The 6th Day of Christmas: Redeeming the Year.

image provided by “Unsplash”

Dear pilgrim,

Snow ever so slightly floated to earth these last days, adding a fresh white cover to our unusually gray winter landscape here in MN. Watching it gracefully fall, I felt a deep longing to leave this year with all its pain and sorrows behind, just like the snow covers the land under a thick white blanket, dampening the noise, breathing fresh crisp air into the old. Now the fresh snow paints a new landscape over the old, leaving just the bare outline of the weathered and worn past, not simply covering it, but transforming it into beauty, redeeming the past.

It is a fine image and reminder of the task before us, on this journey into the 12 Days of Christmas:

We are approaching another threshold, walking towards the night where the old and the new year meet.

A spiritual practice we teach in our retreats is that of pausing within the threshold to gather up the past and anticipate the future. One can do this literally as one enters a room, to become pre…