Good Morning from Prince Edward Island

Time to cuppa? 

Get out the finest; you deserve to treat yourself to one simple pleasure today, every day. 

Crazy to think it is just five more sleeps…

And Christmas morning tradition begins. One of ours is preparing an extra special breakfast and serving it on our wedding pattern, Barrymore by Noritake, which we started collecting in 1986. We light a beeswax candle, give thanks and enjoy the meal together. We are fortunate to have one daughter home with us and missing our eldest. 

Do you or your family have a Christmas morning tradition? 

While we prepare for downtime from Christmas to New Years’ and thinking about 2021, this poem, by Judy Brown speaks to me. 


Fire
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

It can be a challenging time of year for many people and I can empathize. Fortunately, the persistent love given by my wife turned my hard time of year into  a joyous one. 

Love is the great miracle cure. -Louise Hay

I have also come to believe in the reason for the season and celebrate the love that was sent and offered to all.

Faith is to believe what you do not see;
the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
-Saint Augustine

If none of this resonates with you, you cannot argue with kindness and the joy that comes from helping those in need.  

"Compassion is the ability to see the deep connectedness between ourselves and others.
Moreover, true compassion recognizes that all the boundaries we perceive between ourselves and others are an illusion.
When we first begin to practice compassion, this very deep level of understanding may elude us,
but we can have faith that if we start where we are, we will eventually feel our way toward it.
We move closer to it every time we see past our own self-concern to accommodate concern for others.
And, as with any skill, our compassion grows most in the presence of difficulty." ~ Albert Nolan

I leave you with hope for a world at peace. 

Koolulam is a social-musical initiative, meant to bring together people from any and all walks of life. 3,000 people of all religions coming together in Haifa to sing: One Day.

Sometimes I lay under the moon
And thank God I'm breathin'
Then I pray, "Don't take me soon
'Cause I am here for a reason."
Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know some day it'll all turn around because
All my life I've been waitin' for
I've been prayin' for
For the people to say
That we don't wanna fight no more
There'll be no more war
And our children will play
One day, one day, one day, oh
One day, one day, one day, oh
It's not about win or lose, 'cause we all lose
When they feed on the souls of the innocent
Blood-drenched pavement
Keep on movin' though the waters stay ragin'
In this maze
You can lose your way, your way
It might drive you crazy but
Don't let it faze you, no way, no way!
Sometimes in my…

This morning, I listened to the peaceful sound of Winnow by Simeon Walker

But before I go, a big THANK YOU to all of you who supported us this year through the services we provide. A big THANK YOU to our staff who worked extremely hard to serve others in a safe and responsible manner. A BIG thank you to our mail order team, who were inundated with over three times our normal volume this season and did a great job of keeping our standards for speed and correctness to the best we have ever done. Thousands of orders and only a few booboos. It was amazing. 

Sending much love from Prince Edward Island today. 

Take care and stay safe. 

I hope you have a nice weekend and find moments of solitude and peace. 

Merry Christmas, 

Bruce, Millie and Bobbi

ps. Your Morning Smile

Working in an ophthalmology practice that specializes in LASIK surgery, I am expected to comfort nervous patients. But prior to one operation, the patient was so nervous she was actually shaking.

Nothing I said to her would comfort her so after the doctor finished on the first eye and before he began on the second I wanted her to know the surgery was going well.

"There," I said, patting her hand reassuringly, "now you only have one eye left."