A week until Christmas and really just about six days at the writing of this blog at 9:16 P:M:. MJ and Jonathon and I enjoyed church this morning and the lovely people that comprise our congregation. I notice a prevalent feeling each time I attend church…calm. The church has a wonderful calming effect on me. The hymn singing and the sermon along with seeing the great people that we have been attending worship with for soon to be 25 years. Jonathon introduced MJ and I to Chanmi who has been expertly playing the piano for our congregation for some time. She has completed her studies at University and is returning home at the end of the month. What a great person she is and I marveled as she explained that she relies on God to assist her in her expert piano playing. Her comments were inspiring.

MJ and I went to a Hallmark store in Marion yesterday. It was fun to see a packed store of holiday shoppers with the excitement of the Holiday Season in their eyes. A local coffee emporium was offering free coffee and the line snaked around the parking lot with anxious lovers of the Bean. We, humans, love the spiritual and mysterious nature of our existence. There are times that we feel the assistance of something that is beyond what we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears. No matter how much we study or practice or rehearse…we seek the help that comes from the Great Spirit…and the inspiration that transforms the mundane into the magnificent.

Soon we will gather around our Christmas trees and indulge in the annual tradition of giving and receiving gifts to and from our loved ones and friends. The joy on our faces can be attributed to the miracle of life and that we are a part of it. In a vast universe that is only one of the millions of vast universes…somehow we are blessed to enjoy the love of our families and friends and the warmth of our Hearth and Home.

‘Albert Einstein once wrote: People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Time, in other words, he said, is an illusion.’