Creativity needs a deadline. – author unknown
We do need deadlines. At least, I do. Otherwise, I’m not sure I could successfully complete any project I think of as meaningful. But off the top of my head, I can’t recall a single New Year’s resolution I’ve kept for twelve straight months. This may be true, in part, because I’m not a big fan of resolutions and I’m very bad at anything that is routinized.
Nevertheless, there is one overall resolution that is worth a lifetime of effort. The resolution to "Live Love, not fear," is a complete and pervasive lifestyle that requires moment by moment presence.
It occurred to me that the Journal could become a vehicle for us, as caregivers to enhance our ability to live Love…
A choice we offer across 2008 is that you consider, at lease on occasion, using the Journal as a place to share your day-by-day or week-by-week progress. Part of the practice of presence involves reflecting on our lives.
I don’t know about you, but I am often surprised at how difficult it is for me to remember what I’ve done on a given date at a given time. Police interrogators would make mincemeat out of me if they ever tried cross-examining me about my whereabouts on the evening of, say, November 2, 2007.
Perhaps this is part of the value of keeping a diary. In any case, why not try this journal as a diary of your loving care? Along the way, we will renew and restart the spiritual practices of loving care begun in 2007.
The overall life we all seek is to Live Love, not fear. The last two of these four words help us pay attention to any decisions we are making that are fear-based. All four words help us to do something critical to spiritual living: We need to remember. When I consider a specific action that may grow out of impulse, I need to recall Love’s guidance in order to make the best decision. Otherwise, I may default to impatience, irritability, anger, or self-pity. 
For example, I awoke on January 1 feeling sad to be alone since my wife is still in Boston helping my daughter with our grandchild. There is nothing wrong with feeling sad. In fact, the idea that we need to be chronically happy is no way to truly Live Love.
Still, it was helpful for me to remember the small practices of Joy. I resolved to work my way out of my ego state of self-pity by considering who’s day I might brighten. Reaching for the phone to call my mother, it rang with a Happy New Year’s call from my younger sister.
Martha does not resent having been born with a disability. But she does resent the cold, snowy weather of northern Ohio. I didn’t talk her out of that, but, after we both recalled the power of the Serenity Prayer, I was able to make her laugh with a few funny memories and jokes.
As for my Mom, my call made me happier than I think I made her. "Wish me luck," she said, as she enters this, her 96th year. But I don’t think she’ll need much luck. She’s already been living Love for so long it’s become her natural way of being – all the time.
Think of now as Day 1 for the your new Journal. Even if you are reading this early in the morning, how have you lived Love today? If you want to extend the time period, how have you lived Love over the past day or days?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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