2015. It is a new year. This means New Year Resolutions, yes? Well, my volunteer community chooses to forgo the resolutions. We feel that resolutions often set us up for failure. You might say, “I am going to work out more,” then a month goes by and if you (more than likely) return to old habits, you have broke your resolution, and some would feel like they failed and must cast it off. We each want our year to move us towards being a better person, so at the Jackson House (community for volunteers serving in Jackson County), we do not have resolutions, instead we have a word. We each chose a word that describes a characteristic of the person that we want to be. The word is more about changing our mindset rather than an action or habit.
I chose a word last year, too. My word was “Vulnerability.” In the past I have had walls around myself that protected me from people. My goal for 2014, was to get rid of those walls. Summer Camp happened halfway through the year and was hugely helpful for breaking down the walls. And thus, my obsession with love was born, or maybe it was reborn. But that is another blog post. The point is that I did this word of the year thing last year and it worked. I definitely figured out how to be more vulnerable.
Now it is 2015. The word for my year is Positivity.
The idea for this word came to me after I attended church with one of my housemates a couple weeks ago. The pastor was reading from John 15:1, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” And so then the pastor started talking about bearing fruit. I had not given this much thought previously… my deduction from this passage was God=prosperity, no God=nothing. Sure. Fine. The pastor had given this passage much more thought. He said that a tree does not extend its branch, bear down, grunt, and *pop* bear fruit. Bearing fruit does not necessarily have anything to do with producing fruit. Bearing fruit seems to be more about the right conditions being present so that fruit might be produced. The pastor made the case that you must spend time with Jesus to cultivate these conditions, which I do agree with, but through his sermon, I kept thinking about love (predictable). Love is always a positive thing, no matter what definition you use. Though lately, for someone who is supposedly obsessed with love, my thoughts have not been particularly positive. I have spent a lot of time being critical and if I want this year to have the right conditions to bear fruit, I need to make a change.
Let me share with you the metaphor behind my word of the year, which I previously shared with my community. When a storm blows in, as the clouds move over the Earth, the ground builds up a positive charge, while the clouds build up a negative charge. When these two charges meet, lightning strikes. The conditions have to be just right, and then a beautiful light connects the Earth with the Heavens. Pretty cool, yeah? So I am going to spend this year building up my positive charge, preparing good conditions, so that beautiful things can happen. I am going to need a lot of positivity.
I have included a picture of the bulletin board I made for my community to go along with this devotional. We each put our word on a “take what you need” flyer and put them up for anyone to see. We are all in this year together and we have similar goals, so maybe there’s a day when a word from one of my housemates would be more helpful than my own word. On such a day I can take a slip from their flyer instead of my own. Anyone who comes to our house can also take whatever they need from the bulletin board. This way we can help each other, including our friends that visit, and be reminded daily of our commitment to our words of the year.
Anna is an AmeriCorps Educator/Summer Camp Counselor at CAP’s Camp Andrew Jackson and is a member of the Jackson Volunteer Community. Opinions expressed in volunteer blogs are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CAP or the Volunteer Program.
