A good start is half the work ~ Tús maith leath na hoibre

That's a good saying for the beginning of the year, give yourself a good start. 

Whether your attitude is one of hope or trepidation for 2024, the sun will continue to rise, the days will continue to get longer. And according to the philosophy of ominous positivity, we will survive, we have no choice. 

A lot of people like to take time out at the beginning of the year and fill in their calendars, either electronic or manual. There's something satisfying in marking out the upcoming events. It makes the year more real, gives us a sense of the rhythm of the time to come. Birthdays and vacations are fun to mark down. Seasonal beginnings and endings give us a sense of when we will be pushing hard and when we might breathe a little easier. 

If you have a calendar with astrology you may wish to note important transits. There's an eclipse in April. The January full moon falls in Leo. By the time you read this Mercury will have come out of the retrograde it went into in December 2023. Mercury will go into retrograde  three more times in 2024, April 1 - 25, August 5 - 28, and Nov 26 - December 15. 

There will be twelve full moons this calendar year, and twelve new. Twelve opportunities for a fresh lunar cycle. 

It's an election year in the United States and typically that raises emotions and tensions. Political operators have discovered that fear and anger are effective motivators and they routinely exploit these emotions in these times. There are plenty of valid concerns to be active about, but we will have to work harder to not be manipulated simply for the sake of manipulation. It's a good time to remind ourselves of what works for us to ground and center. Activity might be an antidote to anxiety or despair. On the other hand, meditation is a good mediator of emotion. 

Our publicly available events are posted on Meetup and there are plenty of opportunities to join in. We routinely celebrate the Full Moon, on the day of in Mountain Time (7pm), and hold a New Moon Morning Meditation on the day after the new moon, at 7 am MT. Every month, on the Sunday following the full moon we have Irish language practice, and every Saturday morning we have a meditation and check in. 

This year we will offer our ritual to process grief, the Blue Moon Celebration of Grief, once per quarter. It has become a satisfying part of our offering to our community. The ritual covers three categories of grief: the loss of a person, the loss of a companion animal, the loss of something intangible. 

I hope your year is off to a goood start. 

Peace of the mountains to you, 

Paulie Rainbow