Where is all this going? What can we ultimately hope for, for both the universe as a whole and our own individual life as part of that same whole?

Don’t be distracted my friends. Take a deep breath and remember your inherent goodness.

A New Year is only magical when we shine light in the darkness, when we choose to bless the world. It isn’t time to wait for miracles to happen, for some ritual to chase away what bedevils us.

What wisdom I have Awakens me to my blindness. I cannot see light itself: What I know of light Is only an alluring shadow Of what it is and does.

The incarnational faith of Jesus invites us to live more deeply into our spiritual convictions day by day. This type of faith invites us not just into knowledge, but into lived experience. In today’s digital age, we can get just about any information we want over the internet. What we desire and crave, in life, and in faith, is not simply knowledge, but inspiration, experience, and integration.

At times like this, I wish more people who identify themselves as Christians or followers of Jesus knew more about the roots of their own tradition, Judaism. The Mother religion of our tradition has a very different kind of New Year called Rosh Hashanah. Jesus, or Yeshua, was a Galilean Jew. As should be expected, his teachings are heavily influenced by his own tradition and its teachers. For Jews, Rosh Hashanah is preceded with a long period of time for introspection. It’s time for looking back at the mistakes of the past year and thinking about those whom they may have harmed. This intentional self-inspection ends with the holiest of holidays, Yom Kippur, ten days later. The time in between is referred to as the Days of Awe or Days of Repentance.

Traditionally this is a time to learn from our mistakes and commit ourselves to do differently in the new year. I wonder what

For reasons I cannot explain, I have often find myself as an adult mired in a bit of darkness during the Christmas holidays.