It's 9am. Sunday Morning, December, 7th, 2008....

I woke up quite early this morning depsite a late night. A very relaxed, yet productive Saturday lies behind me. The weather has been amazing - the sun shining in all her glory granting us bareable temperatures.

I was just thinking back to my 3 years in the USA. And how as life evolves and as you change with your environment, you have to disengage from life for a moment and just appreciate the past and the present and have an excited hope for the future.

Yesterday, I went searching for a toy for an 8 year boy. I picked his name card off of our office "Salvation Army" Christmas tree and he is to have an airplane for Christmas... All the while walking in search of a nice gift, I started thinking about so many things..

My name has never been on a "Salvation Army" tree... I cannot say I have lived a life of the Rich and Famous, but I realized that I have actually never wanted for anything. I never really had to worry about security or financial survival.

I had to battle the lack of purpose, the dissatisfaction with mediocrity but never had to fight to purely survive. And I wondered about Jose.. and where he was and who he is... and I am glad that atleast this year he will have something for Christmas.

This world truly has gone crazy. I see how time has meshed into the other, how there is no longer a Time and a Season for everything, that in the age we live in you can have any time and any season that you desire. ... and It makes me sad.

This world fueled and driven by Capitlism and Materialism engulfed by marketing impulse, unappreciative of silence, incapable of waiting, and unable just to be. Life loses perspective; our concepts of past and future are impoverished, and we live exclusively in the moment and for external sastisfactions that are here today and gone tomorrow.

I am so glad that Christmas comes.. even if you are opposed to, indifferent to or highly into Christmas.. It's a time when we are reminded that giving is important. People are what matters and that we should appreciate the time we are given and celebrate it in it's fullnes in ways that matter.