These words of Parker Palmer’s are the words I’m taking with me into the New Year. With them are: congruence, wholeness, and listening (listen is my word for 2017). The beginning of this New Year will be an intensive writing time for me, which means the call to integrity and honesty is resting on me anew. Joining that call is the conviction to burn down those false mantles that are heavy and contradictory to my soul. In a word, paralyzing. It’s a call to trust myself more deeply as inklings surface and as desires deepen. And it’s an invitation to run headlong into offering that which I’ve been given. Gifts are best given. I was reminded of that recently.

I’m sharing all this with you because I wonder if you, too, feel like you lose your way about every week or so, that all the popular wisdom is confusing you more than it is helping you, and you are longing to live “divided no more.” I don’t know what that looks like in your life. I barely know what it looks like in mine. But I have whispers and ideas and thoughts and I feel compelled to tease those all out. And I want to encourage you to do the same.

Of course, integration requires listening. To ourselves. To God. Listening is a lost practice. And I’m going to rediscover it this year. No matter what this year has held for you — glorious or gutting — we must begin again. Always we begin again.

All my love,

Leeana