December 2022

I write this as 2022 draws to a close. While I don’t usually stay up to see the New Year in tonight, weather permitting, I plan to light a fire outside and sit around it with some family and friends to welcome in 2023 . . . or at least stay up for a while into the night.

This last month has been filled with the Holiday season for me. Preparing for it, social activities. My posts this month have been more numerous than of late, and at the same time they have been short posts. Posts where I am checking in with what I am doing in that moment, or how I am feeling now. The Holiday time is something that I struggle with. Essentially the commercialism of it all and the consuming that happens on all levels, swamping a simple but important message. Yes, there is joy. Yes, there is happiness. And I feel that there is too much excess and no stopping for a moment, no pause. For the me the message of the Holiday period is lost. While I don’t call myself a Christian, Buddhism is my adopted faith of thirty plus years now, I have always felt there to be an essential message around Christmas, one that is independent of any faith. And that is a message of peace and good will.

I grew up going to a school in Britain where we always sung carols at Christmas. I would go to carol services and go carol singing collecting money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Those carols hold for me the message of Christmas or maybe the message that I hold for this time of year. It is just a simple association. When I hear carols, and I look to play them whenever I get the opportunity, my heart drops into a calm and quiet place, a place of reminiscence of times past, of times growing up, a place of gratitude, and at peace.

And on a more lighthearted note - living here on Maui, I struggle with Christmas in 70/80F sun. I always have done, though this year was my most comfortable. It should be cold at Christmas! 😁

December’s posts

Below are a selection of my posts from this last month. I wish you all a very Happy and Peaceful 2023.

Thank you for reading.

With very best wishes,

David.