All Are Welcome

Making room for yourself, others and a new way of thinking about the world

All Are Welcome

Oh Winter

Falling crystals of intricate design

Awakening my delight and joy

For a season ripe with wonder

Let me be childlike again

Trust again

Hope again

Dream again

All are welcome here.

I went to sleep last night after having observed a light dusting of snow and gazing at it falling and then sitting down to write that poem. I woke up this morning to even more falling snow and took a walk and discovered the tree pictured above with the eye-popping red berries covered in pure white snow.

I understand that 1-3 inches of snow for this boy from California is no big deal and much more is coming. I am sure there will be frustrating days of winter weather but for now it is magical and I am 5 again in my front yard in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a child making snow angels on the ground.

Photo by Pei Yu on Unsplash

There is so much happening in our world that could freeze you in a harsh reality of endless negative activity. Either doom scrolling on your devices, giving into temptations, or numbing out with a myriad of pleasures that would keep you distracted, any of these options do not bring about the thriving and flourishing you probably most desire.

What do you want me to do for you?

This is the question that Jesus asks a blind man in the book of Mark. His answer is, “I want to see.”

How would you answer this question today if Jesus asked you? Maybe he has been asking this question to you for a long time and you have been ignoring it or keeping yourself so busy that you don’t really look at what is the thing beneath the thing.

In my poem above, there were three words I connected to being childlike again.

Trust, Hope & Dream

Perhaps you could care for the childlike part of you today and ask yourself these questions and maybe journal what comes up in you:

Who or what do I most place my trust in?

Where do I have hope right now?

What am I dreaming about?

Sometimes we have a hard time seeing through the grind of our days and weeks. We get so overwhelmed with the tasks of caring for ourselves, our families, doing well at work or school, paying bills, shopping, etc. We tend to let the things that trigger us send us into a tailspin and we scream back to people, “You just don’t see things as they are.”

The reality is that, as stated above by this wise philosopher, Anaïs Nin, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

This phrase has been such a help for my own mental health and how I see others in the world. This does not mean we get a pass to be a jerk and do whatever we want. We have a responsibility to re-humanize people again.

In the world we currently inhabit, there is de-humanizing happening all around us. In countries that are far from us and right here at home it happens everyday. We are conditioned to protect ourselves and those near us and keep any threat to our comfortable status at bay.

This is not the way of Jesus.

We need to reclaim a sense of wonder about the world we live in. I am going to be using a book to journey through Advent called WONDER.

My friend, Alicia Hamilton has written this as a guide to rediscover the awe of God and reclaim a childlike faith. This is what I want most between now and the end of 2025.

I am going to be starting this next week and spending the next seven weeks going through it for an extended Advent season. I will be posting more about it on my Instagram ( @matthewnash1 )and here on Substack. You can order the book HERE.

Let me know in the comments or on Instagram if you decide to join me in this. If there is a group of us all doing it together I would love to organize a Zoom call to talk about what we all are learning about ourselves, others and the Divine.

Here is to the ongoing adventure of trust, hope and dreams.

Here is to wonder and making sure all are welcome.

Grace and Peace

Matt