On the way home after her Christmas visit Joy's Mum said to me, "I wonder what next year will bring?" and I, with at least half a mind on the road said, "Whatever you want it to bring."

It sounds a bit precious I know, but actually that's not so far from the old sporting wisdom that, "In this game, you make your own luck."

Life very often is more about how we perceive it than the underlying facts. Of course there are some things that you can't get away from: if you have no money it's difficult to have much life; if someone you love has died then you cannot escape grief.

But there are many of life's experiences which are only as bad, or as good as we want them to be.

So as we look back over last year, and make our wish lists for next year, do be aware that the way we meet them can transform tragedies, and drain the joy out of triumphs.

Our worldviews really do affect the world we live in, and the worlds in which others have to live as well. There are three ways of looking at the world, and they all have their consequences for others.

In the first, the world is a stage and rather like a precocious child in a nativity play, we want to spend us much time in the spotlight as possible. Other people in the play are only there to meet the needs of the real star.

Then again we may see the world as a battlefield, complete with unseen minefields and snipers just waiting to get a clear shot at us. In a world like that we are always on the defensive, always looking to do unto others before they do it unto us.

But here are those who see the world as simply a footpath, winding through all sorts of country - one moment you're in beautiful country and then the path is passing through a housing estate or a disused gasworks or a hospital car park before finding the fields again.

And you can never tell what country the other people you meet have passed through unless you stop and chat to them. You may make new friends - you may be glad to see them go, but whichever way you will have let them be themselves without forcing them to play a part in your own little drama.

Was it Henry Ford who said that 'History is just one damn thing after another? Whoever it was they were right in one sense. Reading a timetable gives you no idea what riding on a bus is like. Events just happen - it is people who give them meaning; and if you want to have a Happy New Year then you are more likely to find it in your mirror than in your diary.

God bless you all.

Alan
1st January 2002