HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025!!!

Of course, the new year begins with Advent for us Christians, but there is no doubt that the changing of the date on the 1st of January reminds us of the way the newness of time creeps up on us and the old slips away as well. We mark a transition by marking this day, a transition from unfulfilled promises, perhaps, to a time of new possibilities and potentiality. We will spend a bit of time getting used to writing a new date on our journal pages (or our checks!) and perhaps we will also recognize that living is about negotiating this ongoing never-ending transition well. Though we may have landed in a new year, and though we may quickly become used to writing that new number whenever necessary, we must not forget that time continues to move around, in, and through us, and we do the same with it. There is no real stopping place in time and no actual destination; there is only the journey.

So, today I renew my commitment to this journey and to valuing the journey over the destination. I am grateful (SO grateful!!) for those who accompany me, and who allow me to accompany them as well! I pray for and celebrate all of you. Meanwhile, we move into a Jubilee Year of Hope in the Church! This focus is rich and sustaining, and also very challenging because it promises not just times of light and increased life, but of darkness and loss as well. Resurrection is real and grounds our hope, but we don't experience resurrection without suffering and death. Someone reminded me that a year of hope also means a year of courage, so I pray that we each may find all the courage we need to negotiate this piece of our journey and live it well!! I am also reminded that David Whyte says the following about courage:

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we care deeply about. . .. To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made. (Consolations, excerpt pp 49-50)

May the blessings of our God touch each and all of us with his sustaining love and empower us with his presence as Emmanuel!! All good wishes for a genuinely happy new year!

Happy New Year!!!

I spent some of today and will continue tomorrow reading through my journals from this year --- so much change, growth, and healing that it is hard to believe.  But then, the grace of God is always hard to believe --- even as (whenever it is experienced) it is impossible to doubt. I love paradoxes like this!! God is just SO good!!! The fruitfulness of grace is especially realized in many small steps of faithfulness. So, I look back at a year of hard and fruitful work even as I look forward to another one of the same. The needs of our parishes, communities, neighborhoods, and country cry out for the grace of God. Each of us is meant to be a temple of that grace, that active presence, and our hearts are meant to bring the newness of eternity into the fragility and temporality of our world. This is the vocation of every person, no matter their state of life, nor their age or station. 

We Christians believe that because (he) is eternal and living our God is the ground and source of genuine newness (kainetes). We believe that he is a God who transfigures all of reality into something hope-filled and meaningful with (his) presence. We believe that in Christ we can and are called to cooperate with God in his creative and redemptive activity as he brings about a world where heaven and earth profoundly interpenetrate one another, and where one day God will be all in all. On this holiday, as so many make lists of goals and resolutions for the New Year, may each of us look to the God who is source of all blessings, and recommit ourselves to a time in which God's own projects in us and in all we know, and love may be brought to fulfillment. May God respond to our deepest needs with a presence that transforms all need into blessing! 

That is my prayer for each and all of us. All good wishes for a wonderful year!

Happy New Year (Reprise)

[[The Japanese have a centuries-old ritual, Waraiko, they use to greet a new year and to celebrate birthdays. The ritual consists of giving three hearty belly laughs! The first robust laugh is of gratitude for the previous year just ended. The second hearty laugh is in gratitude for being given a new year of life to enjoy. The third is a really full-bodied belly laugh, since it is to blow the dust off your mind, heart, and soul. Dust? The dust of habit and routine that slowly accumulates like all dust, causing the soul to lose the luster of its youthful vitality.]] by Edward Hay, Chasing Joy

We believe that because he is eternal and living our God is the ground and source of genuine newness. We believe that he is a God who transfigures all of reality into something hope-filled and meaningful. We believe that in Christ we can cooperate with God in his creative and redemptive activity as he brings about a world where heaven and earth profoundly interpenetrate one another and God is all in all. On this holiday, as so many make lists of goals and resolutions for the New Year, may each of us recommit ourselves to a time in which God's own projects in us and in all we know and love may be brought to fulfillment. All good wishes for a wonderful year!