Modah Ani*

I.

Is it overly meta to blog about a blog on the blog you’re blogging about?

II.

On the anniversary of this experiment born out of a whim born out of an unexpected—and very welcome—breaking open of self, it seems apt to revisit not just where I began, but also where I now find myself as I journey through this new year of sorts.

Those who know me will know that this past year has been a year of both celebration and heartbreak; a year of holding so many opposing emotions and ways of knowing in tension with one another.

This journey of this past year has both changed me and more deeply exhumed the me I always was.

And for this…

III.

Modah Ani.

I am grateful.

I am grateful for the new
in all its opportunities and its challenges.

Modah Ani.

I am grateful.

I am grateful for the old
in all its comforts and its frustrations.

IV.

A few years ago, I was part of a group that was instructed to write on an index card the things we wanted to work on in the coming year, not as resolutions or aspirations, but as realities.

Here was mine:

I wrote this in teeny-tiny script because I didn’t want anyone else to see what I was writing.

V.

A prayer (of sorts) by way of affirmation:

May I (I will) approach the changes and challenges to come with wonder and presence.

May I (I will) approach those things that resist change (within and without) with patience and understanding.

May I (I will) not question moments of contentment when they come or miss their gifts by imagining their end, but instead hold them lightly, with grace and with awe.

May I (I will) not resist pain by rushing to find and share its meaning before its time, but hold it as lightly as my joy, grounded in the knowing that “no feeling is final.”

VI.

There’s a song I stumbled upon recently that feels like a hymn to me (or some of the verses do, at least**).

“Change, like the wind
Like the water, like skin
Change, like the sky
Like the leaves, like a butterfly

Would you live forever, never die
While everything around you passes?
Would you smile forever, never cry
While everything around you passes?
…
Would you stare forever at the sun
Never watch the moon rising?
Would you walk forever in the light
To never learn the secret of the quiet night?”
– from “Change” by Big Thief

VII.

For change,
And all that it will bring,
And the grace to embrace its celebration and its grief,
Modah Ani.

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kfw 2022

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* or Modeh ani – “Every Morning when I awake I thank you for another day/ I give thanks to you…. You have returned my soul to me.”
** for the purposes of this post, though they are lovely words, let’s skip the wrestling-with-a-love-who-has-moved-on parts of that song.