I’ve rarely made New Year’s resolutions: it seems like a giant way to set myself up for failure. “Hello, self esteem, another way that you didn’t measure up”.
Or so said my former self until I had the realization: I don’t have to make a bunch of resolutions: I could just do one. And there are no NYr rules (that I know of: if there are, I don’t want to know: keep that door firmly shut: la la la, I can’t hear you) that state I have to do a BIG resolution. It could be small. Insignificant.
So I started flossing. Yes, that was a NYr: and I actually followed through.
The next year it was drinking enough water. And as you can ask my husband, who trips over water bottles (reusable, BPA-free) scattered throughout the house and the car, I tend to keep decently hydrated.
When I lived in Boise, I decided my NYr would be to read my Bible in one year following the handy dandy guides in the back. It was a Bible I got “free” while attending YouthQuake (you know, the “free” stuff that comes with a hefty conference fee). It was an amazing experience. Boise was a ‘desert’ time for me, a time where God met me (kicking and screaming, or rather twitching due to my unknown blood sugar issues) to spend some quality one-on-one time together through God’s Word. It hurt, but it hurt so good.
A few years later when I started doing “things to help keep depression a pacified, happy camper” coping mechanisms, one of the suggestions was to read a Proverb every day because it stimulates the frontal lobe, and when the frontal lobe is happy, everyone is happy. I got bored after a while (there’s only so many Proverbs, and only so many times I like to read about how it’s better to sleep on a roof in the rain than in a house with a cranky woman), so now I read some part of the Bible at breakfast time, whatever interests me. I just finished reading the Narrated Bible version of the Gospels (which you, as some of my pastors who I won’t directly name but might reference later on, might think is a verbal version of the Bible, but really it’s just chronological). Now I’m moving onto Judges, because my dad believes (after much study, and of course, a little Godly insight) that we’re in a time period similar to that of Judges (I’ll go into that someday later), so I figure it might be good to familiarize myself with the patterns of that book.
My friend/fellow blogger/pastor/fellow Newberg-Boise-Newberg mover Gregg posted about reading the Bible in a year. He’s opting to subscribe to an RSS feed through Google Reader. Sweet: I’m glad that works for him! I, however, am a skimmer, and would read simply for consumption rather than transformation. Must get all feeds read! What’s that about edification?
What’s been helpful for me is to subscribe to a podcast called The Daily Audio Bible. The host reads through the Bible in a year – Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs selections each day. He closes with prayer, thoughts, and prayer requests from the DAB community (which I rarely listen to, but am glad there’s space for such a thing). I also listen to PrayStation Portable (interesting, not having grown up in a liturgical setting) as well as Pray As You Go. In the morning I listen as I get up, get ready, and open up the house (feeding all the creatures – two and four-legged, blinds, mental list for the day, etc.).
So there’s my liturgy of sorts. A little different than monks and nuns probably intended, but would you expect any different from Quaker Sister Mary Aj?