If I carry my father
I hope it is a little more
than color of hair
or the dimple or cheekbones
if he’s ever here in the space I inhabit
the room I walk in
the boundaries and peripheries
I hope it’s some kindness he believed in
living on in cell or bone
maybe some word or action
will float close to the surface
with my reach
some good will rise when I need it
a hard dense insoluble shard
will show up
and carry on.
~ Marjorie Saiser

It is the middle of January, 2025. I fear the year started with not much fanfare and is rolling along with some speed. The Christmas decorations are tucked away for another year. Bulb gardens are appearing in nurseries. Books received as gifts have been opened and stories are unfolding in imaginations. Children have returned to school and the winter is holding us in the way winter does.

In the midst of all this I am sitting with a word in my hand. Each year on the Sunday of Epiphany, the faith community where I find a home offers ‘star words.’ These little cards are gems that we are invited to choose with a word that might be a guide for us for the year to come. Truth be told it seems to me that the word usually chooses the person. This year my word is a doozy…’goodness.’ Walking away from the table where they were arranged and turning the card over, there it was, eight letters to ponder, question, pray, argue and wrestle with, ignore, accept. For a year.

Since that day I have kept the card front and center on my kitchen table. I have told people about my word. Some folks lift their eyebrows in wonderment.There have been scowls. I have heard things like “Wow! That’s a lot of responsibility.” One friend told me that recently she had been trying to say “Oh, my goodness!” instead of “Oh, my god.” I wondered if it might not be the same thing.

Anyway, this word, ‘goodness’, is mine now and I am trying to explore what it means. I don’t feel the responsibility of trying to be goodness in the world though I’d like to think I sometimes do. I have come to think that perhaps it is more about being awake to goodness, noticing it when it is present. This seems a good place to start for now. After all, I do have more than 340 some days to mine its other attributes.

Watching the evolving wild fires in California and the devastation that is happening every day, I have also been aware of the goodness. People helping feed, clothe, house others. Folks helping neighbors and complete strangers. Humans with few resources and those with many sharing with whomever is standing right in front of them at the moment. States and countries sending firefighters and first responders to fight the immensity of flames that seem untamable. So much goodness.

If our only lens on the world is the nightly news or what we read on social media it is easy to miss the goodness of the ordinary. Every day there are teachers walking alongside students who are struggling with reading, with life. People are holding doors and shoveling sidewalks. Healers are healing, helping. Others are visiting with the those who are ill, elderly, lonely. Someone is bringing flowers to a person they know needs a pick-me-up. Another is taking a moment to pen a quick note to a friend or relative…just because. Someone is listening, really listening. So much goodness.

Over the last few weeks I have experienced the goodness of a few people who have helped me with this website and blog. I have been trying to migrate it all from the church’s website where I first started writing to managing it myself. It has been a complicated process and along the way several people have shown up and tried to help. Finally, after many emails, texts and phone calls, a former employee solved the puzzle. He didn’t have to do this. None of those who tried did. But they gave of their time and expertise. So much goodness.

Side note: For those of you who received the Winter Solstice post this past week, this was a result of all that technology being moved and shoved around. Hopefully its arrival on the day of the Full Wolf Moon game you a chuckle.

Perhaps the goodness we carry and bring to birth in the world is placed there by some relative, an ancestor that has gone before as the poet says above. Whatever its genesis, I will be on the lookout. Today. Tomorrow. Until 2025 draws to a close. 

Which begs the question…where are you seeing ‘goodness’?