Are you one of those people who finds yourself heading to the end of the year, getting past Christmas at work and home (if you celebrate Christmas), and then looking back over the year that has been? Maybe you even look forward to the new year, with hopes, dreams, thoughts.

There is a lot of hype about a new year, about looking back.

People who train in spiritual care and the ministry of spiritual care learn the art of reflective practice and often theological reflection. Theological reflection explores particular experiences or situations by naming where God may be in the situation, or through the lens of a particular faith tradition.

This year, through an extended time of personal leave, I realised how grateful I was to have developed a reflective practice. It is not purely a time of looking back or wanting the find the best in a situation. I don’t regard it as a time to make lists. For me it is about sitting with the unknown – in me, in others, in the sacred. It is about being vulnerable to the challenges and joys we experience in life and being real. Often it is realising that we keep trying to pin down our thoughts and feelings so they will be steady and we will feel more balanced in life. Spoiler alert. That isn’t how life goes!!

The art of reflection to me is about our emotional and spiritual maturity. It is ongoing and happens daily throughout the year. Every now and then we have a growth spurt, of learning, of reaching a deeper understanding of ourselves and others, or acknowledging hindsight is worth taking notice of! Reflection is about noting where hard decisions that have been made – where we laid out our options and landed somewhere. We learn and develop wisdom from that point if we can say (and truly believe it), ‘In this moment I did the best with what I had and what I knew.’

The movement to become fully human is within all of us, staff, friends, families, clients, residents. May we pause, sit in the unknown, and avoid trying to ‘make’ the new year something. The new year will happen in spite of us. And all that has been in this year will come with us in various forms. You may hold some of it more loosely, you may have new grief, you may know more joy. May the source of life pause with you, love and hold you in the moments and accompany you through what is yet to be.

Rev Clare Brockett
Director of Mission