December is the month with holidays and festivals for gratitude and giving in many cultures and religions. Make this a whole month to express gratitude and to give. What are you grateful for in your life? What’s good in your life? What do you value? Give thanks for that, whether its to your God, or to the Universe, or, more specifically to the individuals in your life. As you think about the people you share your life with, when was the last time you thanked them for something? Now would be a good time and if this giving thanks becomes the basis of your giving, then think how much richer will be your experience of gift giving. All too often gift giving at this time of year becomes a chore, and then the gifts are not appreciated. How often do people say “It’s the thought that counts”? Well it is. How could you give more thoughtfully to others? How could your gifts say more powerfully, thank you?

As you celebrate the fruits of your life, you begin to reflect. November can be a month to give reflection centre stage as the year draws towards its end. This reflection can be on any, or all, aspects of your life. How is your year going? What about your ongoing plans and projects, not just the ones which have come to fruition? Are they going well? If you’ve set yourself certain goals, how’s progress? Are you traveling down the right paths? How are your decisions and choices working out? Is there anything you would like to change? Reflection also brings an opportunity for learning. What can you learn from the experiences of this year so far? And what about the balance between the various areas of your life? Are you satisfied with how you allocate your time, attention and energy? How does it feel to you? How are you? Reflection is something we can do for each other too. Have you considered asking someone who cares about you to help you reflect? You might get some feedback you could never have discovered by yourself.

October is a month of berries. Many kinds of berries appear at this time of year. Red ones, purple ones, white ones. Some are nutritious and tasty, and some are poisonous, good to look at but not to eat, but they all add something to this month. They add colour to our lives. Make this month a time of noticing the trees, hedges and bushes which burst full of berried colour. How colourful is your life? What effects do different colours have on your moods, or your health? Is it time to change the colours that surround you? Berries, or at least the edible kind, are also juicy and tasty, so maybe that’s another aspect of life you could consider this month. Taste. Do you actually eat slowly enough to savour what you eat? Do you need to change something in your daily diet to make it more tasty? To give your taste buds a treat? The other aspect of the berry season is that it’s a time of fruition. So why not celebrate that in all aspects of your life? What plans or projects have you been progressing this year? What fruits of your life would you like to celebrate? Your achievements, your major positive milestones? This is a time to enjoy what’s come to fruition, to recognise these milestones, and to celebrate them.

September tends to be the start of the academic year. Schools, colleges, and universities often begin their year here. If you are about to undertake a new course of study, or are working your way towards a diploma or degree, then each September is likely to be a month of beginnings. You see the curriculum laid out before, the new schedule of learning and the dates for your examinations. This is a good time to plan this area of your life. But you don’t need to be a student to learn. We can all learn throughout our whole lives. What would you like to learn this year? Are there any courses you’d like to take? This is often the start time for extra-curricular or “adult education” classes. This is the month to think which classes you’d like to take this season and to begin acquiring new skills and new knowledge. Many more people are entering retirement in good health and have many years of growth ahead. September is a good time to consider what areas of life you’d like to develop in the year ahead, and, not just to consider them, but to actually get started!

August is the month of “Le Grand Depart” in France, the month when everyone sets off to have a holiday somewhere. In many countries, different regions have their traditional weeks of vacation in August. Having considered the need for adequate amounts of rest last month, this month can be the time to look at that other aspect of a holiday. Travel. To get to your holiday destination, you have to travel. Sadly, this can often be a bit arduous, with busy motorways, hours spent in airports and the apparently inevitable delays. So, here’s the first part of this month’s challenge. How can you enjoy the actual traveling? Is there a way to make getting to your destination fun or pleasurable too? Maybe thinking about how you experience different forms of travel might help you to decide not only where you want to take your holiday, but how you choose to get there. The second part of the challenge is the holiday itself. Is your holiday destination just a place to enjoy better weather than you would’ve had at home? Or what’s different about this holiday town, this different country and its culture? Exploring a culture very different from your own can completely change your perspective on your life back home. It’s certainly good to enjoy your home, but it’s also good to broaden your outlook by travelling and discovering other places.

July is the beginning of the second half of the year and for many, is the beginning of the holiday season. In the Creation story in Genesis, God rested on the seventh day. Well, this is the seventh month so why not make this is a month to consider your need for rest. We do all need to get a healthy balance of activity and rest in our lives. It certainly good to be active, but it’s also very necessary to have sufficient rest. What is rest? It can be different for different people, so a first step might be to try out different forms of rest. What kind of rest works best for you? Once you know that, you can begin to make sure that you make enough time for rest. The Italians have a great phrase about rest “Dolce fa niente” – doing sweet nothing! When was the last time you did sweet nothing? Start now. This is the month to find a time to pause, relax, and take it easy for a while.

June is the month of midsummer. The month with the longest day, and the month with the greatest number of hours of sunlight over all. Sunlight is so very important to us. Not only do we need sufficient amounts for our health, but it can lift our spirits too. Yet we take it for granted most of the time. Every morning when we rise, the sun rises too, and every evening it sets over the Western horizon. We certainly notice it when it cascades shades of red over the sky as it rises or as it sets, but once it is “up” we tend to forget about the light. Certainly, the Sun also produces a lot of heat and we notice it when it is high in the sky on a hot day, but more often than not it’s the heat which draws our attention to the Sun on such a day. This can be the month to celebrate the light, not just the celebrations of midsummer’s day, but every day this month. If you are going to celebrate the light, then you will have to notice it first. This month you could focus on raising your awareness of all kinds of light, both natural and artificial. Fill your June with light.

One of them, for me, is Casablanca. The movie which has provided us with SO many quotations. It’s the very last one in the movie which springs to my mind when I’m thinking about possibility -

“Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

As the whole tale spins out, we see Rick, first of all stereotypically, and bit by bit as we see his vulnerability and hurts revealed we slowly see the potential he has for great compassion and personal sacrifice. A man who appears to be determined to stand aloof from the politics of the war, is revealed as, no, becomes, a man who feels so connected to all that is greater than just him, that he channels his immense personal power to the greater good.

The last scene of Casablanca just bursts with possibilities revealing glimpses of what is absolutely best in human beings.

May is the month of the flowering buds. It’s a time when Nature reveals some of her potential. Seeds contain incredible potential. You couldn’t imagine what a plant might look like from a seed, unless you’ve seen that particular type of seed before. Even if you know what kind of plant produces this kind of seed, looking at the seed does not help you to know, in detail, what this particular plant will look like when it emerges. The time of budding begins to make everything a bit clearer. In the buds you can see more of the potential contained within this individual plant. Why not make this the month you think about your own life, and the lives of the others around you? What is beginning to emerge? What potential is beginning to be revealed?  Make May the time to wonder about what may come to pass.

The opening scenes are Bridget’s family’s New Year party and we hear her wrestling with that old problem of resolutions. How to make life better? Every year, we take some time at the beginning of January and start to think about how to improve our lives. What should we do this year that we didn’t do last year? And what should we stop doing?

New Year often feels like a threshold, as we look back and say farewell to the year which has just ended, and celebrate the one which is just beginning. Thresholds can feel like major junctions too though, and Bridget, like most of us, is wondering about her whole direction in life. Is it time not just to change some habits, but to think bigger…..to think about what kind of life we want to live, and what we might have to do to achieve that.

This movie can be watched as an uplifting love story, but we can use it too, to stop and think about our own lives. What was that last year like? How would I like this year to be different? And what might shall I do to try and bring that about?

My resolution this year was to be more aware of when I was in a negative frame of mind and expressing critical or cynical comments from that mental state, of when I was in a positive frame of mind and expressing praise and positivity from that mental state, and in as a consequence of paying attention to that, to change the balance between the two, favouring the positive as much as I possibly could.

How’s your year been? And how would you like this year to be different? What’s on the other side of the threshold, and are you ready to step through and begin your new journey. You’ve never been in this year before, and you won’t be passing through it again!