Winter's Grace

Hillside Cemetery Unexpected Snow

Photograph by: Karen Holmes

Sometimes the purpose of a day is to feel our sadness,

knowing that as we do we allow whole layers of grief, like old skin cells, to drop off us.

Anything that takes us closer to true compassion takes us closer to what will one day be an experience of greater joy. 

- Marianne Williamson in "Everyday Grace".

The holidays become an invitation to softly remember a dear loved one waiting for us now in a hard to explain place of grace: our hearts and also a far off home we have yet to visit. We create holiday markers of remembrance, but tender parts of us know they exist most profoundly in our own beribboned packages of memory. We sit down to open our parcels with kind regard, and the memories gather like a peaceful, quiet winter's snowfall of remarkable insights and goodness, and, yes, a feeling of loss... we are aware that because of those loved ones, and their influence, our lives are made better and we have become better...

The Giver and Receiver have become blessed in unison.