{"id":270,"date":"2011-01-01T22:41:28","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T06:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/?p=270"},"modified":"2011-01-28T18:37:11","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T02:37:11","slug":"happy-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/2011\/01\/01\/happy-new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Four\u2026. Three\u2026.. Two\u2026.. One\u2026. HAPPY NEW YEAR!<br \/>\nRight on cue, the tops of the buildings on The Strip of this City of Lights erupted into flares of red, green, yellow, and blue fire in celebration of the upcoming Gregorian Year 2011. Gail and I learned from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/terminology\/#Universe Story\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Universe Story <\/span><\/a>that the upcoming year is more like number 13 billion 700 million 2 thousand and eleven (13,700,002,011). But who\u2019s counting, and anyway that\u2019s too long to write on the mortgage check so let\u2019s just call it 1-1-11.<\/p>\n<p>Human cultures and religions have historically had difficulty in marking the beginning of a new year. The Chinese new year can be in Feb; Buddhist new year may be in May or June; Hindu new year can be in Mar, Apr or May; Islamic new year may be in May; Jewish new year may be in Sep; and of course the Gregorian new year begins 1 January.\u00a0 Cosmology &amp; orbital mechanics help little in defining a specific point in the elliptical (nearly circular) orbit of Earth around the Sun that could be considered the end of an old and beginning of a new orbit. Earth just continues smoothly on its way, as it has for most of the past 4.5 billion orbits &#8211; unperturbed in even the slightest way on its graceful annual dance around the Sun.<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Milky_Way\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-279\" title=\"220px-Milky_way_2_md\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/220px-Milky_way_2_md.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"220\" height=\"147\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>January seems to be an appropriate time to mark a new year, because at this time of year, we can look in the direction of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sagittarius_(constellation)\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Sagittarius<\/span><\/a>, toward the very center of our whirling clan of 100-400 billions stars &#8211; the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Milky_Way\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Milky Way galaxy<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<em>[Note:\u00a0 The primary stars of Sagittarius are indicated in red.]\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 As we look inward to the center, some 26,000 light years away from us, we can see the heart of our swirling Milky Way, made from nothing but stars and 13.2 billion year old star stuff almost as old as the universe itself. We can see \u2018Something More (a swirling galaxy) from Nothing But (stars) as a consequence of their gravitational relationships.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We can wonder about the ongoing<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/terminology\/#Emergence\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">emergence<\/span><\/a> we can&#8217;t see.<\/p>\n<p>January is also a time we can look inward to the center within ourselves, marvel at our own existence, and know we too can consciously create Something More from Nothing But ourselves and fellow travelers as a consequence of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/terminology\/#Right Relationship\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">right relationships<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>May your new year create Something More.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four\u2026. Three\u2026.. Two\u2026.. One\u2026. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Right on cue, the tops of the buildings on The Strip of this City of Lights erupted into flares of red, green, yellow, and blue fire in celebration of the upcoming Gregorian Year 2011. Gail and I learned from the Universe Story that the upcoming year is more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationship-to-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions\/274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}