So this is the new year

It's been a long time.

Christmas in New York. Anticipation mixed with dazzling displays and crowds to match. Kindness and consumerism, selflessness and worldliness all to the extreme. Experiencing this season was like nothing else, especially while working on the program to provide gifts for the children at our shelters. I have too many experiences, wroght with emotion, to begin to share. The season was different for me, it was good. Unfortunately I found myself stuck in the Ohio valley storm, spending an unexpected night to wake up on the floor of Cinncinatti airport for Christmas eve. In the end - I made it back to Salt Lake, and more than ever I felt what home means. While I usually avoid being overtly religious in my web log, I must say that I had pause to reflect on the reason for which the setting of Christ's birth was in a manger - not in a home, a hotel, a castle or a church - but a manger. It's certainly not happenstance, even if the bible isn't your thing - you can at least note that the author/storyteller certainly chose the setting carefully.

At any rate, Christmas ended - even "the holidays" have ended, and the above is old news. I have been in Salt Lake for eight days now, and have been reflecting on my own sense of home and birth. Mostly enjoying the confluence of factors: physical, emotional, circumstantial that have defined my Salt Lake home over the years. It should be useful as I figure out what in the world this coming year is to bring. I don't know where I'll live or what I'll be doing this time next year. Fortunatley, for some reason, that doesn't frighten me, but it does make me confused an anxious. Maybe I should want my life to be a page turner, but then I'd have to relinquish my desire for control. hm. At least I will always have this "home" to come back to, whether physically or not, at least mentally, and often with good company. For the new year and the last, I must say, I am especially grateful for that. So thanks to the city lights, the Queen of spades, Big Cottonwood, the pink house, little Hun, baby Nathan, the gateway, la Puenta, snowflakes, deans, Desperado, taquitos, Foothill, Mount Olympus, gasoline, 4WD, heck and miss for being "home" this time.

. . . carry me back.