I keep up with friends by phone, email, the occasional text, over coffee, and at the dinner table. Most of my friends and family keep in touch on phones, tablets, and computers – a few clicks and it’s done. What’s happening with the family, where everyone is meeting, and a review of the new local restaurant go to everyone as a group. Social media is an efficient way to communicate, and this month I’ll jump in – the last one in the information pool.

I’m not opposed to social media. I think it’s a great way to share information. But information isn’t connection. Pictures with captions and a few sentences about my friends’ latest adventures are life snapshots: better than nothing, but just a passing glimpse of who they are. To connect in a personal way, there has to be more. Social media can go both ways: lead to deeper connections or keep those deeper encounters away. Information instead of or for encounter, Oz hiding behind the digital curtain or Bastian Balthazar Bux moving through the words to save a world and reveal himself.

Deep encounter takes time. When I don’t take the time to move through pictures and blurbs on a screen to true connection, the best I can hope for is a passing familiarity with those I love. That’s the easy road, requiring little more from me than an occasional hello. But it doesn’t bring me to the home where they live. To get there is a different journey on a road that requires time, effort, and sacrifice to walk. To be at home with those I love is communion – the true purpose and destination of all communication. Social media puts me at the crossroads. I hope I choose the road that will make all the difference…

[Oz can be found in Baum’s The Wizard of Oz series; Bastian Balthazar Bux lives in Ende’s The Neverending Story.]

Rest is the space between notes that gives shape to melody and harmony. Without it, a song becomes unrecognizable. When a musician in the orchestra misses a rest, the entire symphony is lost until the rest is recovered. Pushing through won’t help; only a pause in playing can restore the musician’s place in the symphony. Rests are required for two or more to play together.

I think the same is true for my life. Pushing headlong at breakneck speed doesn’t improve my performance and it puts me at odds with everyone else. I can’t add anything meaningful without the pauses, and I certainly can’t play well with others if I’m too busy playing my own part at my own hectic pace.

I don’t think the point of life is to get to the end as quickly as possible, or jamming in as many notes as possible. It’s not how beautiful music is made, and it certainly isn’t how a beautiful life is created. If I want to sing a new song to the Lord, I have to honor the quiet spaces between the notes. Solo or as a single voice in the choir of all God’s creatures, it’s the rest that makes my life a song rather than a noisy cacophony.

This may not be the winter of my discontent, but it is the winter of my limited options for exercising. It’s also the season of bulky sweaters and filling meals. While I keep my weight within an acceptable range, January and February often find me at its top end rather than its middle or bottom. Eating slowly and mindfully will help, as will walking whenever the temperature is above single digits and the sidewalks passable. It’s nothing fancy or drastic, but it’s enough to fulfill a “watch my weight” resolution, in the usual sense of that word.

In the Epiphany sense, it’s my existential weight I need to watch. What I carry in my heart, mind, and soul that can cause damage. I can feast on anger or indulge in resentment until I get a soul or heart ache. Swallowing grief rather than letting it go will choke my spirit. So here is my plan:

I’ll do my best to keep my burdens to a minimum – grieving when I need to and letting go of hurts when it’s time.

I’ll see my work for what it is: a blessing, but not my life.

I won’t go it alone. There are so many wonderful companions on my life’s journey – family, friends, neighbors, strangers.

When it’s time to rest, I’ll rest – physically and spiritually.

I’ll trust that whatever weight I carry, if I offer it to God, God will take it. When God gives it back to me, it will be transformed into something that lightens my spirit.

My throat started getting a tickle New Year’s Eve, and by the time the ball dropped I could tell a cold was on its way. Unfortunately, it’s turned out to be a rather nasty virus, keeping me home with a fever, sore throat, and a cough. When it was clear that I wouldn’t be healthy by Sunday, I called my sister to break the news: my family and I wouldn’t make the holiday family get-together at her home in New Hampshire.

Last Sunday, my sister called me. She had a rather nasty virus and had to cancel the family get-together scheduled at her home that day. A lot of extra work comes with a rescheduled or missed event: calls to everyone involved, removing edible gifts that might spoil or get stale from baskets and bags, freezing already prepared entrees and desserts, and moving other things on the calendar to fit a new date in. Fourteen of us did that when my sister got sick. When I got sick, I planned on mailing the gifts I could, and taking a trip up to New Hampshire to bring the ones I couldn’t. The best I could hope for was to see a few of my relatives – work and school schedules resume for everyone tomorrow.

My sister called last night. After texting and calling everyone to let them know I was sick, they all decided to postpone. There won’t be a Christmas tree in the room when we have our Yankee swap, and we’ll call it a game night instead of a holiday celebration. Some presents will be swapped before the new event, and I’ll mail our family Christmas letter to everyone rather than hold onto it for another couple of weeks.

Why not cancel the whole thing and go into 2016 without a twice rescheduled event? At first glance, it looks like a lot of wasted time and effort. It’s probably the prudent thing to do, and certainly the most practical. But this year, we are going home by another road. On this road, saving time and seeking convenience miss the point: Time is where we seek the face of God and neighbor, self and family. That’s worth every detour and delay – and my family knows it.