My little one has a delightful habit of saying, “This is the best day ever!”  Today is not only the first day of a new year; it is the first day of the new decade in this new millennium.  As someone from the last century, 2020 still sounds somewhat futuristic.  January 1 (depending upon what calendar you follow) marks a new beginning.  My father always taught me to look forward, to have goals, and — above all — to always be grateful.  I can remember my mother often exclaiming, “This is the best *fill in the blank* I ever had!”  It became sort of a running joke that EVERYTHING was always “the best” she’d “ever had.”  Our child is so much like my mother; her namesake, it is uncanny.  I have watched my little one apply lip balm in the EXACT same manner in which my mother used to put on her lipstick.  I have watched her decorate things exactly the way I know my mother would have.  They love the same foods and have a shared love of playing the piano as well.  I cannot recall exactly when, but at a very early age our daughter start saying:  “THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!”  She has just as earnestly proclaimed it when we took her to Disney World as when we gathered leaves on our street for our Thanksgiving table.  Looking back on my childhood “bests” I realize that more often than not they did not involve money.  I loved taping our Halloween decorations on our apartment window every year.  I loved going to church each Sunday with my folks and watching them hold hands.  Money is of course not a bad thing; it is just not EVERYthing.  I think it is human nature to enter into a new year wanting to make personal improvements — whether that is making more money, paying more attention to our diet, carving out more time to exercise, or giving more effort to learning a new language or skill.  In the past, for whatever reason, I have always viewed an improvement as something “more.”  I should try more; do more; be more.  My mother gave me an appreciation for classical poetry, among many other things.  I cannot help but think of the British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, who was the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria’s reign.  However trite, this poem of his, “Ring Out, Wild Bells,” comes to mind:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light:

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind

For those that here we see no more;

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

And so as we ring in this New Year, I shall strive to ring OUT some things for the first time:  doubt, despair, and darkness to name a few.  I shall focus instead upon faith, hope, and light.  And I resolve to find something between each new dawn and dusk that has made it the “best day ever.”