Blessed New Year!

I have spent a challenging Christmas in the hospital with pneumonia.

You might say I also spent a Lutheran Christmas!
For probably the first time in my life no Christmas Mass.
My spiritual experience of Christmas came on Christmas Eve watching
the St. Olaf College choir from Minnesota performing a Christmas concert
 from the Lutheran cathedral in Oslo Norway.
Absolutely splendid and inspiring!

The scriptures today still give us the angels hovering over the crib.
I too, in my illness, have been visited by angels.
My dearest Scottsdale Frends, who came loyally in the midst of their own Christmas rush, to my aid.
The nurses in my hospital room.
One, named Madison, who was about to give birth herself on Christmas Day!
And the many friends on Facebook who lifted me up in prayer.
They were all LIKE angels, but of course they were not.
Instead they were all exemplary humans with human limitations.
But when we exceed those limitations with our overflowing generosity,
we do begin to soar like the angels.
So to all these angel-like creatures, my profound thanks!
In my illness I turned to Mary, to Our Lady of Lourdes, and prayed for healing.
"And never was it known, that anyone who fled to her protection, was left unaided."

So on this her feast day:  AVE MARIA.

And on this New Year's Day I send you a Celtic Blessing for the New Year:
May the road rise to meet us.
The wind be at our backs.
The rain fall gently upon our fields,
The sun still gently upon our faces,
And until we meet again,
May we be held in the palm
Of God's hand.
Amen.