We wish you a wonderful holiday, and we hope that you’ll take some much deserved personal “down time” over this holiday period. Of course, it’s a wonderful time to spend with family and friends. But it’s also a good time to do some personal recharging. And we hope you take some time alone to read a good book, go for a walk, take a bath, build something, or do whatever it is that helps YOU relax, recharge, and keep your busy mind occupied with harmless activities.

Remove the Right Front Wheel and Bring It Inside. Here’s a bit of advent advice from a friend of mine. Joyce Tompkins writes:

“Remove the right front wheel and bring it inside. That's an action performed by pre-Christian peoples living in the north in the early winter dark -- removing the wheels from their carts and wagons, and festooning them with greens and lights and bringing them indoors to hang in their halls. It's the origin of the Advent wreath, the great circle of evergreens that Christians appropriated to count down the four Sundays of preparation for the Christmas feast. Its pagan symbols resonate in this time of the year: light in the growing darkness; hope in the face of uncertainty; faith in an age of cynicism and despair.

Remove the right front wheel and bring it inside. What if we moderns were to move beyond metaphor, and do as the ancients did? What would it mean for us, to remove the right front wheel from our vehicles and forgo the distractions of busy bustling? A changed sense of time. An exercise in patience. An affliction of inactivity just when the tempo is reaching its seasonal height.”

In that spirit, we’re taking the next week off. You’ll hear from us next in early January. We wish you rest and recharging!