus years.

Together, may we nourish warmth, kindness and belonging. May we carry it in steaming bowls into the margins of our world.

In return, dear 2020, I offer you these gifts: my gratitude and wonder; enthusiasm, joy, vulnerability, sorrow. Courage, willingness. Receptivity.

Let’s be delighted together. Let’s be sources of provision and delight!