Happy Holidays to All Readers…
It’s so hard to believe that the year is almost over. What a year it has been. The world was thrown a curve ball this year from out of nowhere. This year has been one that we have all had to do things we don’t like doing. Early on I started calling 2020 the ‘year from hell’. Sadly, it’s so easy to get caught up in the negative event of Covid-19, the negativity of a crazy and ridiculous presidential election, the negative news, the horrific racial tension, negative social media feeds and the negative attitudes around the country and the world. It is extremely hard to not become angry, bitter and self-centered through all of this.
I would like to suggest to each one of you reading this that you take just a moment and stop! Just stop long enough to look back to the beginning of 2020 and how chaos began to descend. Being told by our states leaders to stay home and to wear a mask when we went out for essential things. After all the countless lives that have been lost and yet, if you are reading this… YOU are still here! I am still here! WE are still here! I can’t help but be grateful for life! Every time we have walked out our doors there has been a high chance of being exposed, possibly sickened with this ugly virus, but no…and if any of you have been exposed, or have had Covid-19 then I am certain you must be grateful that you walked through the experience and survived.
Now, I would like to call this year of 2020, the ‘year of opportunity’. We have been given the opportunity the last few months to become more aware of others needs than our own. It was a chance for us to draw close, even though being separated. We have been given the opportunity to allow the creativity that we were each given at birth to surface. It was an opportunity for us to become less self-centered and to think of others more than ourselves! It allowed us the time to take a deeper look at ourselves. It was a time to begin to love like we have never loved before. Life is too easily taken for granted!
A couple of years ago we subscribed to a daily email from a place called The Center for Action and Contemplation, run by a Franciscan Priest and his name is Father Richard Rohr. This may shock some of you that know us, but then it might not, but we have decided to begin a new journey from the traditional evangelical church and step into what is called “Christian Contemplation”. We have experienced, felt, seen, read and heard so much love from this contemplative walk that we can’t help but be drawn into it. The perspective of the contemplative way is simple… we cannot live a dual life. The dual life is our ego (what we personally create), and our true self (who God created). The contemplative way is the journey of having oneness with our creator God, so much so that we are not maneuvered by our ego. This is the simplest way, for me, to describe it. It’s been a beautiful journey and we are learning so much everyday!
I would like to share an excerpt from one of the recent subscribed to emails we receive from Richard Rohr. It wraps up what this whole season of Christmas is about, to me.
“We can read the history of our 13.7-billion-year-old universe as the rising up of Divine Love incarnate, which bursts forth in the person of Jesus, who reveals love’s urge toward wholeness through reconciliation, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. Jesus is the love of God incarnate, the wholemaker who shows the way of evolution toward unity in love. In Jesus, God breaks through and points us in a new direction; not one of chance or blindness but one of ever-deepening wholeness in love. In Jesus, God comes to us from the future to be our future. Those who follow Jesus are to become wholemakers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love. Christian life is a commitment to love, to give birth to God in one’s own life and to become midwives of divinity in this evolving cosmos. We are to be wholemakers of love in a world of change.” (Sister Ilia Delio)
Our prayer for you, along with my family and for the new year coming, is that we be the ‘wholemakers of love in a world of change’. Let’s not be negative, contrary, ego-focused or dividers! Let’s allow the love of God to point us in a new direction…into the wholeness of divine love. Be open to a whole new perspective for the new year ahead! Surely it will be better than 2020!!
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year with lots of love, joy, peace and bright hope for 2021!!
Freely Authentic 