Happy Holidays!

The holidays can be hard and are, at the very least, complicated for many. Still, I hope you are finding some joy amid this gloomy winter. 

I know that in the course of a truly ugly year in our national community, I have found a great deal of peace, hope and joy in my family life and in reflecting on the grace and beauty weaving through my days alongside the ugliness and pain and loss. 

My hope for you is that these weeks will provide a love-buffer to you for facing all that buffets our shared calling to build a more just world in the New Year.

My family will be celebrating Christmas in the coming days. As a Catholic Christian, I cannot help but reflect on incarnation. While many of my readers may find the metaphysics of religion to be nonsense, I find great inspiration in the notion of a God that is with us, as us. This is deeply tied to some of the virtues I most aspire to: solidarity, sacrifice, and love. 

Whatever views you hold dear, stories you take inspiration from, and holidays you do or do not celebrate, I hope the days to come inspire you to solidarity, sacrifice and love. And then, as my favorite Christmas hymn, “O Holy Night” suggests, let us turn our solidarity, sacrifice and love into action—and break the chains that bind people.

*Free image from iStock