Departures. Arrivals.





Bring on the Wonder.
Bring on the Song.
HOPE



        Taylor and I just got back from our annual Christmas/
New Year's journey.  Airports bring out the best and worst in me. I love the adrenalin that starts pumping---traveling, going away, something different, off center, out-of-my comfort zone.  And pushed up right next to that excitement is an almost pathological longing to cling to what is safe and known and routine.  I am not spontaneous.  Damn.  What happened to those days?

   I have traveled through airports during some critical points in my life.  I have stood sobbing in long security lines after a painful breakup; I have pushed Taylor in wheelchairs in and out of handicapped access lines before and after surgeries in other states.  I have left sisters and parents and dear friends at gates with my heart up around my throat believing that my life would never be back on a normal track.  Inevitably after each......a change...in me.

   Always...always...I have seen those signs: "All Flights.  Departing Flights"

Follow these arrows.  Go that way.  Make those  choices.  Depart.  Fly Away.  Go down that ramp way.  Your life will be different---maybe drastically.  Maybe not at all.  But, there will always be a departure from this moment.

    It is a new year.  I like the sound of 2011.  It sounds hopeful to me.  Does it to you?  I am not into numerology, but there is a swing in those numbers.  A newness---a new sound, a buzz, a skip, a bounce.  Life.

    My New Year's Choice is to depart from things, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors that weigh me down, hold me back, make me mean, lead me to negative thinking, keep me living in a "small" world.   Departure from being closed off to love. It's time to let people in--time to float along with the current instead of beating against the tide.  Flying away to new things-----new ideas---new love---new hope. 

Arrivals.  All flights.  Isn't it a good thing to be open to new-ness...to new seeds...new beginnings....new birth?

Bring on the wonder.  Bring on the song.

Anybody want to join me in hope? 

How will we "do" hope this year? 

Make hope happen.  In real ways.

What will it look like in my life?

What will it look like in your life?

A noun and a verb: HOPE.

I'm open.  Are you in?