January 6/Full Moon

First post of the new year.

The Songs of Forgiveness began last January, and now they have returned to January again.

That’s a full year of the moon circling the Earth many times while the Earth circled the Sun just once. Somehow those planetary paths give time more substance. Disrupting its usual flat, 2D representation on planners and calendars and moving it from the page and into its true form that occupies space. They say time is the 4th dimension, but I don’t actually understand that even though I sometimes get glimpses of it.

During this past year, we have followed 12 rotations of the moon around our Earth and today’s full moon marks the half-way point of the 13th rotation. Songs of Forgiveness has 59 written posts, which do not include Yoga Poetry Radio posts. I have gathered them together into an annotated Table of Contents that I will link here.

Annotated Table of Contents

Here I have been writing stories of forgiveness, because without them the new world won’t get built. I am not sure I have always done that expertly. As I looked back and read them over, sometimes I squirmed, not always certain that the subject matter fit into my forgivenesses purview. But that is the beauty of forgiveness. It involves facing mistakes and wrongs and the feelings engendered therein. With forgiveness there is an acknowledgement of the wounds and an incorporation of that loss into your future, so the future can hold less of what caused that wound and more of your strength and resilience. Forgiveness is letting go of the outcomes that you held tight to that never transpired. It frees up the energy that gets tied up in blaming. It brings in more relaxation and ease. Forgiveness is a gift to yourself that makes taking action towards the world we want ever more possible.

Here are some questions for you to consider as we go into the new year:
What story will you tell this year?
Is there anything you would look back at in 2022 and think “I would never do that again”?
Living into the year ahead, what animal medicine will you practice?

On New Years Eve I went to the birthday party of a friend and sat at a table that had been piled high with games. One small box contained beautiful animal oracle cards, a different set than the deck that I have. We devised an end-of-the-year prompt game together with the cards. We shuffled and cut the deck and then chose for the other person. The first card chosen represented the focus of 2022, the one that we would now let go of, and the second card was for 2023, our focus for the year ahead. We all took turns doing it for another friend at the table, when mine were chosen by my friend Kara, something magical happened.

These were mine. The card on the left for 2022 and the card on the right, 2023.

When I turned over the card for 2023, we had a moment where our eyes met and my stomach dropped a bit, woah. Because, as I had posted on December 23, the ravens have been showing up for me. And she has her own raven escapades going on. So the message arrived yet another time. I shall be going forward with these two in mind, letting go of last year’s focus and bringing in the New Year’s in. The messages may feels too big for my britches, but it harkens back to a time in 2009, when I got the Magician card of the Tarot deck once before, years and years ago, when the 4Ds(the four daughters of Stan and Shirl) picked cards with my sister Karlene on the Oregon coast, and these recent Raven pickings have been harkening me back to that trip west, years before the many parental losses have been incurred. More on that after I refresh my memory.

In the meantime, I got to those questions above by picking cards from The Hygge Game, a Hanukah gift from my Sister-in-Law, Chris, and altered them to make them our own. Let me know what animal comes up for you as we go into the year ahead.

Here is the game open beside me as I sit on my work couch.

Going forward: Spending the rest of this month, solar Gregorian Calendar timeline, on reflection upon the last year. So there will be more from me soon, as usual.

Much love♡, Tina