The completion of another year...

Yesterday, while standing in the check-out line at the grocery store, it hit me: tomorrow is New Year's Eve!  How did that happen? I've never been much of a NYE party guy - in Tucson it was a hoot to go to the Chicago Bar and hear the Rowdies ring in the year with great rock and roll - but that's about it.  For most of my almost 60 years I've been chill when it comes to partying the night away like it was 1999.

(God I LOVE Prince...)

But that doesn't mean I ignore the chance to be reflective on the year, ok?  And while I am often weary with all the year-end lists ~ except VH1's various retrospectives of "one hit wonders" ~ I still find that pausing to look backwards and inwards a helpful exercise of faith. In his year end words for December 31st, Eugene Peterson writes about heaven in Living the Message: Daily Reflections:

(Heaven)... is an immersion in the realities of God's rule in our lives that has the effect of reviving our obedience, fortifying us for the long haul and energizing a courageous witness.  By using the stuff that is in our lives right now - places and people, sights and sounds - the invisible and visible parts of our lives are connected in a fresh way. Heaven is an affirmation and confirmation that the beauties and sanctity's of the visible creation - tree and rock, Jesus and Eucharist - are not illusions that trick us into what cynics think of as the naive, useless and silly practices of love, hope and faith, but are realities that are in strict correspondence with what has been begun in us and will be complete in us...

This is not a long (eternal) weekend away from the responsibilities of employment and citizenship, but the intensification and healing of them. Heaven is formed out of dirty streets and murderous alleys, adulterous bedrooms and corrupt courts, hypocritical synagogues and commercialized churches, thieving tax-collectors and traitorous disciples: a city - but now a holy city.

And so on this grey and damp morning in the Berkshires I think back to the realities of this year past for signs and glimpses of the holy within the human... signs of God's presence within and among us:

+ the intense, humbling and rewarding challenge of jazz immersion that gave birth to not only new musical skill and friendships but a peace-making through music tour to Istanbul.

+ the movement towards greater lay participation in our worship planning and the choice to become and Open and Affirming congregation on many levels.

+ the beginning of a regular Jewish-Christian conversation about faith and practice with three other clergy (2 rabbis/2 ministers - 2 women/2 men.)

+ the joys and sorrows of loving and standing with adult children as they mature.

+ the deepening friendships I have made with my blogger-buddies ~ and a few FB friends, too!

+ the movement of the Spirit leading another young person into full-time Christian ministry from within our community.

+ the evolution and ripening of our church band, Between the Banks, and our Thanksgiving Eve show.

+ the agony of family tragedies that have no solution except trust and prayer.

+ the on-going experience of growing into deeper love with Dianne after all these years.

+ the absurdity and blessing of caring for an aging clown dog who is still vibrant, annoying and goofy after 14 years.

+ the year of protest: from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street presence that continues to wave the banner of freedom and hope.

The poet, Mary Oliver, writes:

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two,
housed as they are in the same body.

And so we come to the completion of another year... (this is what 2011 has felt like for me on so many levels.)