On a recent walk, it came to my heart to name three words that I love… words that I lean on, words that I use nearly every day.  The first word that surfaced was the word ‘savor’.  When reviewing the dictionary definition, I was excited to read this: ‘to delight in, to enjoy slowly in order to appreciate it fully.’  Yes!  This is why I love this word.  I love to savor beauty and time with people and quiet time with God.  To savor is to be present, fully.  To savor is to take time and allow the pressures of ‘hurry up’ to rest.  To savor is to discover the gifts right before our very eyes. 
 
The next word that surfaced was the word ‘lovely.’  Isn’t it lovely?  It’s such a precious word, so full of joy and ease, thanksgiving and attention.  This definition includes:  enjoyable and pleasant, kind and exquisitely beautiful.  Wow!  Don’t you love that?  I mean, I say all the time to folks, “I wish you a lovely day!”  And so I am actually wishing you exquisite beauty and pleasant kindness.  Yay!  That just feels so good!!
 
And the third word to bless me was trust.  Trusting doesn’t happen for me as easily as savoring and honoring what is lovely.  Trust is something I practice… daily and moment by moment.  Trust interrupts feelings of fear and those things that hold me back.  Trust encourages patience and hope and reminds us to keep loving.  Trust is what I lean heavily on for myself and for those I love and pray for in the most difficult of times.  I often say, “I will trust with you that God is present and at work in this circumstance.”  The definitions include:  to have a firm belief in the truth, reliability, ability or strength of something or someone, and to have confidence in.  I trust that the Creator of all that I savor and all that is lovely, is loving and kindhearted, and this same Creator trusts every day that we will learn how to trust in this love.  I believe that we are called to trust in “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:8).
 
We are standing at the edge of a New Year, and we’re all going somewhere.  We are not called to go back, to live in the past or to mourn without hope our mistakes, our losses, or our wounds.  We are not called to jump so far ahead that we also grieve what is not yet time to be.  We are called to arrive here… to this moment, to this new day, this new chance to be fully alive and fully loving.  We are called to know ourselves and love ourselves, so that we may better know and love others.  I believe, as we peer into the New Year, that God is yearning for us to be happy, to be whole, to be pure vessels of what has always been intended for us… that we see what is lovely, that we savor our blessings, and we trust that God is with us and we are loved and held on the journey’s paths. 
 
May the words that call to you at the edge of this New Year, enable you to love, to savor, and to trust the bountiful life God has created for you… wherever you are and wherever you may go.

​Christmas Eve 2018
Dear Spirit of Christmas,
 
I am praying to you today as you are wide as the sky and loving as the sun and as compassionate as the moon.  You are ancient and wise.  You are the essence of what it is to be holy and humane.  You are Creator God, Blessed Mother Mary, sweet Baby Jesus, and the unnamable mystery that is sometimes called Santa.
 
I believe in the purest truths of Christmas.  I believe it is a time not just of miracles, but a time for us to open our hearts to miracles and miraculous wonderings and wanderings.  I believe that the God of love, the Spirit of Christmas longs for us to take off the shroud of dusty unrealized dreams and lay them open to the night skies of Christmas eve… and trust… again and again that the way is opening up.  We may wait a long time.  We may not see the artistry taking place, but like wind chimes that move and sing by way of invisible musician’s hands, the Christmas Spirit is stirring.
 
I believe that the Blessed Mother Mary cherished the tears she wept both out of joy and sorrow and that she can fully comfort us in all the bitter sweetness of this life.  She prays with us and for us with the purest of hearts that in our waiting and in our longing, we find peace to sustain us and the will to be faithful to our God.  Our dreams, the dreams we dare not say aloud for fear of breaking them, she holds and blesses so we need not feel alone in our yearnings.
 
I believe that Baby Jesus loved.  He loved that stinky stable.  He loved his sweet Mama and his precious Daddy, and he found delight in the cows and sheep and He loved them, too.  He loved the darkness of night and the stars that begged Him to look.  He loved the guests, the journeys, the wonder.  And he reminds us to allow what is present to be enough, to be the joy, and to be the love that steadies us in all and through all.
 
And I believe that tonight, there will be sleigh bells all around this world.  They will ring with hope that every child of God will tend the dreams and prayers that long to be realized.  Santa lives most fully, no doubt, in the hearts of all the dreamers who never cease to believe that what has not yet been possible, can still push up through the sod and be made known.
 
And so once again on this blessed Christmas Eve, I will lift my face and my heart, my prayers and my dreams to the holy winter sky and believe that the Spirit of Christmas is with us and for us.  Ah, yes.  Perhaps the bells ring not so much to help us to believe, but to remind us that God still believes in us.  O, Holy Night… come and be welcomed.