Just a few more sleeps to 2024. Here are few short thoughts to help you sleep or keep you awake, perhaps.

Firstly, in 2024, the new millennia will be almost a quarter of a century old.

No doubt, the debris of New Year celebrations will scarcely have been swept off the streets before ‘Planning and Marketing’ departments in every corporation are beavering away to sell us the following year’s 25th birthday merchandise, and analyse the Millennial generation.

For what it’s worth, I think they are absolutely marvellous. Best generation yet!

Ethical, brave, compassionate and courageous in spelling out what needs to be done to challenge worn-out ideas that have failed humanity over and over again, like War, Oppression, Austerity – all to fuel the greed and ambition of a very small number of megalomaniacs who have too much to begin with. More power to all their elbows.

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It seems no time at all since the year 2000 and, if you recall, the fear that computers would register the precise moment in time, date and year as 00.00.00, and die on the spot.

People scrambled to buy ‘patches’ and pay for expensive training on how to save their data from such a fate.

Some airlines chose not to have planes in the air at midnight!

We all survived. Our fear now is that the computer is smarter than its creator.

I wonder if God, who we are told ‘created man in his own image and likeness, to know, love and serve him’ ever worries is His creation just got too smart for Him.

Just a passing agnostic thought as the age of artificial intelligence (AI) dawns, although I suspect that AI, like the real thing, is already significantly overrated.

Some five year-old will ultimately cause the whole thing to collapse in a heap of overheated noughts and crosses by simply repeating “But why?” each time the computer answers his/her/their question.

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Speaking of God/s, did you know January was named after the Roman God, Janus, who was the God of Doorways?

The original ‘gatekeeper’, he presided over entrances and exits, beginnings and endings, the passage from one thing to another, such as reality and imagination, Life and Death, the God of transition.

He seems to have been well suited to the responsibility, as apparently he had two faces, one looking backwards, and one looking to the future.

I guess if he turned his head, he could also see sideways.

He also held the keys that opened the doors to the other Gods and their largesse, so I guess things didn’t go well for anyone in Roman times when Janus, the gatekeeper, got confused about which way he was facing, or if he tried to move forward while still looking behind him.

I am not sure if there is a punishment for Christians consulting with Pagan Gods, but Jeffrey Donaldson could do worse than check in with the God of Closing Doors and New Beginnings before January 18, 2024.

‘Yer man’ Heaton-Harris, with the ‘lean and hungry’ look, seems to have already mastered the art of adopting the ‘two-faced’ dithering approach while all the time planning to decisively lock all the doors but one.

Chris Heaton-Harris, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, looks like a man who might know this already but, just in case Jeffrey Donaldson doesn’t: the first elections in Northern Ireland following the 1920 Government of Northern Ireland Act took place in January, 1924.

Maybe Westminster has decided 100 years is long enough to be putting up with the mistake it made in thinking Stormont was a viable project.

Their New Year Resolution might be an exit strategy!

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Many people – as the brilliant comedian, Peter Kaye, would put it – are planning to ‘start Monday’, New Year’s day, with a to-do-list of good intentions that might make them healthier, wealthier and wiser in 2024.

Just for a change, here is a ‘not-to-do’ list that might stand us all in better stead.

Don’t be so hard on yourself (or your children, friends and neighbours).

Don’t envy other people (because their lives are as ‘screwed up’ as your own).

Don’t be afraid to cry (or laugh) or own up you are getting it tight. People do care.

Don’t lose hope in the goodness of people. It is still there if you look carefully.

Don’t lose faith in yourself. You are a better and stronger person than you feel.

Don’t stop talking about Palestine. This is the ‘genocide’ of our generation. We can stop it.

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I wish you all safe passage through 2024. Nobody says it better than the 19th Century poet, Alfred Tennyson. Turning to ‘In Memoriam’:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind

For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.