HHP Holiday Message 2009

It has been a hard year…

Jobs are down while interest rates are up.  We have committed 30,000 of our young people to a war half a world away while we continue to lead the battle on not one but two fronts.  The fragile hope of last year’s political elections has been tarnished by the reality of the very real and slow (sometimes plodding, often frustrating) work of turning a country towards what we hope are brave new shores and what we fear is more of the same…

And now we find ourselves in the season of Faith.

Faith that the oil will last as long as it needs to, faith that a newborn can bring peace to mankind, faith that building strong families can lead to a better world, faith that one man’s enlightenment can ignite candles of consciousness the globe over, faith that even darkness has a bottom from which we will eventually return to the light.

“Faith,” says Martin Luther King, Jr., “is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”

By its very nature, faith is not easy, and when you feel as if you have been burned by hope, that you have tumbled one too many times down the stairwell, it becomes exponentially more difficult.

Cynicism, pessimism, and distrust are so attractive in these dark nights of the soul.  There is a kind of logic to holing up behind their walls and saying “enough” to pain and suffering.

But at what cost?

“To sacrifice what you are and to live without belief.” maintained Joan of Arc, “that is a fate more terrible than dying.”

And award winning author William Styron acknowledges, “It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.”

Fearful of moving forward; aware that the tactics we take to protect ourselves are themselves a kind of death, what then are we to do?

In those moments when we cannot ourselves muster enough trust, we must depend on those who love us to keep our dreams alive on our behalf.  It is so much easier to see another’s possibilities – to realize that what seems like an insurmountable problem is an opportunity for growth, that what feels like bottomless despair is the beginning of joyous enlightenment – to know that there is an end to pain and misery.

We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone,” admits writer and painter Walter Anderson. “But paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.”

In the season of Faith, we ritualize the longest night of the year and acknowledge the joys and difficulties of belief during the darkest moments.  We gather together in churches, synagogues, and temples, in the woods and on the beach.  We join hands in the dark and turn together towards the light.  We bring, each of us, our own small glimmer of hope, sharing the faith amongst us, until it builds to a blaze, enlightening and warming us all.

We here at Holistic Health Practice are honored to hold space for your hopes, your fears, and your potential.  We will hold you gently in our hands, as  you hold others, knowing it is a privilege to tend and nurture that spark of faith until you are ready to carry it yourself, to walk beside you through the darkest nights and into the dawn.

We are right here.

Blessed Be!

Kurt, Sara, Amie, Tara, Kevin, Derrick,

Sheree, Matt, Tory, Karyn, Jane