Today is New Year’s Day, and we celebrate the beginning of a new year marked on the calendar. And we all walk around wishing each other “Happy New Year!” and we talk about new beginnings and starting again. And everyone makes their new year’s resolutions as to what they are going to do this year differently than they did last year. There is a general consensus that this day is marked as an eventful day in the year, and things start anew. Well, it’s interesting that it comes in the middle of winter when things aren’t really starting anew. They’re sort of in a deep hibernation. Other cultures have New Year’s at different times. They have New Year’s at the harvest or they have New Year’s at the planting, times which have something to do with the agricultural seasons. In Sufism, in Islam, each time of prayer is a new beginning.
