My New Year's resolutions

12. Stay focused on what matters most: harmony with others, my relationship with God.

11. Choose life. Do something regularly that helps to end violence, strife, war, capital punishment, abortion, and other ugly things.

10. Be creative. Grow plants and flowers, mostly especially berries that can be made into pies. Share a homemade pie with someone who has never tasted one. Get my hands purple with berry juice.

9. Stay fit. Run to my heart’s content. Find new people to run with; slow down or run at their convenience, if necessary.

8. Call and send letters to people who are alone or isolated, most especially older people I know. Be patient and listen well. Encourage them.

Less Calvin, more Hobbes

7. Learn a new skill from a friend or family member. Share a skill I know with someone who wants to learn it.

6. Find better ways to talk about the suffering and travails of others in a way that helps them. Learn to better recognize the truth of God that exists in each person, even if they themselves are not aware of it.

 5. Love better those closest to me. Put my own agenda aside long enough for them to believe that I really care about who they are.

4. Appreciate the wonder of the natural world in new ways. Take a long hike in the high desert. Sleep under the stars without a tent. Drink from a high mountain stream without first purifying it.

3. Compliment other people for skills and talents that I lack—and really mean it.

2. Pray to God like he truly exists. Expect that what I pray about will not go unchanged by my own indifference toward the power that I so casually invoke.

1. Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one.