New Year’s Eve

December 31, 2025

New Year’s Eve Reflection

Firecrackers, fireworks, celebration, champagne toasts, or perhaps a quiet evening with family around the fire, looking back on the year and imagining the one to come. Whatever the setting, at this special time of saying good-bye to part of our lives, we long for life’s energy to shine as brightly as the fireworks themselves. And if we’re not celebrating, we still crave that burst of life because it is an antidote for the death of an entire year. We need something to compensate for all our losses and to distract us from the irreversible ending that will occur tonight, and all losses of the year that will take its last breath tonight. We need something to give us hope… hope that life will go on, that our life will go on. This night can be a lonely night, even if we are with people, so, some of us may find the unbridled life force by watching the teeming crowds in Times Square. 

Yet there’s always that strange, tender moment at midnight. With flawless precision, the new year rushes in the instant the minute hand strikes twelve o’clock, to take the place of what is now “last year.” In all of human history that new year has never been late.

Moments like this make us aware of time’s steady passage. Days fall through our lives like grains of sand in an hourglass, each one making its way through the narrow neck. And tonight, this day too will pass and carry us forward whether we refuse to go, or not.

When we reflect on Chronos time, it is impossible not to think of our own passage. We find ourselves caught in that very human tension: loving life deeply yet knowing we cannot remain here forever. We wonder what it means not to be here and then we hope fiercely that heaven is real, so we can continue. The thought is so vast we blink it away and think of something else. When the ego oversees our thoughts, oh, the places we go!

Humanity has always struggled with the awareness of our mortality. It has built kingdoms, waged wars, raised pyramids, temples, and monuments because of our impermanence. It has inspired our creativity and our longing to extend ourselves… through children, through passing along wisdom, art, service, discovery, and the stories we leave behind. From this awareness came the phrase, “Make your mark.”

Resolutions have their place, but if we want to enrich our lives truly, not by adding more years, but by adding more depth, we must be present. Through spiritual practice, we begin to see everyone and everything, even what is disturbing, as love making its way into form, whether it takes a moment or an eon. In presence, we witness our own return to the truth of who we are: children of God and that every eventuality will be taken care of by the Divine when they arise.

Presence draws us out of the ego’s restless attempts to outwit time or deny what is natural flow. It reframes our entire existence. It reconnects us to a deep trust in the universe.

In presence, we release our need to control, to deny, to insist. In presence, we discover a new way of living forever: By accepting the mystery, by resting in hope, by remembering Christ whose birth we just celebrated, and whose presence we often rush past in the busyness of the new year, we radiate life more brightly than fireworks. 

I pray this night brings you peace, and that the passage of time opens your heart rather than troubles it. I ask our God that presence reveals the love that has been holding us all along.

Happy New Year.