on the premise that whatever one does on New Year's Day one will do all year

We reviewed the year last night, as everyone else did:

• We didn't move, which, for a while in the beginning of our marriage, was the annual dislocation.
• No one started a new job, though my wonderful husband left one. That was bigger than we knew.
• Dear friends moved across the country just as the market was crashing: accidental but fortuitous timing, given the state of things in CA.
• Revelations abounded -- of health, marriage, friendship, matterings.

And, oh, yeah, we had a kid. Bug turned one year old the day after Christmas, so officially she was an event of 2007, not 2008. But, really.

The world was just as...unsuspecting? as we were. Though how anyone didn't expect the crash is beyond me. I'm no economics whiz, and I saw it coming years before it happened. But I don't think we expected to elect a brown man, and I don't think we expected the banks and the automakers to be the big welfare recipients of the year. (BTW: you wanna talk socialism?) Israel's bombing of Gaza was a matter of time, as was Pakistan's rebellion against "the war on terror" on its borders and in its mountains. Prop 8's passage was a function of a truly lousy and lazy strategy on our side. People seem surprised by all this, and just a little Disappointed (by everything except the election, God have mercy on the President-Elect). Apparently the pony wasn't under there after all.

No. The pony and the rest of the treasure are peeking out through the silt and ash, way over there. Complain if you must, but:

• Rick Warren is a bold move as Invoker-Select, since traditional evangelicals don't like him any more than liberals do, and he's a Boomer (hence elder generation) par excellence;
• The barbarian hoards attacking the castle walls of common wisdom are finally the environmental version of flat-earthers, rather than the Gores among us; the lifeboaters; the antiseasonal produce-purveyors; the black/whit-ers; and the IwantitNOWers.
• In the religion conversation (at least among my threads of X'y), Third and Fourth and Fifth Ways are being discovered, as we realize the Holy Spirit is less bound by either-or than we are.

Last night, my wonderful husband also asked: so how is your relationship with God these days? And I was able to answer, confidently: peachy. God and I are doing really well, like comfortable old friends who occupy a room together, occasionally chatting, doing things together and apart. When I feel distant, I know it's just me -- that I need to pick up the phone and call.

And that's a pretty good place to be with the Alpha & Omega & Everything-In-Between.

So on the premise that what one does on New Year's Day one will do all year, I'm not rushing, am blogging, am seeing my Renovare sisters, calling the right-coast friends, enjoying Bug and WH and the four-leggeds, drinking champagne, and hanging with the Big G(al/uy).

Happy End Of 2008, everybody.