This year, on Christmas Eve, instead of tuning in our television screen to the standard fireplace channel to set the mood for a magical evening, we opted for a dumpster fire that we queued up on YouTube which had been produced by an Edmonton graphic design firm.

And so we come to the end of The Year That Nobody Expected, Not In A Million Years. Let’s see: there was a world-wide pandemic, premature death, economic chaos and, ugh, social distancing. You mean to say that throughout this sh*tstorm, we don’t even get to cry on other people’s shoulders, pull them in close for a hug or sit side-by-side just to have the feeling that someone else is with you? Isn’t that what shoulders are for? So, yes, the appropriate response might be to throw it all into the dumpster and, for good measure, douse it in gasoline and light it up.

Is it possible that there’s another response?

Easy for me to say. Yes, there have been difficult moments for me this year. There was uncertainty, there was frustration, there was fatigue with the whole dang situation – and that all continues as we move into a new year. But I/we have been “lucky”: our business has survived and none of my immediate family got “The Vid”. (Although Simon claims he can still feel the swab they stuck up his nose to test him back in May.)

The last few months of 2020 I’ve been reading through Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World about different ways to practice faith…well, practically. The last chapter is about pronouncing blessings, which is something that anyone can do. BBT says she’s not even sure you have to believe in God to pronounce something blessed, that “it may be enough to see the thing for what it is and pronounce it good.”

AND THEN she goes on to say that you blessing something doesn’t confer the holiness – it already is just there – that maybe we have no business deciding if something is a blessing or not. One can say a blessing “when you break a bone the same as you do when you win the lottery. The two events may be more alike than you know.“

Hmm.

I remember the first time I was challenged with this concept. It was while I was attending university and had stopped in to visit my spiritual mentor at the time. I overstayed my parking welcome and when I found a (not-a-lottery) ticket on my windshield, he called out from the front door where he and his wife were waving goodbye to me: “Call it a blessing!”

Okaaaaay…how could I do that? Well, first of all, it wasn’t enough to erase the happy feeling I had of the good, long visit we had just enjoyed. I got a ticket, but I was also lucky enough to own my own car. I got a ticket but I probably didn’t starve to pay it. I got a ticket and it taught me to be more careful next time. Apparently, there were myriad blessings in the thing.

The dumpster fire can consume a lot of crap. But it can give off a lot of warmth and light, too, which is Not All Bad. Wishing you a Happy New Year and pronouncing it Already Blessed, No Matter What.