It is,

A time of hope,

A time of love,

A time of Memories — the joyful and the sad.

A time we wish upon a star,

A time that brings an ending,

A time resting quietly on the doorstep of new beginnings.

These are the times of the season.

 

It’s a time when we lean towards the sticky sweet sentiment of the season
consumed more with gifts than The gift;

The gift of life,

The gift of love,

The gift of joy,

The gift of sorrow for what has ended, but we once had.

 

For many, these are times when we feel broken —

But let us remember.

Those cracks?
 Those are how the light gets in — and pressure gets out.

 

Our challenge this season of Omicron is not so much to overpower life, to force it
to become what we make it;

Or to hold so tight for fearing the cracks will cause us to crumble.

Instead we are invited to allow the cracks to work both ways — to release the bad and let in the good.

 

All around us lies so much more than just the seeds of future possibility;

What about the harvests of previous plantings?

Why do we often forget? Seeds are produced from what has grown before.

We miss that sometimes. Well, I miss that sometimes.

 

In COVID Christmas Chapter 2, Let us remember our past plantings:

Of possibility

Of hope

Of life

Of love…

And remember the harvests that have fed our hearts, our souls, our dreams, our happiness.

 

Remember when we were young, and dreamed the biggest and the smallest of dreams?

We dreamed for the amazing bike at Christmas

Or that the girl or boy we watched lovingly across the classroom would say yes if we asked them out.

We dreamed of college and adventure;

Of friends, and careers —

We dreamed a million little things as we sat staring at sunsets, or into the eyes of newborn daughters and sons.

 

When’s the last time we sat back and reviewed our genuine success rate?

Not just the big ones, like winning the lottery or becoming an NBA star or Formula 1 driver —
but all of them.

I bet a remarkably high number of them came true.

 

Throughout our lives, oh the goals we achieved,

The heights we reached,

The joys we had,

The people we met,

The kisses received,

The friends.

 

Remember the promises we made when we said to ourselves, If only this or that would happen how happy I would be?

Go there.

Remember.

Grant yourself the joys and the happiness and realize that so much more of our joy is derived from our memories than our future.

And some of our best and richest memories are the ones where the dreams didn’t quite turn out as planned.

 

We are still in whacky times.

We will never go back to normal.

But we will move forward into something new.


Let it be fueled by the number of times our dreams came true.

The number of times our hopes were realized

The number of times our happiness was found.

And smile, knowing that if we are able to recognize the happiness of the past,

We are infinitely more likely to spot it in the most unexpected places in the future.

So crack up, let in the light, and practice hope.


“We cannot possess hope without practicing it. It is the most fundamental craft we demand of ourselves.”  Amanda Gorman