A New Year Message from the Neals

Dear Ones

We wonder how you are during this time of short days and long nights reflecting and gestating on the warmth and light to come. We are with you often in our dreams, seeing your face across the campfire and know the poetry in your heart. This poem came to us recently, stimulating once again to ask "what is my life for the sake of.."

We would love you to share your reflections on the year past and the one to come. What is the yearning in your heart and belly for the journey forward.

So write,either below or via email and we'll post on the Journal here.

Craig & Patricia

FOR OUR WORLD
Matthew Joseph Thaddeus Stepanek

We need to stop.
Just stop.
Stop for a moment....
Before anybody
Says or does anything
That may hurt anyone else.

We need to be silent.
Just silent.
Silent for a moment....
Before we forever lose
The blessings of songs
That grow in our hearts.

We need to notice.
Just notice.
Notice for a moment...
Before the future slips away
Into ashes and dust of humility.

Stop, be silent, and notice.....
In so many ways, we are the same.
Our differences are unique treasures.
We have, we are, a mosaic of gifts
To nurture, to offer, to accept.

We need to be.
Just be.
Be for a moment....
Kind and gentle, innocent and trusting,
Like children and lambs,
Never judging or vengeful
Like the judging and vengeful.

And now, let us pray,
Differently, yet together,
Before there is no earth, no life,
No chance for peace.

September 12, 2001
Matthew Joseph Thaddeus Stepanek
"Hope Through Heartsongs

The lovely photograph above is that of dear FireHawk

http://www.resonance.to/

Comments

[David Banner]

2007 was a year of completion for me. I retired from university teaching on December 6th after 36 glorious years. Last summer, a book came through me which subsequently became titled FRAMESHIFTING; A PATH TO WHOLENESS and will be published in March, 2008. My last child , Katelyn (age 21) left yesterday for Ecuador where she will work on a public health project;my two boys (ages 32 and 30) are out living their lives with integrity and loving focus. I feel SO richly blessed in my life. As for the New Year, I wish to be useful to the purposes of the larger Whole in whatever way presents itself in the moment.