Create your own Christmas and Holiday Peace

Copyright by my amazing friend, ©Liza Donnelly

I wish you much joy this post-Chanukah, Christmas, Holiday and New Year season. We are richly blessed. May you and yours find fellowship and renewal. And may you bring peace to those around you, today and throughout 2024.

Ending a Year that Mattered

The best gifts are each other - our relationships, our conversations, our smiles, our listening. Thank you all for the gifts of yourselves to me.  I wish you a joyful holi-day season and a very blessed 2016!

(thank you Jessica Esch, as usual, for your incredible artistic talent)

Tiptoe Through the Tulips No More

Well, last week’s post got some great responses.  I find it very providential that Jessica Esch has been reading myJessica Esch "#58 At Last" mind as she’s creating her book ;-).  The horrors of last Friday are very fresh for all of us, and sorrowfully, will be permanently fresh for many families in Newtown.  I can’t even fathom their pain and anguish.  It truly is beyond comprehension.

This is the season of merriment, peace and goodwill where we are all smiles and happiness.  Perhaps this should also be the season of taking a stand.  And this is not a paradox!  If we are to truly lead a meaningful, bountiful life that wonderfully makes a difference in the lives of others, then we cannot be the silent majority.  We need to look political correctness in the face and tell it where to go.

We’ve blurred the lines between freedom and license, between having the right and it being right, and between output (a vehement disagreement) and outcome (a solution achieved through work, compromise and promise). Our fear of offending others can have a very high price – life itself. 

So, in this season of joy and blessings, as you prepare for time with family and friends, as you put on your smiles, real and manufactured, find time for a little reflection on what you will stand for in 2013.  What will you refuse to tiptoe around and finally address – with wisdom, firmness, and compassion?  When you look in the mirror, who will you see? I pray it will be someone who has made a significant and powerful impact on and for others…by not staying silent.  Tiptoe no more! Let 2013 be a year of making a difference!