A Blessing for the New Year
(Remarks as prepared for the Ritual of the New Year, January 3, 2015. Dedicated in memory of Dan Ha) The most important part of any gathering is the guests. Not the music, not the location, not the food. So thank you for coming here. The year is young. Like all young things it has great potential to surprise those who give it life, with disappointment or delight. How the events of the year will unfold is not under our complete control, but we can give to it a good beginning. We can start the year with goodness and love, put forward our best intentions, and pray that our actions today will echo forward through time, to guide us for one more trip around the sun. On Christmas Eve I received a blessing from a Jesuit priest. He said �Bless you and all you care for, in the name of the father, son, and holy ghost�. It struck me that this was a very big blessing, I wonder if it was bigger than he realized. It was both a blessing and a challenge in disguise, because the responsibility lay on me...