Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays, Everyone!
The sun is finally shining here is south-central PA, after about a week of overcast skies and drizzle. I’m cooking Christmas dinner today, and the table is set.
Found in the spud bag a little ‘tater perfectly suited to the season and this post.
On Christmas day, I want to take a moment to share a beautiful, uplifting, hope-filled essay with you:
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dianne-collins/theres-a-new-mainstream-o_b_6146988.html>
Diane Collins is right – there IS a “new mainstream.”
I know because I’m part of it. I know – from talking to them – that many of the college students I teach are part of it. Virtually all my friends are part of it, too.
I’ve learned (finally!) there’s nothing special about me. So if I’M starting to catch on to something, chances a whole lot of other folks are.
What is it we’re finally starting to get? It’s simple, really: we’re all in this together. If I want to be healthy and happy, I’d better do all I can to ensure my neighbor is healthy and happy. That’s not a new idea. A certain Semitic long-hair said it a long time ago. A little brown Indian man in a loin cloth said it a few hundred years later. More recently, the current Catholic pope indicated he’s onboard, too.
What defines the new mainstream is our willingness to try, over and over, to overcome our personal fears, greed – and the conviction that we are right – and choose love, in one of its many forms, instead.
Making that choice is seldom easy. But if we keep trying, we will build new habits of thinking and reacting, and, more and more often, our default will be love.
Are you in?
