Dear Friends,

 We pray you are safe and well.

 Today's Meditation offers a timely call to action. It is entitled "What If" by Marchae Grair.

We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in healthcare, in the workplace, in the Church--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.

Dear Friends,

 We pray you are safe and well.

Today's Meditation is a moment of respite that will bring a smile to your heart: A Children's Presentation of the Nativity Scene that develops in a way that was unforeseen but is representative of life.

Dear Friends,

 We pray you are safe and well.

Today in our area, it is a snowy contemplative day: we have about a foot of snow on the ground with perhaps another six inches on the way. It is a good day to reflect on this Advent Poem by John of the Cross: each of us is called to be pregnant with Love, with Light, with Mercy that we give birth to in our neighborhood: "each of us is the midwife of God."

Dear Friends,

 We pray you are safe and well.

Today we celebrate the 250th Anniversary of Beethoven's Birth. Our meditation comes to us in the singing of Ode to Joy--the translated words are below the You.Tube link. The song celebrates the joy of all of us becoming one human family, drinking at Mother Nature's breast, searching for a Loving God.

Dear Friends,

 We pray you are safe and well.

Yesterday was the Feastday of John of the Cross, a devoted Spiritual Seeker and Spiritual Director. He was imprisoned in his own Carmelite Monastery when he joined Teresa of Avila in trying to reform the Carmelite Community who had settled down into complacent self-indulgence.