Welcoming change and presence

By Karen Miller-Lane

All that you touch/You change

All that you change/Changes you

The only lasting truth/Is Change

God/Is Change

From Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Here we are in another new year.  According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2025 was the year of the Wood snake, in fact we are still in the year of the Wood snake as the Chinese New Year is on February 17th.  Late February into March we will enter the energy of the Fire horse.  These are energies of recalibration, transformation, dynamic change and action.  Welcome to the possibilities and potentials of this year.  I write this to support the  intentions, stirrings, and insights that you are feeling into.  These moments of transition and liminal spaces are opportunities to be mindful and listen to ourselves as we move into the next step of our becoming.

The Chinese zodiac derives its symbolism from a rich tapestry of astronomy, astrology, and mythology. At the heart of the Chinese Zodiac are the twelve animal signs, each representing a different year in a twelve-year cycle.  In addition to the twelve animal signs, the Chinese Zodiac also incorporates a system of elemental associations, adding further depth and complexity to its symbolism.  The five elements are Fire, Metal, Water, Wood, and Earth.  The Chinese zodiac provides a window into universal patterns.  Within these arising shifts and cycles of energy lie an opportunity for better understanding ourselves and engaging with life from a dynamic ever emergent flow, not something preordained.  For example, the wood snake symbolizes shedding, release, recalibrations, and completions.  The fire horse is about bold action, passion, and rapid change. I invite you to feel into the different qualities of these two energies.  How do we experience grounded movement?  What needs to be released in order to shift and step into what is calling us forward?   How we show up and meet each moment will affect our experience of these energies during this year.  

As we are coming to the end of the Wood snake and closing in on the beginning of Fire horse, we exist in a state of in-between.  We are at a threshold, in which we are still shedding before the energy and movement of fire and air.  In this  liminal space there is a sacred pause - perhaps not a comfortable one, as shedding can be uncomfortable - also think of the vulnerability of the snake after it has shed its skin - and yet, this is a space that is important to listen to and tend.  For us, as for the snake, shedding is about growth, health, repair, and new visioning. That said, within this liminal space, there can be tension.  The tension that comes with a pause can create a desperate urge for relief, a need to fill the space with purpose or goals before we’ve thought things through or recognized and addressed old patterns and conditioned behaviors.  Again, I invite us to stay with the tension,  to pause and appreciate that we are always in the what was and the what next moment of the what is.  What if we lingered here for a while?

As Reverend Amy Zucker Morgenstern said in On the Threshold

“We need to honor what is on both sides of the doorway: to celebrate the whole of our lives, the self we are leaving behind as well as the self toward which we are going.”

We are living in unsettled times and each of us is meeting it from different needs and in different ways.  Instead of mindlessly and at times recklessly moving forward to get out of our perceived discomfort we instead pause and listen.  Instead of creating lists and goals and things that need to get done or ways to distract --  we instead turn within, at the threshold, and listen to the inner landscape of a deep knowing that calls us to dance with uncertainty and echoes of past perspectives that may no longer ring true.  Perhaps we can even invite compassion for ourselves and care.  Perhaps we can leave judgement at the door.  

This liminal space, a space of thresholds, may not provide clear answers.  What if it is an energy and space that holds potentials and possibilities.  This space calls us to rest awhile and allow.  To recognize that in the pause we may meet a movement, like a current of air that lifts us and carries us forward to the next moment from the wholeness of who we are.  We often count on parts of ourselves to get things done.  We often only reveal certain parts of who we are.  We may in fact be unconscious or disinterested in the parts that lie under the surface.  However, if all that we touch/we change, from Octavia Butler’s book Parable of the Sower, doesn’t it matter these unconscious parts?  By stepping in and pausing at the door - acknowledging that all that you change/changes you - can we meet the change we want to enliven and be carried by?

I share this to provide ground that will shift but hold.  To call us into the movements and changes that this year will bring from a place of intention and trust.  Trust in the deep knowing of who we are as we meet and are shaped by the ever changing landscape that will be 2026.  To be light and clear as we ride the Fire horse into the actions and passions that call us each into our unique becoming.  Stay a while longer at the threshold, enjoy the pause, things will be moving fast before we know it.