It's a new year on the calendar. These days are filled with plans and hopes for good things to happen in 2011.

Lots of our new year's resolutions center around health and quality of life issues: losing weight, exercising more, and finding a better balance between work and personal life. In addition to these, I hope you'll also resolve to work for the health and quality of life of our society as a whole. Support neighborhood efforts to bring community gardens, urban farming, and grocery stores into communities that are now "food deserts." Support making affordable and adequate health care available to everyone. This will ultimately save our society a lot of money! Support local agriculture-buy smart and eat smart! Resolve to ask our leaders, "What can we do to make society healthier?" Ask yourself, "What will I do to be involved?"

New Year's resolutions also focus on money-especially in spending more wisely. As you commit to being better stewards of your finances this year, let's also commit to restore more people to the middle class of American society. Over the last thirty years, there has been a growing gap between rich and poor in the United States with fewer people controlling a greater percentage of our society's wealth and power. That means there has also been a marked increase in the number of people with less wealth and power. This is not a healthy direction for us to be going. Resolve to ask your leaders, "What can be done to enable more people to earn enough money to live and support their families?" Resolve to ask yourself, "What will I do to work for a community that is healthier financially, as well as physically, mentally, and emotionally?"

A third area around which many New Year's resolutions are made is spirituality--to commit to more prayer and spiritual growth in 2011. There is a hunger for spiritual insight, guidance, and living today. Our resolutions to be more spiritual also need to include putting feet to our prayers: making concrete improvements in terms of health and financial stewardship as well as in prayer and spiritual growth. Resolve to ask your spiritual leaders, "What can be done to discover answers to our deepest questions about life, about God, and about faith?" Resolve to ask yourself, "How can I come to perceive God's presence more fully in my life and to see God more clearly in the faces of those around me?" May God bless you deeply and with joy in 2011.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.
  
Jack Price

Return to the Enotes index