Today was the Great Deconstruction. The Christmas Tree is put up. Santas and Nativities are in their annual hideaway. Big Santa is resting in his cabinet until next November. His Little Buddy is resting with him. The Great Decoration Project took three hours, and the Great Deconstruction took just over one hour. Change is just over the next hill. There is a life of plenty, there is a life of want. There is the fat of the land, there is the Dust Bowl. We will laugh, we will cry.

It is complicated, the young folks say. Getting up and facing the day has challenges. We bring a small armada with us into every skirmish. Our past battles, victories, and defeats walk with us into the New Year. We would second-guess more if we had the time. The mission we should choose to accept is to live the next day with newness and a fresh spirit. We bring one complex person to the performance. The frightened, insecure person of the night and the daydreamer. We are the people who feel small one day and gigantic the next. We hide in the shadows and take big steps into the sun.

‘The New Year will bring us into lives we have not thought about,’ Chet said. ‘Each person is a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire chapter in our life,’ Chet continued. ‘An obscure meeting can change our direction,’ Chet noted. ‘We think we are continuing as the same person we were when we were young, but each interaction with another brings a change in our trajectory,’ Chet smiled. ‘Subtle at first, but growing as we age, we notice where we made a turn on the road back home due to the influence of someone we met,’ Chet mused. ‘These changes become part of our sense of place,’ Chet explained. ‘We are characters in the Grand Production, and each of our parts is vital to the success of the journey,’ Chet said.

‘Parting is so sad until you realize that it is temporary,’ Neva J said. ‘People who are gone are not really gone,’ Neva J continued. ‘They stand in the shadows and behind the door and near the trees of the Woods, watching and waiting for a reunion,’ Neva J noted with a laugh. ‘All of the folks in our lives are still with us,’ Neva J explained.

Pastor Kerry retires at the end of 2025. Two days from now. I did not know him well, but he affected my outlook and my writing. Kerry has such a bright outlook on delivering his sermons and lovely humor that he caused me to rethink my writing. I focus more on stories and feel-good themes with a message. Political decisions made to harm people upset me, and for a few years, I expressed these feelings openly and unapologetically. Pastor Kerry taught me a more compassionate way to write, not knowing that he had. Kerry’s love for children’s stories, which he often reads during a section of our Sunday Service dedicated to children, influenced my writing more in the direction of children’s stories. Kerry will go on to help many others and influence them in positive ways he may not realize.