Happy New Year! I hope you are all doing well and had a wonderful holiday season. I had a great week off of work...visiting family in Ohio...spending time with close friends...getting to see a DVD of my best friend's Ultrasound (so cool!) ...seeing some great movies ("The Pursuit of Happyness", "The Holiday", "Blood Diamond")... laughing a lot...and just being around good people. I hope you had a restful, joyful holiday and can look to the new year with more hope...

Since I ended last year with thankfulness to all of those who have had an impact in my life, I thought I would share the wisdom and encouragement that I have received from them. So...instead of posting my own thoughts and musings, I want you to read what they have to say. Some are long-time friends dear to my heart; others, I have never met. But all have had a profound impact on me.

I always like to read this poem at the end of something: graduating from college, moving, a semester of school... It really helps to reflect back on all that has happened. I'd encourage you to do that for 2006:

I Teeter on the Brink of Endings

O God of endings, you promised to be with me always,
even to the end of time.

Move with me now in these occasions of last things,
of shivering vulnerabilities and letting go:

letting go of parents gone, past gone,
friends going, old self growing;
letting go of children grown, needs outgrown,
prejudices ingrown, illusions overgrown;
letting go of swollen grudges and shrunken loves.

Be with me in my end of things,
my letting go of dead things,
dead ways,
dead words,
dead self I hold so tightly, defend so blindly, fear losing so frantically.

I teeter on the brink of endings:
some anticipated, some resisted, some inevitable,
some surprising, most painful;
and the mystery of them quiets me to awe.

In silence, Lord, I feel now the curious blend of grief and gladness in me
over the endings that the ticking and whirling of things brings;
and I listen for your leading

to help me faithfully move on through the fear of my time of letting go
so the timeless may take hold of me.

- Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace