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A thought for the New Year:  Happy Clean Slate! Happy New Beginnings.

In this season of remembrance and renewal, birth and rebirth, endings and beginnings, Happy New Year.  Happy Clean Slate.  Happy perennial second chances.

​Images & video (c) Janus Adams LLC 2017

We all know how daunting an empty page can be — that blank slate awaiting a word, any word at all, just one little word, please, pretty please.  Yet in these uneasy times the gift of a new page, a clean slate, is a wondrous thing indeed. 

As Muslims we have celebrated Mawlid, commemorating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.  May this year bring greater understanding and good health!

As Jews we have remembered times of need and shared the magic fuel of faith the lights of Chanukah represent.  Happy Chanukah.

As Christians we honored the miracle of birth and the potential for salvation.  Merry Christmas.

From the first principle, Umoja (unity), to the last, Imani (faith), we have honored the Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles); gifts of heritage and of life itself.  Happy Kwanzaa.

This year begins full of hope and promise yet dominated by all-too-human frailties: hubris, greed, violence, fear.  Stresses heap their way upon us.  How will we make it through this one?  How will we survive?

Perhaps it is time we give serious thought to adopting the Chinese calendar where the third millennium has long come and gone – forever debunked and demystified.  Virtuous patience, if we give it just a few more weeks, will bring us a second chance at a new new-year.  Happy New Day.

Happy Thanksgiving, too. This year marks the 210-year end to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.  In 1808, upon its abolition, Absalom Jones, ex-slave and cofounder of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, declared January 1 African America’s Thanksgiving Day – a tradition of celebration and reflection begun; a commitment, too, to the human rights of all (especially those in need of rescue from traffickers to this day).

It’s January: the month of Janus – my month! – named for the two-headed god of endings and beginnings.   As you might imagine given the spelling of my name, I take this Janus thing very personally - as you’ll see in this video: