Prayer for the Holiday Season

Oh Beloved,
Can it be that another year has passed? Wasn’t it just yesterday when we heard such familiar music, when these well-worn stories awakened us from our post-harvest slumber? Wasn’t it only weeks ago when we last reminisced about seasons past, when life seemed easier, when this season was so full of snowy wonder and glorious wants? Didn’t we converse then about how much there was still to do and how short the daylight hours had become? Wasn’t it we who sat together then and sipped warm cider, or was it hot chocolate, and laughed as we shared again the memories of youth that gleam once again from our eyes? Or was it coffee and ruminations about a world gone mad? And hadn’t we just made the promise that a year hence we’d be farther along than we were and far more accomplished in the doing; those perpetually illusive resolutions that prove us kin in effort and siblings in spirit?
Oh Beloved, can it be that we are here again?
How incredible! How miraculous! How excellent! So let us then give thanks for this heart-felt return! You who have been so much a part of each other’s lives, whose presence means fullness of joy and love, you who are such a gift! Hazzah! Let old stories be shared again with new insight and new adventures add spice to the routines of our existence. Let life’s milestones mark for us the forward path to possibilities yet imagined and our trials and tribulations give us deeper appreciation for blessings bestowed.
The world with its deep challenges is needful of this, of communities of memory and hope, of a people of courage, with love deep enough to speak truth to power, with humility rich enough to make us mindful of the privileges we have not earned and with a conscience broad enough to demand those rights that ought to be accorded all people. Let the light we kindle spark the awakening that is ours to embody. For the truth we seek is the life we lead and the love we share is essence of that peace for which we yearn.
Amen and Blessed Be