The Conversations

"In Ireland, where I spend a great deal of time, they say,'The thing about the past is that it isn't the past.' Sometimes we forget that we don't have to choose between the past or the present or the future. We can live all of these levels at once. (In fact, we don't have a choice about the matter.) David Whyte

We walk through the door of the holiday season carrying packages of joys and resentments as decorated, messy, and entwined as the paper and ribbon will be once the presents we've brought are opened. Our inner conversation is about who we were and who we are now. Sometimes we can't be who we are now with people who knew us best when we were more unformed. We are who we were and we are who we are now, and we're everything we want to be as well. We are our hopes for a peaceful holiday and we are our fears about it. We want to be there, and we look forward to being gone. All of it is inside us, and the way we anticipate the next holiday season says a lot about who we will become. It's as confusing as the overlapping conversations of a Robert Altman movie, and you have all the talking parts.

Baruch ata adonai...may I be peaceful with myself and others. May I forgive myself and others. May I be easy with who I am and who I was and who I will be. Amen