We’ve moved on from the quiet anticipation of Advent. The waiting on wonder…the looking and the listening. The celebration of the arrival of the Christ Child.

We’ve moved on.

What is next? What can we dig our teeth into now? What do we do now?!!

Well, of course, we make our lists of things that need to be different in 2014. We look at our health and we take stock. We look at last years lists and we think about how poorly we did with those resolutions.

Do we want to try again. Do we start with a whole new list? Or do we give up on the lists and simply jump into the New Year with both feet and just plunge ahead?

I know that I have a few goals for this coming year, and as I near January I have that feeling I often have:  a desire for more silence and more thinking.

Less speaking and more listening.

Finding the places where I can sit for a lengthy time and read. Where I can write with pen and paper and ignore the keyboard and the beeps and the notifications. Where I can read and listen.

I know that I cannot completely unplug. I have to follow the boys on their accounts and keep some awareness of their social imprint. Still…I have given myself the space to think more this year. I want this year to be the year of reading and listening. Not of speaking.

Not sure what that means for a blog. Of course if I am reading there will be things to say, at least from time to time, however…what if I took a year to just listen? What if I took a year to not worry about voicing my thoughts to anyone beyond, well, my journal.

What if I read without agenda and without the need.

Reading just to enjoy, to learn for myself and to listen…

Buechner. L’Engle. Chesterton. Lewis. N.D. Wilson.  Bonhoeffer.

Reading, and listening. To words, to music.

Listening to listen and not to debate or to prove points or to write. Reading to be enriched and to grow and to be more deeply who I am…and to be fed. Yes, that is much of it. I feel weary at the end of 2013 and aware of the need to pull back and be filled again.

2014. The year of reading. Yes. I like the sound of that.