Are you ready to welcome the glimmer of new beginnings?
With fresh fires and Christmas lights,
we mark the darkest days of the rolling year,
and call to mind how everything and everyone starts in the dark.
Dark days augur alienation and danger
yet darkness also draws us together;
a time for dimming our lights so we can see the stars.
This sacred season of birth pangs and beginnings
offers time to lovingly look back
over a year of gifts, of losses, and of lessons.
—from the book Wandering and Welcome: Meditations for Finding Peace
by Joseph Grant