If the past is any indicator, this lengthy and all-inclusive holiday season (which actually began on July 21^st when I saw the first ornaments for sale on a home shopping channel!) stands to be the noisiest of all. And what will be the sounds in our cranial "sub-woofers"? Fear or peace? The great Florentine poet of the Middle Ages, Dante wrote: "E'n la sua volontade e' nostra pace" - In His will is our peace. And I believe that it is the will of God for us to realize that we are embraced by God's love, enclosed in God's mercy, and enveloped in God's providence. But the fact is that for most of us we will be too busy to realize it. When this amazingly busy time combines with the noise, the talk shows, the talking heads, the texting, the twittering, the downloading, the ipoding, the blue toothing, the Star Bucking, the conference calling, the power pointing, and ...the "my spacing",...and the "face booking" ...we will rarely allow ourselves much time to make and turn ...my space...and my face... toward God. And yet, it is this God, who is our ultimate future, who turns to us in stillness and silence.

     So, when it all starts to get too much for us, and it will; then it's time to halt. And halt is a word that I have been taught about through my encounter with wonderful men and women who practice the 12 Step Spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous. They have told me that the word HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired. This is a word that invites a powerful daily spiritual reflection. "Am I hungry; if so, for what?", "Am I angry; ...if so, about what?", "Am I lonely;...if so, for whom?", "Am I tired;...if so, of what?". You and I know that when we do not get what we deeply need then ...bang! But HALT-ing for ten or fifteen minutes each day can be a powerful navigational tool to guide us through the coming holiday season and help to reduce the inevitable frayed nerves, short fuses, and quick tempers that can appear when we least need them.

     Yep, here we go, get ready for the descent, the approach, and the touchdown, because as the commercial says: life comes at you fast! So, let this holiday season not be a time of merely coping and surviving it all without maxing out all the credit cards, and alienating the in laws, but rather be a time to know and to experience what the medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich wrote: "From Him we come, in Him we are enfolded, to Him we return." That is the gospel.