Hello December

 The count-down towards an event...whether Solstice, or Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or the next new year beginning...this is a month of preparations for that chosen event.

Gift giving is a wonderful way to remember those we love. It can also become the root of hectic shopping. I hope we can all forget that for a moment, sigh and maybe consider how to do it more consciously. Just have in mind the person you are giving it to...imaging their face as they open that present from you. It is the season.

A friend's decorations for Christmas.

Ann Baily won the gingerbread contest this year at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville. "When Dreams have Wings." The display is up until the beginning of January.

Governor's Plaza, Santa Fe NM with Holiday lights!

And speaking of holiday lights...here's one of my favorite displays in Black Mountain NC. (There will be more coming this month!)

On E. Cotton Ave...don't miss the bears!

Today's quote:

Magic doesn't sweep you away; it gathers you up into the body of the present moment so thoroughly that all your explanations fall away: the ordinary, in all its plain and simple outrageousness, begins to shine -- to become luminously, impossibly so. Every facet of the world is awake, and you within it.

David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology