hoedls haven; WHERE NATURE IS THE SOURCE OF ALL ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Go back in time.

No, not a million years ago or last week. Go back into your memories to a time when you were too young to drive a car or date or have fulltime employment.

Go back to a very special Christmas memory that you remember to this day.

Close your eyes and relive that moment, that memory, as if it were happening right now.

Experience the smells and sounds and feelings and actions as best as you can recall.

What was so special about your special Christmas memory? How did it make you feel? How does it make you feel?

Now, come back to the present with all the concerns, deadlines, worries and scheduling facing you prior to the holidays. Quite a difference from that place, from that memory you were just at?

My friend, today I share with you a brief reflection and reminder that you are never too far from being "home for the holidays." Nothing over time has changed the very essence of the Christmas miracle. Sure, toys and gadgets have become much more electronically advanced, but a Christmas cookie still is made and tastes the same as it did years ago. Sleds have advanced somewhat but the feeling of shooshing down a snow-packed hill still feels the same as it did when you were just a child. Favorite carols still contain the same words and sentiments and snowmen (now possibly referred to as "snowpersons") are shaped in the same fashion. The only thing that has really changed over the years is us, my friend.

It's not that you or I have aged or grown up, it's just that we've let go of the childlike innocence of the Christmas season. We've dismissed some of the childlike wonder of peering in department store windows and across starry skies - waiting for that special present, that wondrous Christmas miracle...

The good news is that it's never to late to go back home... especially for the holidays. Make the moment, the season, the experience yours by instilling some of that childlike wonder you had when you were a child. Instill those smells, sounds, feelings and actions in your own family and traditions. Allow the season to lift your spirit and hug that child inside once again.

Find that child again this season and remind him/her that it all "came upon a midnight clear." And then let that child take you by the hand and guide you through the season as it was meant to be celebrated.