Merry Christmas, dear digital neighbors! Welcome to Day 6 and the geese a-laying! Some say these represent the six days of Creation mentioned in the Good Book. Either way, I pray your Christmas season is a good one. As this year winds down, I hope your experience of 2025 contained some of the richness of this little prayer/reflection. If this year was a rough ride, I hope that 2026 will offer you a new path with more grounding experiences of life and its goodness. I am not a fan of drama—especially the “sky-is-falling” variety or the manufactured outrage that drives likes and farms engagement on the internet. I know the world is not a perfect place and that humanity needs a massive amount of grace and conversion.

The challenge for me has always been the same: to venture forth into the world and be aware, informed, and thoughtfully engaged where I can, without being consumed by its brokenness and insanity. When it comes to the internet, it is doubly so, since everyday encounters are so infrequent there. The internet—and your particular feed—is filtered and refined to offer you the best in distraction, obsession, and outrage. Like any good drug dealer, it wants you returning for your next fix.  Other than venturing onto Locals and Substack to deliver these reflections, I try my best to avoid the larger world of the internet for the first hour or two of the day. I am happier that way. I am sure the later hours will have plenty of opportunity for doom-scrolling, distractions aplenty, and the occasional good find. Creation is grand; more time with it can do a lot to heal the distortions and infections caused by internet overdosing. Blessed Tuesday, my friends. See you around the more sane neighborhoods on the internet.

In the universe, law;
In the conscience, goodness;
In the mind, truth;
In nature and art, beauty and order;
In the heart, love.

— Bradford Smith, What is God?

Drei zinnen, Dolomites, Italy - Thomas Vitali - Pixabay