I especially love this time of year, for me it is a time for conscious

 accounting and of great anticipations.  It is the birthing of the new,

 and letting go of the old. It is a time of honoring all that has happened,

 and of welcoming in the possibilities. This New Year is especially a time of giving

 thanks, and of sharing my gratitude with all of you who read this letter.

 It is simple: I love you.  I am inspired by you.  

 I am forever touched by each of you:  my husband for risking everything he knew and felt comfortable with to come to be with me in America:  my courageous children, (they chose me as their mother) my delicious grandchildren, and my dearest friends who live their lives and challenges moment by moment. ( in doing this they have come to know their own hearts.)

 Three cheers and gold medals to my students who are commited to a life of loving, and are willing to be "Danced to the End of Love."  (Thank you Leonard Cohen for your passion expressed in your words and music)

 To my newest friends who have entered into the most thought provoking

 and intimate conversations with me in our "Ministry of Love".

 Who would I be without each of you as a faithful reminder that we are all Angels living a very human experience.  

 AND to my teacher's and Guides...those with and those without bodies...thank

 you, thank you, and especially a thank you to Emmanuel who helped me personally to open my heart to myself.

 This letter is a letter of gratitude, and as I breathe in..... I breathe in such

 gratitude........and as I breathe out I exhale peace.

  Let us practice this together:  Inhaling I fill myself with gratitude,

                                                         Exhaling I fill the world with Peace.

  Let your entire body enter His presence.  Surrender to your heart and to your greater knowing.

   I would like to take this moment to to sit with you all in a moment of prayer for the world as we know it and a prayer for the world that we can create as we open our hearts to ourselves and each other.  My prayer is that we see each other through the eyes of Christ and come to know that we are all one in our joy and in our suffering.

 I share this poem by Thich Nhat Hanh:

          "Call Me By my True Names"

Do not say I will depart tomorrow-

even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch,

to be a tiny bird in a new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river.

And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond.

I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am a twelve year old girl refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am that pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands.

And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes the flowers bloom all over the Earth.

My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.

          Please call me by my  true names so I can  hear my cries and laughter at once

          SO THAT  I CAN  SEE THAT MY JOY AND PAIN ARE ONE.

         Please call me by my true names, so I can wake  up and the    door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion."

 How can we have Peace on earth..... unless we choose to embrace and have compassion for those parts of ourselves that we have chosen to deny rather than embrace?  How can we have Peace on Earth until we accept and forgive ourselves and each other?

 Now is the moment to change.  In the aftermath of the tragedy at Newton, let us wake up to the knowing that we are all one and repeat as our mantra:
                      Please call me by my true names,

              So I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,

                     So I can see that my joy and pain are one."

As this year ends, let us inhabit this call for the opening of our hearts to our own pain so that we can see and be present to hold another's.  It is not the time for bullet proof backpacks for children, or more gun laws...it is a time to wake up and know that we  can redesign our  world through our own self loving.

There are no new messages: 

 Fall in love with yourself and you can recreate this world in this moment of NOW.

 I wish you the most blessed New Year Ever,

 A conscious, and healthy 2013

                  Barbara