And the race is on...

Winter will arrive around 6:30 PM today and with it the Christmas rush like the snow storm scheduled to hit us in the next few hours. Everything is about as ready as it can be and anything less then essential has now been placed in the "see you next week" file.

Service bulletins are done. Travel plans are in. Schedules are set. Events are locked and loaded. All has been spooled onto a bobbin and awaits only the precise unwinding. As if! But that's part of the texture of this time as well.

Tomorrow will be on to western Minnesota and time with my wife's family. Then Saturday evening is return home, Sunday morning travel to LaCrosse, then return home for time with my family, then Monday morning travel to LaCrosse, then return home and then some sort of rest on the 25th and 26th. We've even stashed enough food in the house so once we finally get home we don't have to actually leave the premises.

For clergy this is a working weekend, one where you must shine and still find a way to get snippets of time in with your family. To be married to a Priest means you'll never have a normal Christmas again so forget about anything that looks like Currier and Ives because you, too, are on stage and on the road. Oh well.

The actual serene moments will be during the Liturgy, as they always are, when time and space seem to be on hold and you can rest as the great words wash over you and the smell of incense mixed with candles wraps around the altar. It's always like that but on this busy weekend the peace, the refuge will be deeper. Whatever else the coming events bring I will cherish this the most.

So before it all starts you have this last post. By God's grace I will write again sometime after the Feast of the Nativity but until then I wish you, yours, and the world all the peace, joy, love, and light that come with these holy days and above all the abiding presence of Christ.

Merry Christmas!