Friday, December 31, 2010

Friday Five: Year-End Edition

For the final Friday Five of the year, the revgals suggest listing 5 blessings of 2010 and 5 hopes/dreams for the new year.  This seemed like a good spiritual practice, since "blessings" is not the first thing that springs to mind when I think of this year.  This year was rough, and as I read through others' year-end blog posts and status updates, it seems "rough" describes many folks' 2010 journey.  May 2011 be a gentler road for us all.

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!