Whether we have the heart to face it, the strength to endure it, or the spirit to celebrate it, each day surely dawns. We might as well make the most of it. This is the message of this heartening book of daily meditations, which in its reassuring way helps us find the promise in every day.Healing, help, and wisdom may come from anywhere, and so the authors begin each day's meditation with quotations from men and women of many lands and times. That these speakers, the humble and the great, have pondered, struggled, failed, and succeeded as we have gives their words a special power to inspire and comfort. The meditations that follow impart challenges and insights, comfort and encouragement, making this book an ideal spiritual companion, a daily source of healing, understanding, and strength.

Millions of people around the world spend a few moments in quiet reflection with Karen Casey every day. Karen is the best-selling author of Each Day a New Beginning, the first daily meditation book written expressly for women in recovery from addiction. Published in 1981, Each Day a New Beginning has sold more than three million copies and has been translated into ten different languages. Over the years, readers around the world have come to regard Karen as a trusted companion on the recovery journey. Among her other best-selling inspirational books are Keepers of the Wisdom, A Woman's Spirit, Fearless Relationships, and A Life of My Own. In her newest book, Serenity (Hazelden, 2007), Karen shares favorite passages that gently convey simple lessons for living with greater peace, hope, and trust.Karen enjoys golfing and riding her Harley with her husband. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Naples, Florida.

IntroductionIt takes strength to step enthusiastically into each day of our lives. This strength comes more readily on some days than on others, but every day makes demands on us.Personal experience has taught us that centering ourselves in the face of these demands smoothes our passage. To get centered means to sense our place in the grand scheme and to trust the rightness of all experiences that beckon.It is our hope that these brief daily meditations will help you find your place, and thus help you summon the forces to see you through the days ahead. We both follow a Twelve Step program for sane living, and openness is an integral part of this approach. Healing, help, and wisdom may come from anywhere so we gathered these quotations from men and women of many lands and times, and let them stimulate our own reflections.Taking responsibility for our own lives, trusting in the rightness of a plan--however we may define the higher power that is its source, and nurturing ourselves to be the best we can; these are the tasks that renew our energies even as we perform them.The words we have chosen remind us that women and men in every place and time have pondered, struggled, succeeded, and failed in much the same way as we. In every case, they had the drive to begin their journeys anew, day after day. They are like all of us. We are like all of them: journeying forth courageously one day, tentatively the next. The real importance of the journey is simply that we're making it, alone and yet mysteriously together. the authors January 1One faces the future with one's past. Pearl S. Buck We are never divorced from our past. We are in company with it forever, and it acquaints us with the present. Our responses today reflect our experiences yesterday. And those roots lie in the past.Every day is offering us preparation for the future, for the lessons to come, without which we'd not offer our full measure to the design which contains the development of us all.Our experiences, past and present, are not coincidental. We will be introduced to those experiences that are consistent with our talents and the right lessons designated for the part we are requested to play in life. We can remember that no experiences will attract us that are beyond our capabilities to handle. All is well. I'm ready for whatever comes today. My yesterdays have prepared me. January 2One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach, one can collect only a few. Anne Morrow Lindbergh Our lives are a series of selections. We select projects to do, activities to participate in, friendships to cultivate. And often we'll have to forego some of the selections we've made because time and energy run out. Full commitment, total involvement with singular activities and few friendships, is far better than partial attention to many. Rapt attention to the moment and all of whatever it contains enriches our lives; nothing less than full attention can do s

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Excerpted from The Promise of a New Day: A Book of Daily Meditations by Karen Casey, Martha Vanceburg
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