Dear Westwood Family,

Here, on New Year’s Eve, I invite you to join me in a bit of reflection. I know that the calendar year is, to an extent, an arbitrary designation; the days (after all) just keep going. As a church nerd, I’m aware that our liturgical calendar tradition designations the first Sunday of Advent as the beginning of the church year. So I know there are options about when to celebrate the turning of the page of time.

Still, this threshold to a new year feels like a good and right time to reflect on what has been, and what may be coming. We’ve just passed the winter solstice, and the days have begun getting even just a little bit longer; I am ready to turn my orientation toward tender, new hope.

I love that this work–re-orienting toward hope–can start while the nights are still long. Though poets, theologians and writers also love to talk about darkness as a space of despair and deprivation, I have also experienced the ways that the long darkness can offer such a beautiful, generative space. “Not the darkness of a tomb, but the darkness of a womb,” as Sikh writer and leader Valerie Kaur writes. It sometimes requires lots of faith and courage, but we are invited to dream of justice, compassion, and love here, now, in the very midst of the long night. In the midst of uncertainty and loss and danger.

Last week, during our Contemplative Christmas Sound Bath, I was grateful to spend time in our beautiful sanctuary in a dark, generative time of worship. I have loved this recent tradition and the way it honors and makes space for the healing and growth that can happen in the dark.

Honestly, there are a lot of things that I have found to feel easier or safer in the dark: crying, dancing, sharing stories, pondering deep questions, saying hard-to-say things. My life is better for having done all these things.

So, I wanted to offer a little affirmation and encouragement to you: I hope that you will find time in these days of long nights, in between holidays and obligations, to do some reflecting on this past year. I feel the weight of SO MUCH that has happened. I carry my own desire to be attentive to it all, but not controlled by what has been; I want to respond from love, not fearful reactivity.

• When/where did you experience joy in 2025?
• What brought you to sadness, fear, or anger this past year?
• What do you regret, or wish could have gone differently?
• What do you hope for in 2026 for yourself? For your family, community, and world?
• What do you want to ask for God’s help with in the coming year?
• Are there commitments you want to make to yourself or others as you move into the year ahead?

God is at work in us and in the world. I believe in the power of forgiveness, love, and grace, and in our capacity to be changed by them.

I pray for you, as you move into a new year.

grace and peace,
Pastor Molly