Week 49--in which we pause at a year's end before considering a beginning

Beautiful Ones,

You may have noticed that there is a theme for each year’s Notes from the Field. I don’t remember when the themes first began to surface but now, as December dawns, I can’t help but look back at the theme for the year ending, so I can consider what it really meant, tie up any loose ends, and get ready to listen for the theme of the year to come.

This moment in time is particularly important this year, because the transition from 2025 to 2026 is so much more than the dawn of a new year.

We are standing at the threshold of a whole new nine-year cycle. I was not consciously thinking about 2025 as a completion of a cycle when I intuited the theme for 2025. It happened organically, as it always does.

But now, looking back, our theme feels prescient and pregnant with meaning.

I announced the theme for 2025, on the first Sunday of this year, January 6. Until 2025, the themes had always been a phrase or a sentence—words that conveyed meaning. But this year was different. As I searched for the theme last December, I found myself drawn to the painting Cathy Stevens Pratt had made for the 2025 Forecast which was called: “A new universe asks to be born in you.”

Cathy painted this magnificent, evocative, Goddess—Cosmic Creatrix. People were so enamored of this painting that dozens purchased it to grace their altars all year.

Whenever I wondered about the 2025 theme, I found myself staring at this Cosmic Creatrix.

So she became the theme. But there wasn’t room for the entire painting on every newsletter, so I asked Cathy if we could just use the swath of creation moving in and through her womb which you now see at the top of every newsletter.

Knowing what we now know about what power has wrought in 2025 this image carries much more meaning that we could have imagined in January.

Consider all that has been destroyed in 2025:

• Relentless wreckage of physical structures, governance, principles, and laws
• Destruction of institutions revered for excellence for decades, even centuries
• Incompetence celebrated as strength
• Suffering equated with efficiency
• Empathy denigrated into the problem
• Truth buried under an avalanche of lies
• Decency, opportunity, equality
• A belief in a better future

Meanwhile, the privileged few grab everything they can while they can.

How strange.

Is this 1984?
When war is peace and lies are the truth.

Or is it 1929?
When the uber rich danced until the music abruptly stopped.

Or is it 2025?
When the abuses were so blatant that we began to wake up, say no, and ask ourselves: "What kind of world do we want to live in?"

I think it’s all here in our unexpected visual theme.

• What do you see dying in this image?
• And, more importantly, what do you see being born?
• And, of the greatest importance, who is doing the birthing? Is it you? Is it me?
• Who can birth a world of beauty, harmony, peace, and joy--for all?

I’m going to sit with this image today and ask myself questions that I may not have realized are mine to ask. Or mine to answer.

Take any of these that speak to you. I’m sure others will surface.

This moment isn’t an ending. A calendar year may be coming to a close, but it’s clear that 2025 was a call to pay attention, to notice what wants to be noticed, and at last, to answer the call to do what must be done.

Here are a few questions I’m going to ponder:

• What is dying? In me, my life, my relationships, beliefs, expectations…
• Is this healthy dying, the release of what no longer belongs in my life…
• Or unwillingness to acknowledge what is finished? Am I clinging when I should be letting go?
• What am I beginning to see that I have been unwilling to see?
• What am I becoming aware of that I had hoped would go away?
• Who am I beginning to recognize really matters? And who or what does not?
• What stories am I being asked to sit with? Mine? Someone else’s?
• What responsibility do I have for the way I live, the way we all live? The things our governments do?
• Who wants my attention that needs and deserves my attention?
• What wants to come alive in me?
• What wants to be spoken? And am I willing to speak?
• What changes must I make in 2026 to bring what is good and necessary alive in me?
• What is mine to do?

For the remaining 3 Sundays in 2025, I’m going to ponder the completion of this sacred nine-year cycle as we transition into the birth of a new one.

May we walk in beauty and strength to birth what wants to be birthed.

Life is fragile, handle with reverence. 

Janet

PS: Watch for an announcement next Sunday to register for Jennifer DeVille Catalano's Alchemy Tones Crystal bowls to ring in the Winter Solstice. Save the date: Sunday December 21 2-3:30pm.

PSS: I will close The Lotus and the Lily next Friday. You will have access to the Resource Page until next October, so don't feel any pressure to rush through it.

The Lotus and the Lily Harvest 2025 Seed 2026

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