Snowcat

"The little snowbird sings
the song she always sings
and speaks to me of flowers
that will bloom again in spring . . . "

~ Anne Murray ~ Gene MacLellan ~

A Prayer for the New Year
from Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber

"Help me forgive myself
for not being the person I think I should be.

Help me forgive others
for not being who I think they should be.

Help me forgive this life
for not being what I think it should be."

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And how about this rather breath - taking connection?
Nadia Bolz-Weber writing about meditation: " . . . there is no distance we must travel to get to the doors of the kingdom. The kingdom our Lord ushered in as close to us as our own breath . . . arriving with this breath and this breath." [ellipses in original; see also]

Charles Dickens writing about the Ghost of Christmas Past: "The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow."

Thanks to my friend Katie
for this mystical passage from A Christmas Carol

and to my friend ~ Beata
for the darling little porcelain cat, imported from Poland

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P.S.

1. Another Snow Cat

2. Additional words of wisdom from Dickens / Katie
From Great Expectations: “That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you but for the formation of that first link on one memorable day.”

[Thinking also of another holiday classic:
It's a Wonderful Life]