Many families that celebrate Christmas welcome in the season with an Advent calendar that has a little window that opens on a special picture for each night of the Advent season, or which harbors a small treat to be discovered each day.
How might it change your experience of this season if you looked at each day with the expectation that it was holding some little hidden treat for you?
“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”
― Kahlil Gibran
What kind of prayers do you offer in moments of joy or times of abundance?
Nothing feels quite as wonderful as the sensation of riding the wave of life, of feeling caught up in the flow and carried forward by a power greater than yourself. In that moment you can do no wrong, you simply balance, perfectly poised, in the great ocean of life. Until you crash beneath the wave or are left stagnant on a beach. Every wave has its crest and trough. And there will always be another wave.
Where in the cycle of crest and trough is your life at this moment?
How do you approach a cupcake? Frosting first? Nibble the cake out from underneath to save the frosting for last? Do you carefully balance the cake to frosting ratio for each bite or do you open wide to take in a mouth full of glory all at once? There is only one wrong way to eat a cupcake, and that is to fail to give it your full attention and appreciation while the moment lasts.
What will you give your full appreciation to today?
On Simchat Torah, the celebration of the completion of the yearly cycle of reading from the Torah, Jews march and dance around the synagogue carrying the Torah scroll. And then, as part of the joyful celebration, they start the cycle of reading over again: B’reshit…In the beginning…
What is ending in your life? How might that ending bring a joyful beginning?
