¡Feliz año nuevo!

Happy New Year, friends! I celebrated by taking a red-eye flight back to Guadalajara and starting off day 2 of 2011 in a zombified stupor.

Unfortunately, my flight got in at 5:20am, and it takes a very generous friend to offer to pick you up at the airport at 5:20am. Fortunately, I just happen to have such a friend. Unfortunately (as if depriving him of sleep on the weekend were not enough), he also got a flat tire and lost his parking ticket on the way out of the parking lot, and then later had his ticket denied because we had stayed too long changing the tire. Fortunately, he has one of the consistently best attitudes of anyone I know.

I got back to my favorite apartment around 7:15am and my favorite roommate had this waiting for me. :)

I was suffering from a major sleep-deprivation hangover and just wanted to go straight to bed, but for some reason I felt a sudden urge to climb up to the roof of our apartment. (Bear with me.) The street lights of downtown were still glittering off in the distance and the mountains were still being caressed by a dark, translucent veil of clouds. (Flowery-pants way of saying the sun wasn't up yet.) I heard my neighbor, the grocer, wheeling out his produce and setting up for the day. Otherwise - total stillness. I climbed up to a part of the roof I'd never been before and sat down. I started wondering why I had come up there in the first place when I could have (should have) been sound asleep.

And then I saw the fingers of God bringing life to the day. And to the beginning of another year. And to me.

It was nothing short of glorious; in fact I felt like I shouldn't even be witnessing such a holy and intimate interaction between God and his creation. The huge expanse of sky and city and mountains, the rotation of the planet, the infiniteness of the heavens, the perfectly orchestrated explosion of colors that took away thoughts and words - so powerful and yet so softly, so carefully, so gradually produced. Timing and tempo perfect. Passion made more intense in its restraint and gentleness. Longing deepened with every subtle change of color and morphing of clouds.

I sat there not wanting to look away, but then I felt like I should look behind me for some reason; I just heard something like, "There is so much more; don't miss it because you fail to look around you." I got up, turned around, and literally fell to my knees. A Noah's Ark double rainbow stretched in a complete arch from one side of the sky to the other. All colors of the light spectrum vividly represented. It was more than my humanness knew what to do with.

I hesitate to include the pictures that I came back and took after the fact when the rainbow had almost fully faded and reduced by half and the sun was mostly up...but just to give your imagination a starting place...

When I looked up again, the rainbows had all but disappeared and the sun was mostly up. It hit me with almost a sense of desperation that all of this was fading away and I would soon forget the impact of the gift I'd just been given. So I said, 'thank you.'

I think gratefulness is going to be my theme for 2011. Gratefulness makes a conscious effort to remember good. It is keenly aware of what is valuable. It allows a gift to be fully received. It actively notices beauty. It builds trust and quiets fear as it recalls patterns of faithfulness. It responds to love by creating more love. It awakens us to life - right now.

What is your big picture theme for 2011?