SR SOLOME NAJJUKA (Sacred Heart Sisters, MBIKKO)
At the cusp of a New Year, we begin to raise our heads high again, scaling the horizon for all there is in terms of surprises and new signs. We wear a certain sense of contentment with all we have achieved, albeit with a sense of regret here and there. In some ways, we pain with some loss and
are still hopping on our clutches but all this is understood in a good clear context – and so we can move on. We are poised for a new start!
Hope sits within us like a citadel and the world feels like a young supplying with the promise of a new season and fruition. We can begin again in every possible way and we can do better in this good young year. It feels like life is beginning yet anew. What a splendid feeling!
We deeply believe that our new hope is rooted in the supplications read from the antiphon: “O Key of David and scepter of the House of Israel; you open and no one can shut; you shut and no one can open” and again: O root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples… Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.” In this way, we so much believe in our Christmas experience of the Lord’s presence among us and his continual self- giving. It is then time for us to feel with new sensitivities lent to us by this hope, to see again and spot opportunities as acutely as an eagle: search, conjecture, project, plan, explore like a child in a flower garden, and think again with the acumen of a youthful inventor. We must dream life into our new year! Putting prayer and inner life in its rightful place, we must find means to banish this famine of peace that Pope Francis speaks about today. “Our biggest problem in the world today is not food famine, but PEACE FAMINE” he reminds us”. Aside the cocktail of night time dreams, we are invited to dream during the day and to think our world into a better place.
Whether we realize it or not, we are all tasked to dreaming the world into being in tandem with God’s first creative act of this, our common home. One wonderful writer resounds that: “When we’re unaware that we share the power to co-create reality with the universe itself, that power slips away from us, causing our dream to become a nightmare. We begin to feel we’re the victims of an unknown and frightening creation that we’re unable to influence, and events seem to control and trap us.” We have a plentitude of power to create our world, to dream it into being.
Your dream may be one of peace or adventure, parenting or teaching, changing and touching a poor life, building bridges in your family, bettering your neighbourhood, researching and studying some more, rebuilding your home, getting a better job, joining a Church movement
or a village club, preparing better meals for your family, nurturing, mending, or healing. Whatever it is, dream it, and let it free to fly. Give it freedom to be for a better world- a better 2023.
