This last week of December is my favorite time of the year. This is both the opportunity and great need for me to ponder the year passing, and the new year coming to birth. Where have I been? Where am I going? What gifts has 2019 bestowed and what challenges lie in wait? I am not a seer but I certainly am able to reflect, learn and discern.

This is the year I’ve been privileged and saddened to attend many parishioner funerals. As I’ve heard their life stories through the lens of their family and friends, I feel urged to consider the goodness of their lives and how their simple living has impacted countless others. Each funeral brings me closer to my own. I realize keenly, that I have lived over half my life. Every day is always a gift, but this decade of my 60’s invites me to go deeper, to appreciate the tremendous opportunities I am given daily. I live comfortably—shelter, food, clothing; family, love, meaningful work. These are things not to be taken for granted, ever.

This is the year I’ve come to accept my physical aging. I am gray and I am beautiful. I have wisdom and courage and strength that no one can take. I am talented in many ways but I can also accept what I cannot do. I’ve become quite good at parsing out work, and encouraging others to take on what they can and should do. I think I am growing in an ability to be a good leader.

This is the year that I am feeling my physical aging. Fatigue comes quicker. I weep more easily than I have in about 12 years. Body pain happens more regularly. These things, while not much fun, help me to be more compassionate, and that is a good thing.

This is the year that I have learned that good intentions in creating don’t necessarily make the creativity happen. And you know what? That is okay. I feel better equipped to try again, to create and make mistakes and let it be.

This is the year I have become stronger in my ability to confront evil, to call out what is wrong, and to not be afraid to do so. Maybe, this is the year I have finally become an adult.

This next year, I hope to continue to grow the time for reflection and prayer, for pondering the little gifts and revelations of life. In these ponderings, I hope to encounter that which I call God. I have my goals:

• To write more regularly
• To reconfigure my blog (more on that to come)
• To be disciplined about creative time, as this feeds my being
• To divest my life of the things I no longer need, the habits that weigh me down, the food that does not nourish
• To simply breathe

I hope you will join me as we together ponder and grow in 2020.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and may your 2020 be blessed.