Happy, Happy Birthday...

...to Danny Lieberman, netmouse, and fgherman! Danny and Felicia have each had a year of cataclysmic proportions while Anne's included a cross-country move and other major events. May your shared birthday bring you all joy and comfort, and may the coming year treat you kindly, kindly.

Welcoming hope...

...back into my life.

Gavi and I went to the Smith College Christmas Vespers tonight. (Note: link goes to a pdf.) Neither of us are religious in the sense of the organized religions of our childhoods (her's Jewish, mine Christian). But we both found the Christmas Vespers both comfortable and lovely.

I left with an added bonus prize: hope. The readings and music reminded me that this is a season of hope. They somehow gave me permission to do more in December than just eagerly welcome each day that brings me nearer the end of this hard, hard year. I can hope. Right now, for tonight, for today.

I've been afraid to hope or otherwise anticipate anything about 2012, and I still am. This year has been so completely over-the-top horrible in oh, so many ways (50, to be precise. So far, anyway). I'm afraid if I think that next year has got to be better, I'll learn that it can somehow be worse. I'm afraid to think anything about it other than the simple fact that it won't be 2011 any more, with a heartfelt hallelujah for the truth of that.

But thanks to that 90 minutes revisiting the Christmas story in scripture and song, I find myself once again enjoying the feeling, the emotion, the reality of hope in all its depth and freedom.

Hope feels good. I hope it sticks around.