Tom Harpur was eloquent about the need for transformation of our very selves, and I do agree with him, but in practice it's tempting to give up completely on making even simple New Year's resolutions, isn't it? Our resolutions (or at least mine) tend to be so repetitive and so seldom successful beyond just about this date, January 5th. But as I promised in the newsletter, I'm going to suggest that when we find ourselves making the same resolution for the fifth (or fifteenth) time we can perhaps take it as heartening evidence of both our perceptiveness and our persistence. It confirms that we know what needs to change and that we're ready to try again. Those qualities are worth affirming and celebrating, I think. As the English essayist Charles Lamb said, in the eighteenth century, the person who doesn't periodically resolve to be better is either very good (already) or very bad! And as Kahlil Gibran said a century later, "To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to." Our hope for improvement, and our commitment to it, is truly wonderful. Before I give you more of my thoughts on this, I want to run a few more little aphorisms on this subject by you, hoping that they'll persuade you to trust your aspirations and feel good about the fact that you do make New Year's resolutions, even if you're very middle-of-the-road about keeping them. Here goes, and I'll pause after each one for you to take it in.

(Anon.) Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.

(So of course it requires resolution.)

The great artist Vincent van Gogh, who suffered much, said "Much strife must be striven, much suffering must be suffered, much prayer must be prayed, and then the end will be peace."

(It doesn't come automatically.)

The wonderful Welsh politician, David Lloyd George, said of an acquaintance - or perhaps a fellow politician - "He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul."

(Get off that fence and make a commitment!)

Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, said, "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

(Choose your attitude - and the choice you make would be a fine resolution.)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author (1797-1851), said, "Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."

(What's your steady purpose - the point on which your soul fixes its eye?)

From that great source, Anonymous: Don't wait for your ship to come in; swim out after it!

(What ship are you swimming towards?)

E.J. Gold, in The American Book of the Dead, said, "The only purpose a human being has, anywhere, in any space, is to grow a Soul."

(What kind of soul are you growing?)

One definition of spirituality is: "the lifelong task of bringing into congruence one's beliefs with one's way of being in the world."

(Are there any gaps between your beliefs and your way of being in the world?)

Some of you are well-acquainted with Neal Donald Walsh, author of Conversations with God. He says, "The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek, therefore, not to find out who you are, seek to determine who you want to be."

(Who do you want to be?)

There's an old saying: "Four things come not back -- the spoken word, the sped arrow, time past, the neglected opportunity."

(What opportunity is presenting itself to you this year?)

And one of those lightbulb jokes many of you enjoy:
"How many Unitarians does it take to change a light bulb?"
"None. Real change comes from within. But a UU will support the light bulb in its own journey of change, if it should decide to embark on such a journey."

(What might be your journey of change this year, and what support do you need from this community?)

A couple of weeks ago, when I used this rather ponderous style of reflection, I asked John afterwards how he liked it and he said he thought it would have been better with fewer questions and more time to reflect. Well, I'm afraid I've gone way over the limit for questions already this morning, so I'll leave you with those and slip back into something more like my usual mode now. I think, though, that I'm gradually leaving behind the need to talk at you for 15 or 20 minutes, in favour of this kind of reflectiveness and in favour, too, of the kind of story-telling that's not quite so preachy as I used to be. Particularly, I think, I'm becoming conscious of the need to show some real commitment to live my reflections out. With that in mind, along with today's theme of "resolve and repeat" - of acknowledging the need for transformation and for persistence and courage in achieving it - I have a story for you now. It's about "the Meaning of Life" in big capital letters, and, more important, the meaning of our small individual lives. It comes from a book of modern parables and is called "The Milky Way Amusement Park".

The true implications of many great sayings go unrecognized on the planets where they originate. One of the most profound sayings originated on the planet Earth, where the words have been set to music and are often sung, but are basically ignored by the millions who have heard them. But in other parts of the galaxy, travellers have listened to the words during their visits to Earth and have returned home to repeat them. As a result, they now hold the hallowed position of a galactic hymn.

The Milky Way Amusement Park, which occupies three planets and a moon, has constructed its main water ride around the theme of this anthem. Enlightenment Way, as it is called, is a thousand-mile-long river ride that could take many years to complete. Yet if traversed correctly it can be completed easily within a day.

At the start of their journey, travellers are given only a copy of the hymn and a seat belt. At first, they may not realize that the river moves deceptively fast, but this becomes increasingly evident the longer they are in their boats. Scattered along the river's path are alluring ports of pleasure whose sights and sounds promise countless means of easing one's way; mock battles on the shores over an endless list of issues on which one is urged to take sides; public service announcements on how turning round and rowing up the river would have cardiopulmonary benefits; signs that warn of indescribable disasters unless one leaves the river; and spotlights on other boats that have stopped to be outfitted in either fashionable or unconventional trimmings.

Rapids, whirlpools, waterfalls and swamps suddenly appear and disappear along the way. One is often sucked under or hurtled forward only to discover -- if the disaster did not succeed in driving the traveller off the river -- that the boat's progress has been unaffected and the journey's end is all the more assured.

The words of the anthem after which this ride is fashioned counsel that you must keep your hands busy in purposeful activity but that you must not take the activity too seriously, remembering always that the actual work is being carried on by the current which conveys you upon its back. The hymn goes on to make this remarkable promise: that if you will but allow yourself to be carried along in this manner, you are guaranteed to be rewarded with four parts happiness to every three parts of non-interfering effort. Nor has the explanation been omitted for why this must be so, because the riddle of human life itself is solved in the anthem's final words.

The hymn itself is very short and runs as follows:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

Oh, that was hard to do - I have the same feeling about public singing that many people have about public speaking - it's more terrifying than almost anything else! I chose a very, very easy tune, and I knew it wouldn't really matter if you couldn't even recognize the tune, as long as you heard the words - but it was a very small step towards being less self-protective and more risky. And I hope you did hear the words, and the truth in them, and what they suggest for some possible resolutions about enjoying this year, enjoying life, contributing to a more joy-ful world: "Row, row, row your boat / Gently down the stream. / Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, / Life is but a dream." "Don't push the river," is another way of saying it, or "Go with the flow," but you do still need to row, however gently; you can't simply drift if you have a destination in mind, a vision of where you want to go.

Resolving to be more joyful and playful is only my personal suggestion; you'll need to solve, or re-solve, what you personally are going to resolve. And as many wise people remind us, we'll need to keep on repeating the resolutions and the steps towards making them real. I was at the hairdresser's shop on Friday (January 3rd) and asked my hairdresser what her New Year's resolutions were. "Oh, I haven't quite decided yet," she said. "But when I get round to it, it'll probably be the same as usual - not to procrastinate as much." We both laughed, but we both knew how much truth was there - she has to resolve it every year, and she has to try not to procrastinate about resolving it every year, too, and it's important to keep doing that, and when I asked her, she agreed that she was getting a bit better at it as time went by!

The inclination to give up on making resolutions isn't only because we've so often failed to keep them, I think - though that may be the major reason. There's also our ambivalence about whether we really want or need to be different. Aren't we all right just as we are, after all, with our inherent worth and dignity and our uniqueness and special gifts? Well, I like the saying Martina Preece uses as an email signature line: "Everything is perfect, but there's lots of room for improvement!" And as the novelist George Eliot wrote in the 19th century, "It is never to late to be what you might have been."

You and I have this amazing capacity to be a more vivid and wonderful version of our present living selves - it's a divine capacity and our resolve and our repetition are part of it. Here's what my colleague Allison Barrett wrote about it in the Hamilton Unitarian 3 years ago, in January 2000:

In our humanity, we stretch towards divinity every time we try to act from our better selves.
In our humanity, we will make mistakes.
We stretch towards divinity when we learn to forgive ourselves and others.

In our humanity, we know that evil will always be done.
We stretch towards divinity every time we choose the good.

In our humanity, we know there will not be enough for everyone.
We stretch towards divinity when we consider how to share all we have.

In our humanity, we are blind to the life that shares our planet.
We stretch towards divinity when we see ourselves as part of a whole.

In our humanity, we know we will fail.
We stretch towards divinity when we begin again in love.

And even closer to home, here's what one of our own members wrote on September 14th 2001, just after the World Trade Centre disaster, in words which I think are a perfect conclusion to this reflection; they are about how to resolve - and repeat! - even when life seems very grim indeed:

Is the ugliness in the world enough to blot out the beauty? Or is it only the ugly that can make us appreciate the beautiful? The only way I can bear the evil that I see is to redouble my efforts to do what I know is good and right. I have to reassure myself that there is also good in the human race and the world, and that I can help restore the balance. There is too much to do for me to allow myself to give up. As the cloud of smoke over Manhattan slowly clears and the sky turns blue again, so too do our guilt and sadness clear, allowing us to feel joy again, joy that is both tempered and sweetened by the contrast of the pain still fresh in our memories. The survivors of this disaster will remember the kindness of those who helped them as well as the horror of the crashes. For every story of loss there will be a story of giving and heroism. For every terrorist, there is a Nelson Mandela or a Mother Teresa, tirelessly resisting. We cannot and must not forget what has happened, but we also cannot allow it to make us believe it is all there is in the world. To do that would allow the perpetrators too much victory.

Today at a community prayer service, a local official spoke of darkness and light. He held up a small mirror, and told us of its ability to reflect light to places the light could not reach by itself. He urged all of us congregated there to be mirrors, reflecting light where there is none. With tears in my eyes, I vowed to be a mirror, directing, concentrating and magnifying what light comes to me. This is how darkness is defeated. This is how we live in the world.

So may it be. So may it be. So may it be.