Contemplation time-- or not

Usually I take the time between Christmas and New Year's to contemplate the year that is leaving and the one coming. I look over my intentions from the previous year, re-evaluate them for the coming one. I read books that will help me live a more meaningful way-- not self-help usually but memoir type books of how others have lived in ways that inspires me. It has been satisfying to spend that week doing 'inner' work and with the weather often either rainy or cold, looking outside further encourages inner contemplation.

This year was very different, with very little time for contemplating, as we had our family time the week-end after Christmas. Sunday there were 18 of us here-- 9 of them under the age of 16. Is there anything more satisfying than to see your family enjoying a big dinner and those at the tables running the gamut of recently born to elder? Well actually there may be some things, but this is definitely among them.

This was the first time I had fixed a big dinner for a houseful in a few years. There has always been pleasure for me in pulling together a lot of good food for a lot of people. I think it comes from watching my mother, grandmothers, and aunts do it. As a child our holiday dinners were always at least 20 with kids and adults everywhere. Usually they were not sit-down-at-a-table dinners but rather eat wherever you could sit, sometimes with what used to be more common-- TV trays-- or your lap. Depending on whose home, there might be a kids' table. I remember the cousin times with great fondness.

Yesterday I got to relive some of the feeling of those years with my brother's family and mine. I had pulled out three tables using my old lace tablecloths and some beautiful pink rose buds on each that I had bought for $9.99 at Safeway. Part of my enjoyment in doing such dinners comes from setting the scene. I didn't use the old china, silver, nor crystal because to be honest I didn't want to have to wash dishes before and after, nor polish silver. Love the old ways or not, I love my dishwasher.

Yesterday we had a kids' table. The second cousins ran around the house shrieking with laughter and doing all the things I remember so well. The women hung out in the kitchen, the men watched football and the meal came out wonderfully well-- ham, scalloped potatoes, cauliflower, salad, dinner rolls, two kinds of pie, lots of coffee and wine. All in all, it was a very satisfying day for me and I think everyone here.

So my contemplating time is pushed to the coming week when we will have entered 2008, which I hope will be a better year for the world. I mentioned before that numerologists say 2008 means a year of beginnings. I bought the We'Moon desk calendar book for '08 and they titled this Mending the Web. Maybe we can each do that within our own lives. Mending isn't always as much fun as sewing something new, but it's rewarding too as we repair something that has lost purposefulness.

Our earth purpose today has seemed to be heading more and more to greed, to some not caring what they do to others all to gain more power for themselves. We cannot totally stop such people before they do damage, but we can mend our own web and grow ourselves individually stronger and stronger with the energy that goes out from us being healing to the world. And if it can't heal the world, it will have at least worked good in our own little corner of it. Sometimes that is hard enough.