As We Leave Another Year

Leave the year behind the way you leave a ridge — look back once with gratitude, then turn toward the next climb with steady breath and a lighter heart.

-- Anonymous

What a year it's been — here are some perspectives: 

The year in video

The Law Is Catching Up 

Thank You

Letters from an American

Prisoner of Other People's Expectations

When your primary goal is to be liked, you can't take risks. You can't disagree. You can't push boundaries. You become a prisoner of other people's expectations. 

-- Shane Parrish

Being Right

Ever noticed...that being right doesn’t really get you very much of what you really want?

What if, as we approach a new year, we resolve to be less committed to being right and discover what that can give us?

Sacred

Whether it be the experience of the sublime in the Christmas season on one end or the trauma of our cultural chaos in 2025 on the other end, I suspect we all are now negotiating something within ourselves. Whether that be culturally, environmentally, physically, mentally, psychologically, or spiritually, we have a shared sense that something is being infused in a way that is compromising us and that a deeper awareness of sacredness is the only real way forward.

Here are two observations that grab my attention on this last Sunday of 2025:

I define “sacred” as that which pulls us beyond the bounds of our individual selves, envelops us within mystery, and gives us a glimpse into the vast, entwined, eternal network of living beings that we are in relationship with.

-- Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder

Sacramental vision means not only that we grow in our love of God’s ways in the world, but also that we grow in our sense of kinship with creation. 

-- Christine Valters Paintner

Observations & A Question

We change most when it hurts bad enough…not to.

 

You receive and then you give and then you receive — thus is the cycle of life. 

We need indulgence; but paucity, too — some would say the order, though, should be the opposite.

What would effort not borne out of insecurity look like?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

AmericaFest

From earlier this week:

Speaking today at Turning Point USA’s annual “AmericaFest” conference, Vice President J.D. Vance said, to great applause: “The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God we always will be, a Christian nation.”

Actually, we haven’t.

Vance’s statement flies in the face of our Constitution, whose First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” James Madison of Virginia, the key thinker behind the Constitution, had quite a lot to say about why it was fundamentally important to make sure the government kept away from religion.

In 1772, when he was 21, Madison watched as Virginia arrested itinerant preachers for attacking the established church in the state. He was no foe of religion, but by the next year, he had begun to question whether established religion, which was common in the colonies, was good for society.  Continue here....

-- Heather Cox RichardsonLetters from an American

Family

So much to be thankful for:

Christmas Greetings from a Fairy to a Child

'Poem for the week' -- "Christmas Greetings from a Fairy to a Child":   

Lady dear, if Fairies may 
For a moment lay aside 
Cunning tricks and elfish play, 
’Tis at happy Christmas-tide.

We have heard the children say— 
Gentle children, whom we love— 
Long ago, on Christmas Day, 
Came a message from above.

Still, as Christmas-tide comes round, 
They remember it again— 
Echo still the joyful sound 
“Peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Yet the hearts must childlike be 
Where such heavenly guests abide: 
Unto children, in their glee, 
All the year is Christmas-tide!

Thus, forgetting tricks and play 
For a moment, Lady dear, 
We would wish you, if we may, 
Merry Christmas, glad New Year!

-- Lewis Carroll

To Bear Christ As Well

To bear the Word, to enter the kingdom, we must indeed be born from the Spirit, not for the second time in the womb of our natural mothers, but continually in the love of the Mother of God that brought forth her son, and like her, in the same movement, to bear Christ as well. 

-- Maggie Ross

The Coming of Wonders

Human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders.

-- Charles Kettering

Allow Your Wonder to Wander

I'm wondering...: 

In simple and unexpected moments of epiphany, you will sense that you are connected to creation in ways that bypass your self-protective, preoccupied, rational mind. Your task? Be attentive. Allow your wonder to wander. 

-- Wesley Granberg-Michaelson

Don't Try to Explain

Don’t try to explain the Incarnation to me! It is further from being explainable than the furthest star in the furthest galaxy. It is love, God’s limitless love enfleshing that love into the form of a human being, Jesus, the Christ, fully human and fully divine.

-- Madeleine L’Engle

Observations & A Question

We are only vaguely aware of most of what deep money systems are really about.

Something about Christmas and nostalgia seem inextricably linked — fortunately Christmas also exceeds it.

"Do you hear what I hear?" … may be one of the better questions of the Christmas season.  

Why don’t we ask more questions?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

So Little Respect (for anyone else)

Letters from an American

 

For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being president of this country was to a certain extent about character. And although I have not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I’ve been here three years and three days. And I can tell you, without hesitation, being president of this country is entirely about character.

-- Andrew Shepherd, The American President (a Rob Reiner film)

But, it's worse than respect. It is hate.

Be Jolly

This morning, I saw this t-shirt my wife laid out for herself as she readied for her school day.

And, it hit me, my disposition yesterday had some stuff baked into it.  One, that things like feeling the spirit of Christmas is something that should happen to me.  In other words, it is somebody else's job.

The reality, though, is that such things are really within me.  When I'm not feeling it, it is more likely because of things I am doing which prevent me from accessing them.

Christmas is more of a state of being than anything else, isn't it? So, it's really more my choice (than someone else's) to...BE, among other things, jolly.

This probably wouldn't hurt the process:

Altadena’s Christmas Tree Lane: 105-Year-Old Tradition Is Symbol of Resilience Nearly 1 Year Post-Wildfire

Am I Missing It?

It’s happening again this year…I’m right up against Christmas and I feel nearly nothing about it.  It's like I’ve missed the spirit of it…again (not even the best eggnog seems to be working!).

Most years now it still sneaks up on me — it finds a way in.  But, until it does, I find myself wondering, will it this year?

You Can't (Allow Yourself) Not See This

Click to watch:

Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other.

-- John Steinbeck

LT: Get The Job Done

Leaders are the ones who, in spite of all the obstacles, find a way to get the job done — good leaders are the ones who do that respectfully.

Defying Any Sense of Human Decency

Defying, even more (if that's still possible), any sense of human decency:

Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace.

-- Donald Trump

Nauseating even by his own standards, we can't just rage back, though. Fighting fake-fire with fact-fire requires an, "OK, can someone please remind us of how this kind of thing should be done?"

Our now nearly endless cultural familiarity might yet still yield to a more constructive example of how to do it: 

Remembering Rob Reiner

Evaluate

I’ve noticed…that I tend to evaluate myself…a lot. 

I often catch myself doing this through a grid of consistency, as if consistency would prove (secure) something or, at the very least, inconsistency would (right?).  What if, though, not really?

Us do-gooders often fear observations like, "that guy is pretty inconsistent".  But, when you hear someone say something like, "Well, at least he's consistent"...what does that really get us?  

Obsessive evaluation in nearly any context is often unhealthy.  Some basic self-evaluation is...well, necessary at times, isn't it?

So, what would be a better way (than consistency) to 'evaluate' ourselves?  Self-awareness, emotional intelligence are among the options because self-protection isn't really our primary goal in life after all.

Incarnation

The Incarnation always brings good news, but it never minimizes the realness of our pain. Advent declares the hope that a light is coming, but first it declares the truth that the world right now is so very dark. 

-- Stephanie Duncan Smith

Observations & A Question

A lot of the way we are living living our lives culturally is not sustainable.

Chaos as a management strategy rarely works out well for those involved or for those impacted by it.

Most good observations come from experience (as opposed to theoretical ideas).

What most catalyzes change?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

Pretty Much Says It All

Don’t the sayings go, “live by the sword, die by the sword” or “you reap what you sow”?

I was proud of the Indiana senators who finally stood up against this kind of self-serving power.

Besides, aren’t we all just a little done with the simplistic (if not condescending) ‘Socialism!’ trope as a cover for this level of greed and power?  He knows too many of us aren’t paying very close attention, but we’re also not as dumb as he likes to think.  Just because he doesn't have a conscience, doesn't mean we don't...we do.  

...so much about the conflation above is wrong.

Meaningfulness

“That was really meaningful”.

We almost long for such sentiment, especially when it isn’t…sentiment.  We want something that feels real, authentic.  When something is like that, it reaches far down to something deep inside us.

Why is that?

Perhaps this feels enhanced for so many of us because there is so much of our lives that feels little more than contrived.  We know about the real thing, but rarely actually experience it ourselves.  If anything, we watch depictions of it.  We consume things that portray it, thinking that must be all we can do — not really experience it ourselves, but substituting that by just entertaining ourselves with it.

But, knowing about something or even understanding it doesn’t really measure up to what we ultimately want, the experience of it.

Meaningfulness is often more a function of participating in something, than it is in simply understanding it.

We can know about Selma, but there is nothing quite like walking over that bridge.  Seeing a picture of beautiful mountains is nice, but nothing like actually hiking in them.  Listening to a great song is rarely as good as being at the concert where it is performed ‘live’.  And, then there’s Christmas — all of the ambiance, music, sweetness, softness, and nostalgia year after year seems to actually create the opposite effect when it isn’t shared with real friends and loved ones.  

We want the real thing — to experience it ourselves.  Because, that’s what makes it meaningful.

Does Not Depend On What Happens

Joy is that kind of happiness that does not depend on what happens.

-- David Steindl-Rast

Enlarge The Box

Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear. 

-- Rosamund and Benjamin Zander

Though perhaps a bit too reductionist, the essential concept is an important one to consider. What frame inhibits the way I view problems?

Sexuality

Ever noticed...that we all have some degree of sexual insecurity?

Maybe that’s part of why we seem so obsessed with it culturally.

I am a Christian because of women who said yes.

I am a Christian because of women who said yes.

-- Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith 

Public theologian Rachel Held Evans (1981–2019) reflects on how Mary’s yes was pivotal to the Incarnation.    

I am more aware than ever of the startling and profound reality that I am a Christian not because of anything I’ve done but because a teenage girl living in occupied Palestine at one of the most dangerous moments in history said yes—yes to God, yes to a wholehearted call she could not possibly understand, yes to vulnerability in the face of societal judgment, yes to the considerable risk of pregnancy and childbirth… yes to a vision for herself and her little boy of a mission that would bring down rulers and lift up the humble, that would turn away the rich and fill the hungry with good things, that would scatter the proud and gather the lowly [see Luke 1:51–53], yes to a life that came with no guarantee of her safety or her son’s.  

By becoming human, God encourages us to honor the vulnerability of our own lives: 

It is nearly impossible to believe: God shrinking down to the size of a zygote, implanted in the soft lining of a woman’s womb…. God inching down the birth canal and entering this world covered in blood, perhaps into the steady, waiting arms of a midwife. God crying out in hunger. God reaching for his mother’s breasts. God totally relaxed, eyes closed, his chubby little arms raised over his head in a posture of complete trust. God resting in his mother’s lap…. 

I cannot entirely make sense of the storyline: God trusted God’s very self, totally and completely and in full bodily form, to the care of a woman. God needed women for survival. Before Jesus fed us with the bread and the wine, the body and the blood, Jesus himself needed to be fed, by a woman. He needed a woman to say: “This is my body, given for you.”…  

To understand Mary’s humanity and her central role in Jesus’s story is to remind ourselves of the true miracle of the Incarnation—and that is the core Christian conviction that God is with us, plain old ordinary us. God is with us in our fears and in our pain, in our morning sickness and in our ear infections, in our refugee crises and in our endurance of Empire, in smelly barns and unimpressive backwater towns, in the labor pains of a new mother and in the cries of a tiny infant. In all these things, God is with us—and God is for us. And through Mary’s example, God invites us to take the risk of love—even though it undoubtedly opens us up to the possibility of getting hurt, being scared, and feeling disappointed.

-- Rachel Held Evans

4 Observations (from Others)

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts. 

-- Charles Dickens

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

-- Charles Kingsley

Joy is the most vulnerable emotion we feel. When we feel joy, it is a place of incredible vulnerability—its beauty and fragility and deep gratitude and impermanence all wrapped up in one experience. 

-- Brené Brown, Dare to Lead

 

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.

-- Oprah Winfrey

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

Voters Increasingly Disapprove of Trump's Handling of the Economy

New York Times

...it is still shocking (to me) how little concern there is about so many things, until it affects the economy.

On The Lighter Side: Do We Look Like…?

On the Lighter Side:

The Clearest Symptom Yet

The Clearest Symptom Yet 

Can’t say I disagree — they sure went after Biden on this topic.

The Atlantic

If only this was the worst of it.  Not even half the stuff going on right now would get anyone else fired instantly for violating protocols (if not the law).

Regarding the Substack referenced above, it has been observed that the only thing that sells more than sex is fear (that's encouraging...).  So, maybe Trump knows exactly what he’s doing and we can’t just chalk it up to being old (or dementia):

Snatching The Eternal

Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.

-- Tennessee Williams

Being Human

Being human takes practice and hard work. Being inhuman, unfortunately, comes all too easy. 

-- Simon Sinek

Innocence

I'm wondering...about innocence.

Among other things, how does this time of year play into it?  For the most part, we seem to want to let our guard down a little and believe in something more…innocent, for a moment.

Innocence is often referenced as something lost.  Perhaps this is why we watch for opportunities to reclaim it somehow.  Why certain situations, places, or times of year seem to enable us to suspend the things that have taken it from us.

In these ways, we often opt for things that make us feel like a child again.  The cynicism of growing older resubmits itself to the possibility that, even for a moment, things could be uncomplicated, simple, pure, good, and hopeful again.  

We all had a kind of innocence and most love a chance to feel it again.