New Month New Year

 It's September and all over the country, children and young people will be going back to school and college, or starting a new stage in their education. The British (non-) Summer is over and it's time to put away our holiday gear and buckle down to something new.

Having worked in or around the education system (including the Unitarian education system with the Worship Studies Course) for donkey's years, I always get a new surge of energy at this time of year - it is so full of new possibilities.... Yesterday, I visited an exhibition about Lego models with my grandson and his mum, at Northampton Museum & Art Gallery, and he was full of excitement to be going up into Year 1.

I'm also excited on my own behalf - there are two new Worship Studies Course Foundation Step courses beginning this month - one for UK students, the other for students from Australia and New Zealand. And I've been asked to help facilitate the Australia / NZ one, which begins on Monday, at 8.00 am (which will be late evening for the students). It's a new venture for Unitarian College and I really hope it goes well. It fills me with hope for the future of our beloved "uncommon denomination", as more and more people are trained to fill lay leadership roles, either supporting our current ministers or on their own, in their home congregations. 

If you are one of the people beginning a new course (or just a new academic year) this month, I hope that it fulfils all your hopes and proves to be both interesting and worthwhile. Good Luck!

Small Excitements

This week's quotation, by Friedrich Hölderlin, reads, "There is nothing so little or small, that you cannot get excited about it."

And I absolutely believe that. Small children know the secret, because they have not got the experience of life to be blasé or cynical about the world. The way that the frost turns the leaves all sparkly, the sound of a loved one's footsteps coming up the path, a visit to somewhere new... all these are sources of excitement for them. Everything, no matter how "little or small" has the potential to be greeted with cries and wriggles of excitement.

As we get older, we seem to become more world-weary. We've seen it all before... meh, whatever. And I think that is so sad. So I try to put myself into a small child's mindset, when something new happens, and appreciate it with all of me.

Yesterday was a good example. I started a new cross-stitch project. There are few things in life which give me so much quiet pleasure as unpacking a new kit - examining the glowing colours of the silks, having a good look at the chart, and being thrilled by the notion that over the next few weeks or months, these disparate elements - silks, material and needle, will be coming together to create something new and beautiful.

And then giving it away to the person I've stitched it for. Most of my stitching these days is for other people, in the shape of wedding and anniversary and birth samplers. It gives me great joy to create something original for the people I love.

Reading can be another source of small excitements. I've recently discovered The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey, and the books (eight of them) are beautifully written. Every few pages, I will come across a sentence, or a passage, which is so perfect, I want to share it with someone. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson have the same effect, as does J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The magic of well-written words, to transport the reader to a new world - this is a small excitement which will never pall.

What little thing makes you excited? Look around your life and see...