Lori and I are taking a few days in California to be with family and old dear friends. We saw my mother who is doing much better, and she even went to her annual New Years Eve party with her Cal friends. We are traveling back to Charlottesville today and will be back at St. Paul's on Sunday.
Back in my journalism days, I used to write those "year in review" pieces, and truth be told, I enjoyed doing them. But I will avoid commenting on 2009, or on the decade that is past. It was a difficult year and decade for many of you, and it had many challenges for me. Thank you for your support, wisdom, love and patience (and you know who you are).
It is my prayer that this new decade will be better than the last for our world, for our nation, for you, and for me. May my unemployed and under-employed friends find fulfilling work, may those who are sick be healed, the world end its bloodshed, and those who are anxious find a way to live without fear, and may we all look back on 2010 as the start of great decade.
My friend Diane Reese, who I've known since high school, posted this, and I share it with you:
"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."
-- Rainer Maria Rilke.
Another year comes to a close and it is hard to believe it went so quickly. Thank you, dear readers, for being with me this year in this space, for your prayers, and when we've been in the same land, sharing a meal or two around the table when we can. 
