Problems and Patterns

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Friends, as we move into Christmas, I find myself laughing at my own humanity. Hanging ornaments, already thinking about putting them away, I see it again. The old pattern. And Christmas, in its quiet mercy, offers us dozens of these moments. Small invitations to notice the difference between a problem and the pattern that keeps recreating it. Swedenborg teaches that divine providence is always bending toward the most good, always holding our long-term welfare, and the welfare of others, at heart. I feel that deeply this season. We can keep trying to fix surface problems, or we can pause and ask a gentler question. What is the pattern here. In our families, with siblings, with adult children, with grandchildren. So much shifts when we stop the noise and become curious. Curiosity opens the door to the stream of divine providence, that beautiful current of God’s love and wisdom flowing through our lives. I love James Finley’s prayer: “God, help me to be the kind of old person young people want old people to be.” I would add, the kind they need us to be. Interested. Loving. Grounded. Good people. When we let go and whisper, “Less of me, more of You,” a new pattern begins to form. One that can actually hold the problem, instead of feeding it. And that changes the energy of everything.