Holiday Greetings...from My Heart to Yours

MERRY CHRISTMAS,
dear friends and family, far and near. As the year draws to a close, as the natural world here in North Carolina prepares itself for winter’s restorative rest, as the days grow shorter and the path of the sun moves to the southern sky, I am thinking of each and all of you with much love and warm memories.

A five-week journey to East Africa accompanied by my dear friend, Mae Miner, working with the founder of The Nyanya Project, Mary Martin Niepold, in behalf of African grandmothers, was the high point of my year…a different kind of ministry.
Daily life has been filled with the joy of spending time with my children and the grands (Lindsay, 23; Felicia, 15; Jack & Jamie, 12; Callie, 10; Nickolis, 9; Mattie, 7; Jannie, 6; and Rollin, 3); lunching with friends or entertaining friends here (I still LOVE to cook for company); being part of a wonderful monthly women’s discussion group, Fresh Bread; serving The Arbor Lutheran Church as interim pastor; practicing yoga in a Prayerful Yoga class weekly; keeping up with my blog, revrlindaslines.blogspot.com ; and reading, reading, reading (80 books so far this year).

And recently, out of the blue, a new job came my way, Chaplain at the Lutheran Home in Winston-Salem, NC, caring for both residents and staff for twenty hours each week…God calling me in new directions, opening new doors, challenging me to take a risk and step out in faith.

As I look toward 2012 and my seventieth birthday (I know, I have a hard time believing it, too), I am increasingly thankful for good health, the continual blessing of a sharp intellect, un-waning curiosity, and an ever-widening faith perspective.

May your holiday be filled with peace & joy. May your new year be graced with wisdom & courage. May you know the blessing of family & friends & faith. And may you know that you are loved.

Love, Linda

thin places
“Thin places”, according to the Celts,
are where the world of here & now
rubs close to the eternal…where
visible & invisible worlds come into
near proximity…thresholds to
      divinity in our human world.
Christmas celebrates
the thin place that is
                the Christ…
     the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth
     as the conduit for the Spirit
      of the Divine to become manifest
      fully & completely-
inviting each & all of us to become
     thin places for one another…
God fleshed out again & again &
      yet again in us…
divinity shining through
humanity, manifest in
     who & how we are to one another…
                                  to our planet…
                                  to the least of these,
     as we kneel at the manger…
     as we live in our world.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Kenya...

Yes, we're here, after 24 hours of travel time and nearly 40 hours without real sleep. Last night the bed at the Wildebeest was so welcoming and I slept until 9a.m. for the first time in years. No apparent jet lag...and a slow,pleasant day today, doing a few errands, catching up on email, reading, and talking with people here. For those of you in Carolina who continually complain about our roads being under continual construction (and I am one of you), after riding down a main road near here and watching our driver doing potholes and serving into the non-existent shoulder the road countless times, I pledged never to complain about our roads again. The people here would think they were in heaven driving I-85...while we Carolinians mutter under our breaths and curse the NCDOT. All a matter of perspective, I guess, but we Americans have so much for which to be thankful- and too often aren't!  Tomorrow we head to Rwanda to visit with friends and meet our newest grandmothers the
Read more

Adventures in Health and Well-Being, Linda-Style...

I am not good at being sick…or perhaps I should more accurately say, at admitting weakness in my body. There has always been a kind of shame (as bizarre as that sounds) connected with lack of wellness for me, a sense that I am not living up to what is expected of me. Perhaps it comes from my German background and upbringing, this inability, unwillingness to acknowledge frailty of any kind, but I am gradually, ever-so-gradually coming to acknowledge that this is a very dangerous and self-defeating kind of hubris. Gritting one’s teeth and soldiering on through whatever it is may be fine on a battlefield (though even there it has its limitations, I’m sure), but in everyday life, this philosophy can be not only a failure to acknowledge one’s own limitations but may also be detrimental to one’s health and well-being. All of this being a lengthy preamble to what has been going on with me lately. For the past couple of weeks, I have been noticing that I tire much more ea
Read more

Finally Friday

Well, dear ones, the sun is shining brightly here in Carolina, after several days of rain, and though the morning air is chill, the promise of warmth is in the sun's early rays coming though my window. Of course, those lovely rays are also alive with the dust motes floating in my room, reminding me that today needs to be a "cleaning day". Get out the dust cloth...get out the vacuum cleaner...mop under the bed... shake out the bathroom rugs...run a couple of loads of laundry...and then perhaps buy some lovely tulips for a vase in the living room to bring the outdoors inside and lift my spirits. The dredges of the flu remain like sludge at the bottom of my cup, and though each day i feel more and more myself, energy is slow in returning fully and i find myself trying to cope with a self that seems not fully me. My morning readings remind me that this, too, shall pass...and that my task is to be with what is happening rather than to rail against it- which is an exercise
Read more