Blessed Boxing Day! Sending warmest holiday greetings to all! I’m snuggled in my favorite holiday Pook (a fleece onesie gifted last year from dear friend, S.E.) and reflecting again on how blessed and lucky I feel today even if my eyes are swollen from feeling so much.  I know these holy-days can be complicated for so many in the world. This holiday, especially this year, may have brought up the best of times, but maybe it also brought up a few of the ghosts of Christmas pasts for you, too. Hugs to you wherever you are in the play of holiday celebrations.

Some choose to be on their own. Others wish it were otherwise. Even being fortunate to be surrounded by loving family and friends can bring up how to be one’s truest self. “Welcome!” or “Make yourself at home” are common invitations as we arrive at parties, but that’s often easier said than done, especially these past few years when so many big questions have arisen, and family and friends have been tragically and politically sorted. And if olive branches have been offered or wished to be extended, there can be hot topics that are pre-declared as off-limits. Chilly skating parties abound. Surely, not all have intimately been there for your spiritual journey, either. Chances are, some family or friends might only see you in your former light or even as one would view a child, so an extra helping of grace and breath when meeting the probabilities is still encouraged all around, especially now in the afterglow. 

There was a dinner about a decade ago when my dear stepfather had an extra half glass of wine, and while answering a question I’d asked about faith, he shared that he actually didn’t believe in God. The timing couldn’t have been more unfortunate. It was Christmas Eve and Mom was passing second servings to our party before we were to go to midnight mass. She’d been facing away from us in the kitchen, but I could tell by the way she straightened her back she’d heard Ralph. It was more than all the implications of vows they exchanged to be married in the Catholic Church, or the months of marriage prep with Fr. Pat, or that she had worked for years for the diocese. They were well into the second decade of their marriage. He’d attended weekly mass faithfully at my mother’s side from the beginning.. 

I was that guest. “You don’t believe in God?” I asked a little too loudly. I was shocked. While Mom didn’t cluck her tongue, I felt the sharp thwack in the atmosphere as if she’d spanked my bottom to be quiet and be quiet now. But I didn’t. I didn’t stop. I had a taste of iron anarchy in my mouth. As my mother’s youngest child, I was protective of her, but also, at nearly 50-something, I didn’t want to obey the rules that kept such information under lock and key. This was important. How could he have kept this hidden from her? As a grown woman who had long been on a spiritual journey of many paths up the mountain, I marveled at how he’d danced into this truth, and now there was no turning back. 

If “the truth shall set you free,” Ralph was laughing nervously and a little too freely for Mom’s comfort. “I may not believe in God, but I believe in her,” he said, nodding toward my mother. Her cheeks flamed unhappily. There were no more answers, and there were certainly no more questions. There was simply a look. This was for their marriage alone. And we never heard of it again. Subject done and class closed forever. He believed in her. He didn’t believe in God, but he believed in her.

And now, with this Christmas Day tucked in as I sit here writing ‘round midnight, and I lick my own little papercut wounds from a stray comment or two from a Christmas Eve party guest, my stepfather’s loving façade returns before me. He’s laughing again as I lean in. He likes truth. He also would never wish to hurt anyone. Even now, still a little undone that I missed this detail of his truth, how could I have given him more grace that night? Maybe no one had ever thought to ask him that before, and if so, would it have been swept under the rug with “You can’t be serious?” Some beliefs simply weren’t questioned in our family. God was always behind everything in our family, but I assumed he and Mom had sorted out all their important details.

Maybe we weren’t encouraged to go deeper because we hadn’t sharpened the tools to process variation from a well-mannered spiritual life as given to us by the church or parents. My parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents were all college-educated, but did we apply deeper critical study to our spiritual life besides Sunday School when we were children? My mother had been so horribly betrayed by the priest of our Episcopal Church that she was grateful for the relief of kinder priests at her Catholic Church. Her way wasn’t my way, nor should Ralph’s way be anything but his own, and the intersection was theirs to sort together, yet it felt complicated, and I wanted to help. His radical disbelief wanted air, and Mom’s belief in something bigger than her 5’2” self needed to feel safe and loved, too. 

In the spirit of Boxing Day, (when the Queen would wrap back up the gifts she’d received on Christmas and didn’t wish to keep and then re-gift them to her loved ones), I would like to share the overflow of grace with you today. Love is so very precious. So many are feeling the ache of love a little too far away or feeling a world too tender and don’t know how to make it feel better. Grace is flowing. There were so many loved ones I wished to connect with over the holiday but couldn’t. A big thank you for your grace and for us all as we stretch our hearts to where they need to be.

My daughter Ruby asked what my intentions were for 2024. I shared two with her, but the third is to keep intending for the best and highest good while dancing deeper dances of Source Energy. Love grows here. If I am to honor the good manners of my upbringing and our evolution simultaneously, I must welcome you to join me, make yourself at home, and really see how we can explore the constrasting caves and fissures in our rock solid belief together. I invite you to be your own true love and love more freely in return. Ready?

Source is encouraging me to open up another live segment in the series of our Conversations with Source, perhaps as early as February. Yes, we have dozens and dozens of these Conversations in our Source Course already waiting for you on the Sparkling Circle, (see below), but more than a few of you have let me know you’d be up for beginning the nightly sessions live, anew. Please let us know if you are interested in 7 evenings over two weeks or 14 evenings over three, or would prefer weekly sessions over 7 weeks. There’s new information coming in and you’re invited. Yes, this would be like a Quanta Circle in every way except it would be an arc of 7. 14, or 21 sessions. To grace flowing round the world

Until the next time…know you are loved and appreciated. I AM grateful for YOU!