Letters to 2021
Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that. You cannot hold onto the old all the while declaring that you want something new. The old will defy the new; the old will deny the new; the old will decry the new. There is only one way to bring in the new. You must make room for it.
- Neale Donald Walsh, author
2020 was terrible and wonderful – but mostly terrible. With a global pandemic, a continued rise of authoritarianism, the unveiling of a deeply racist system of oppression, and economic hardship, it’s natural to wish that year into the dustpan of history.
But...we learned a lot about who we are and who we can become. We learned new patterns of working – online and alone. We spent more time with family. We learned about stillness, rootedness, and silence. We learned about fear, anger, hope and love. We were asked to practice our love for one another in ways that didn’t look like what was once our norm. Our understanding of community expanded.
We don’t want to lose those lessons. We also realize that the world we create must come from our dreams of what could be before us.
Rather than starting 2021 merely reacting to the current turmoil in our country and world, we believe it is important to spend time not only listening to the emotions and lessons we experienced in 2020, but also casting a vision for what we want to see born into the world this year.
Letters to 2021 is an initiative to make casting that vision possible.
We are inviting people of faith and congregations to write a letter to 2021 which will both remind us of the lessons we learned during this challenging season and how it felt to live through it, and cast our personal vision for the world we want to see coming into being by December 2021.
