On the twelth day of Christmas my true love gave to me … twelve months of presence

It’s all very well having Christmas presents for the twelve days of Christmas, but what about the rest of the year? It’s time to move from presents to presence. The gift of being present, day in day out. OK, that may be a bit beyond many of us, but to have the aim of being present, sets a positive intent: when we are in the moment, when we are connecting to whoever we are with, so we are able to engage fully. To be present is to be in the flow, in a state of Grace: naturally loving the moment and anything and anyone in it.

Many years ago, when I moved to my then new home in the Monchique hills of the Algarve, I had a few months of gorgeous weather in a gorgeous setting and the time to enjoy it. I said, quite truthfully “everyday is a holiday, every day is a holy day!”

If we love life, does not life love us back in return?

OK, we still have to face the harsh realities of life that are seemingly all around us, and I truly believe that we need time to grieve: we cannot be happy all the time; that would be unrealistic. But to see time as an opportunity for flowing, for loving, would seem like a reasonable philosophy to have in life or even as a New Year’s resolutiion