Upon Further Reflection…
Jan 4, 2026
Welcome to 2026! I hope that however you marked the turning of the year, it included some moments to look back on the ground you covered in 2025, and to consider what came from that reflection. I know that’s easier to say than to do (at least I find that to be the case) but my experience is that there is usually value in making the effort.
If you read the blurb last week, you may recall that I wrote the following:
…I want to encourage you to do some reflecting of your own. When you think back on this past year for us as a community, what comes to mind? What is “sticky” for you? Challenges? Insights? Moments of movement in your own beliefs? Something else? We’ll come back to this when we gather on January 4th and do some collective storytelling. I think it’s also worth observing that, in a world too often characterized by loneliness and isolation, we continue to have the opportunity to do this together. Let’s take advantage of that whenever we are able.
That’s basically the plan for our gathering this Sunday. We’ll meet at the usual time and place (10:45 am,
VA Cafe at 171 Mcdermot Ave, lower level), we’ll check in with one another in Community Time, and then we’ll pull the chairs into a circle and get to work, engaging with what I described above. If you can’t attend in person, please post your thoughts to our
Facebook page, so we can include your voice in the conversation. We’ll livestream to that same page but there will not be a podcast of the morning, in the interest of people feeling as free to share as possible.
And, perhaps as something to get our wheels turning a bit, I’ll leave us with an excerpt from the notable contemporary mystic, Thomas Merton. His perspective is both recognizably Christian, and also reaches well beyond those constraints, which I hope can make it accessible to most of us. Of particular note, in the context of our planned reflections on Sunday, is the final paragraph and especially the last sentence. Often it is in helping someone else we find the best way to bear our own trouble. Let’s keep that in view when we reflect on the past year in our life as a community, and see where it takes us. The full quote is at the end of this email.
I’ll see you on Sunday.
Peace,
Tim Plett
The heart of man can be full of so much pain, even when things are exteriorly “all right”. It becomes all the more difficult because today we are used to thinking that there are explanations for everything. But there is no explanation for most of what goes on in our own hearts, and we cannot account for it all. No use resorting to the kind of mental tranquilisers that even religious explanations sometimes offer.
Faith must be deeper than that, rooted in the unknown and in the abyss of darkness that is the ground of our being. No use teasing the darkness to try to make answers grow out of it..
But if we learn how to have deep inner patience, things solve themselves, or God solves them if you prefer: but do not expect to see how.
Just learn to wait, and to do what you can and help other people. Often it is in helping someone else we find the best way to bear our own trouble.
(Thomas Merton, form his Christmas letter, 1966)