Our wish for you all today from Bedlam Farm is to have a good Christmas. It need not be merry to be good, just peaceful, meaningful and healing. It need not be about the most amazing gifts, but about our amazing lives. We all need to heal, life sometimes scars and breaks and tests all of us. I hope there is love in your life today, and adventure. The call to life is a wonderful gift, it is free and at your fingertips, at the beck of your heart and soul.

Today, we can be who we really are, where we really wish to be.

Today, and for us, a good Christmas is already underway, a day of simplicity and quiet and contemplation. Already, and before the sun rose to join us, we fed the animals, ran the dogs, talked and talked. We hope to sit by the river today, commune with donkeys – they are the most spiritual of all animals that we know. We hope to give ourselves the gift of a walk in the deep woods.

I hope to make a pear and cranberry goat cheese pizza.  might want to read a book, or go to a movie. I hope to heal. We both do. How do we heal here? We heal with our creativity, our writing, our images, our art.

That is the way back for us, the healing path, the hopeful path. We will resolve to give hope to the poor, as best we can figure out how to do it. It is a good feeling just to think of it.

We hope to let go of the things we need to leave behind, embrace the things we need to keep, the things we want. Our lives are not about nostalgia, but the good memories of today and tomorrow.

I hope to keep the memory of Jesus, in whose name we make this holiday, in my heart today. This is not a religious holiday for me, I am not so good at being merry.  I don’t want a Feast Of Failure. I want to feel the warmth of the light inside of me.  I hope your holiday succeeds in whatever way you need and wish.

I hope you wake up tomorrow feeling a Magnificent Storm of goodness and promise.

I do not know if Jesus is a God, or the son of one, it is not important to me, but I hope and pray his great vision of a new kingdom of love and justice and mercy is at hand. What a gift to the world that will be. And I believe in it. He was a healer, and so I think this is a healing holiday. Perhaps it is true that the best gifts are free.

One life at a time.

I have no advice for anyone else about a good Christmas, only for myself.  I don’t need to feel joy to have a good Christmas, I don’t need anyone else’s rituals, I can make my own. We do that here every day.

Every lover of good in this world can testify in his or her own behalf. Have a good Christmas.