Thinking in the Quiet Hour

 In the quiet hour that I've been awake while my home and the world sleeps, I refreshed donned sweat clothes, cleaned my kitchen, ate a pomegranate, drank some tea at 5:30am, did some Tai Chi, and thought about this last day of 2025.

morning brew

My day has always been to rise early, do my morning refreshing, and usually, typically, grind the coffee beans. Today, however, with husband and daughters home on break, it is just unkind to burrrrrrrrr it this early.

Thank goodness for my daughter's homemade lavender syrup and a cold brew from the French Press I made the other day.

So,  yes, coffee does get me thinking about life and possibilities and what can be.

2025 was a year of psychological trauma launched against the nation at the behest of the malignant narcissist-in-chief. 

Each day was a fresh expression of hell, honestly.

No, I'm not an immigrant.

No, I'm not unhoused.

No, I'm not food insecure.

Yet, I feel it all in the atmosphere because I am a person who cares.

This morning, during my stretching and breathing, I centered the quietness of stilling one's soul, that is the beauty of taking a moment, even in chaos.

It is something I always talked to my patients about. I'm a Chaplain and live in the space of emotions, the uncertainty of life, dying, death, and grieving.

In a lot of ways, we are all dying, daily.

My Biblical texts teaches us to die daily to selfish ambitions and those things that center individuality over the collective common good of all humanity.

I think about those things in the stillness when dreams are enveloping those in my household.

What will 2026 bring?

That is often the question on the last day.

For me, it brings a move and a new ministerial endeavor, a structuring of two major writing projects, a settling into our home, my daughter graduating from college, and overall, it brings opportunity.

But that is always what a new year brings, even a new day. 

One we've never seen before and one that will never come again.

What was is not what has to be and what can be is up to us to choose.

So, that is also the thought of 2026 after all the trauma and grief the nation has endured in unnatural ways.

It doesn't have to be this way.

340 million people don't have to suffer because 340 became billionaires and want all the marbles for themselves.

There, quite literally, are more of us than them.

What if we all stopped?

I for one will continue my boycott of certain retail establishments. I've reconsidered what is my style and have shopped my wardrobe other than buying essentials for the frigid temperature of the place I will be working.

My other things I've been stopping - more like weaning myself from - is social media.

That is a harder one to let go when it is quite literally the picket fence of our day.

Legacy media no longer can be trusted and newspapers are a relic of a bygone era.

Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram, and Substack are spaces where I spend my time in various increments. What I've noticed is that Facebook, for me, is the update to family and close friends. It is where I engage with my ministerial colleagues and do some thinking. Blue Sky is my replacement for Twitter (I refuse to call it the other name) but I haven't fully formed back that writing community I cultivated over the decade I was on the little birdie app. I. miss that engagement in 26 characters. Instagram is a bit necessary for me because I am president of a legacy social and civic organization, our national headquarters posts a lot there and for engagement, I have to do the same. It is also a bit where I engage in the local cultural community and yes, do some mindless scrolling through reposted TikTok videos of people's antics. I mean, television is essentially gone for me with literally every show being on a different app that wants $14.99 a month. That adds up, so the mini-episodes of non-influencers but content creators is where I can be entertained. It is 'free" but I know my engagement is paying someone's rent. And finally, Substack. It is where a lot of former bloggers have navigated for longer think pieces and subscribers.I started one and am still somewhat ambivalent because I've been using this site - Blogger - on a domain I've owned - since 2009. Why start something new? I'm thinking through that one more.

This iced latte is yummy - may have to consider that more on the mornings when my body wants to sleep a bit more and a 8:15am morning meeting is still an 8:15am morning meeting. I'm also trying other not spend money at the coffee shops, even I have my limit when the latte on the. menu was $6.99!

I'm sitting in the midnight blue of night letting go so morning can come. It is really pretty and if I was half the artist I am in my mind, I would be waiting this night morning sky. 

The cars zip by on the. highways that is adjacent to dwelling for the next 15 days.

I always wonder about those who, like me, get up early, to start their day. Unlike me, for now, I am not taking a long commute in this pass through state.

tools of my trade
a new handmade pen from 
a Connecticut maker
my new planner/journal
Moleskin to track expenses

It is O'dark' five and the hour when the ones who make the day go are already at their posts. Back when I was really going to coffee shops to do my writing, this would have been my time to be the almost first in line. I preferred the local shops that understood the ministry of service they provided.

This is their hour.

The ones who make the world run for the rest of. us.

And they deserve to have food and clothing and shelter.

So I think about all that 2025 took away and what we can get back in 2026.

And again, what if we all stopped?

I know in the state to the south of me, some of the people-who-make-the-world-go have gone on strike.

No, you will not have a ventifrappehalfcafewhippedtwopumps latte to feel super important and whisk off to a job your father got for you.

No, you will not dismiss the ones who make the donuts.

Told you I muse early in the morning.

This is the last day of the year. 

And it doesn't have to be the last time we stop and think about what matters and what could be.

When will the 270 million of us who are not in the cult of the malignant narcissist-in-chief wake up and know that if we stand up, they can't stop everyone.

They've already kidnapped more immigrants than they have space for and still, their mediocre insecurity is not assuaged.

But some are waking up and have been all year, honestly.

They've been boycotting and protesting and demanding and resigning.

I know we are in the last dying embers of empire and the final whims of a thing that never should be.

It will end.

No one is meant to endure this level of depravity.

I think that was also the message of the one whose birth those same kinds pretend to celebrate.

He came as the child of a marginalized people who were oppressed by empire and as an adult, used his voice to speak up and out.

There are more of us than those in power and even power will crumble under sustained truth.

WE just have to not look away, to still be bothered by it, to still ponder it, and what we can do about it.

WE can still use our gifts and our engagement and our wonderings.

WE can still be a part of what can be.

That is also the hope of a new year, that euphoric feeling that overwhelms as the clock strikes midnight.

We get a blank sheet, a new page, a new journal, a new start.

What will we do with it?

©2025. All Rights Reserved. Still pondering life and thinking about what can me, sitting in my flat in Stratford, Connecticut, looking out over tomorrow.