Blessings:
1 -- Bearing witness to my cielo's continued growth as the most amazing human I have ever known. Assuming all continues smoothly, she will be ordained in 2011, something I am already looking forward to.
2 -- Rediscovering an old love: opera. Thanks to this broadcast, which blew my world open and reminded me that there is beauty in the world:
And in rediscovering opera, I discovered the global White Shirt contingent, which has provided much delight. For an example, here.
3 -- Good friends and mentors who help me feel less lonely during the lonely stretches.
4 -- Goats and hermitages and a flying St. Francis.
5 -- Colleagues in the multi-stranded movement for justice, which only grows stronger.
Hopes/Dreams...and things I'm looking forward to:
1 -- Opera-related, there's the Capriccio HD broadcast in April, the Die Walkure HD broadcast in May, and the HOPE that the Met will release the above-mentioned Rosenkavalier on DVD, as they have done with other HD broadcasts. Cuz then I'd feel like this:
2 -- I started the "One With the Collar" series (last one here, which has links to all of them) without realizing that it would be a series. These poems have been helpful ways of thinking about my own experience as a minister, of wrestling with issues of privilege, authority, pain, injustice. So I want to be more intentional about these reflections moving forward.
3 -- Continued deepening growth of the faith community I pastor.
4 -- Finally being delivered. All right, maybe not "finally" as in that's the end of that, but finally in the sense of being brought out of whatever-the-hell-I'm-in right now and onto what is next, whatever that is. Ironically, it's exhausting, even thought there is nothing I can do but be still and let God do Her work.
5 -- Time with my cielo, my friends, "my" hermitage, the goats...
Happy 2011, everyone!