December 2022

It is the last week day of the year, the end of 2022. Soon we will wake up to the beginning of 2023. It’s just another morning, just another day— and yet every day brings another morning, every day brings a new day. Every day we start anew. Every moment we begin again. Possibility is what you do right now. Opportunity is what you decide upon today.

This past week my family has been in northern Italy, looking for snow. I’ve injured my knee, and so am frustrated in the hopes I’d had to participate with my boys in this adventure. Even so, I’m grateful they have the opportunity, that' I’ve had some time to read, to write, to think, to walk as much as my knee will allow. The mountains in Cervinia literally took my breath away. Here’s my favorite phot with morning light on Mt. Cervinia, which many of us know as the Matterhorn.

 

I wanted to share a few things as the year comes to a close and thinking about this next year, and offer a challenge to you as well:

1. My word for 2022 was the word “Whole.” in 2023, my word is “Relationship.”

   What will your word be for this new year?

2. A number of years ago I wrote a piece on a blue Christmas, a blue holiday, a time of sadness when all else was bright. If this fits for you or someone you know, I hope it will bless you. I have it up now on my Medium site where the original interviews are for The Grit Factor.

A few things I’ve come across this holiday for our beautiful world and your beautiful life, today, now, always… which I hope might help to inspire your 2023:

Our beautiful world:

1. Listen in to the conversation between Brene Brown and Bono on a recent episode of her podcast Unlocking Us. This quote (among many) really stands out as a resolution for 2023:

"We need the center. We need to find the center. We need to listen more...not only people you don't agree with, but people you don't like...(this) may be what radical Christianity really is."- Bono

2. An excerpt of Wendell Berry’s new book The Need to be Whole in Plough Magazine Autumn 2022: here’s the quote I’d like to share to consider at the end of this year seeking to the two sides of the political divide:

“Love that hates has cancelled itself. It cannot survive its hatred of hate any more than one can survive minus one…(love) is a force, extraordinarily demanding and humbling, dangerous too, for those who attempt to take it seriously.”

Your beautiful life:

 

 

How is this time for you an end, and a beginning? What will the light that is making its way slowly back into our northern hemisphere days illuminate for you this year? How can you honor and support all four quadrants of who it is that you are in this new year? (more on that here, if you missed it!)

Stay tuned for a special opportunity next week to join my friend Breda McCague and me to vision your year ahead and more!

The latest two episodes from Facing the Wind to listen in over the New Year (be sure to subscribe!):

Leading the Caretakers with Bishop Gretchen Rehberg

The Mind of a Marine with Courtney Lynch

I’m excited to share this year ahead with you, facing into the wind!

With love, and to your grit,

Shannon