I have long been one for New Year's resolutions. In fact, from 1988, at the midpoint of my sophomore year at a private Christian college, through the start of 1999, I had scrupulously engaged in year-end review and resolution-making. Since the end of 1999, however, I have not done any but the most general of mental resolutions. There are a few reasons for that.
First, of all, most of my resoution-making energy came from being caught up in the "daily-planner" (Daytimer, FranklinCovey) mindset. When I need to be, I can be very disciplined, and the use of a daily-planner proved increasingly helpful up until I moved here to Chicago. Through planning and using action-item lists, I was able to work full-time, move from central Illinois to Baton Rouge, find two new full-time jobs (in succession) and undergo two weeks and a month and a half of management training, respectively, complete my master's thesis (with oral examination by phone) in eight months and teach myself Latin. But once I left the telecom management field to pursue ordination and a doctoral program, I had hit daily-planner burnout. I continued to use a planner (and still do), but with much less discipline.
Second, since spring of 2000, the complexity of my vocational, educational and family decisions became more complex than could be put to a list of action-items. The "flow charts" would have branched exponentially as each attendant consequence would have resulted in multiple considerations. And many of these consequences were unforeseen: namely, my leaving the ordination process, and ECUSA, altogether. Trying to implement New Year's resolutions in such a state of continual fluidity involved much more time and energy than simply abiding by my principles and attempting to head in the general direction we'd decided on before coming here. The use of a daily planner largely became a matter of a glorified to-do list in a multi-ring binder with pretty paper.
Finally, you can't program God or reduce him to a daily planner schedule. The one verse which has guided me through all my New Year's resolution activities is from Proverbs: "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand." (Proverbs 19:21 ESV). These past four years have not been merely planning and programming a career with attendant changes matching changed circumstances (and changes of mind). Rather, these past four years have been primarily a concentrated effort of listening for the vocation of God. I had thought God was calling me to the priesthood in ECUSA. But in reality he brought me to Chicago to show me he was calling me out of ECUSA into Orthodoxy, out of a clerical vocation, to one of layman and professor. Neither of these would have figured into New Year's resolutions in 2000, 2001, and only provisionally in 2002 (though they became much clearer this past year).
These have been excruciatingly painful and difficult years here in Chicago (and in looking back on some of my journal entries, I noted that 2001, our second year in Chicago, was exceeded in pain and difficulty only by 1996, when we left the ministry at Greenview). But out of these challenging times, great joy and blessings have already begun to come. I finally found the Church for which I had been searching since 1990. My wife has gone from being vociferously opposed to Orthodoxy, to being open to strong involvement in the local Orthodox parish we now attend together. I escaped what could only have been much heartache and moral compromise by leaving behind my quest for ordination in ECUSA and have been enriched by the life of faith and practice available to all in the Orthodox Church. I have embraced and been affirmed in my chosen profession of teaching (philosophy, and, perhaps, theology), and in my writing. And I have met and made wonderful Christian friends. (Here's God's funny bone: all these friends have attended/are attending the ECUSAn seminary by which I was once repulsed and angered.)
So, in talking about all these New Year's resolutions, and the not making of any, am I returning to my former practice? Yes. But not in quite as disciplined (or anal retentive) a way as previously. I will coalesce my thoughts on what I need to accomplish or would like to accomplish this year, submit them to prayer, and focus on doing them.
What are my resolutions? Well, perhaps they can be summarized in this way: "For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead" (James 2:26 ESV). In other words, this year action will take the focus. Thought and contemplation will never be discarded, but this year thought and contemplation must find their fulfillment in acts.
Posted by Clifton at January 3, 2004 12:24 PM