"Something in me's stirring"

Decoupled from the holidays, today is the genuine first Friday of 2026. I hope your first full week of the New Year marked a good start for you. Mine, while good, has been a bit tumultuous.

I am preparing for a big life change. Retiring from my nearly 30 year career, I'm moving on to another full-time position for the final phase of my working life. It's time for a change and I am excited about making it.

My several discernment posts sprinkled over 2025 from beginning to end were about this very thing. In the "Grand Inquisitor" section of his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky was quite correct in his insistence that freedom is very often a difficult thing for human beings. Exacerbated by several good choices, I've found it overwhelming at times. It's way easier to just keep flowing than to either swim against the current or get out of the river altogether and jump in a different one.

Of course, I have more to think about than what I want. As a husband and father, I have duties and obligations to others. And so, I have to be responsible. I had discerned through prayer way back last January that this change was the right way ahead for me. But I had quite a number of things I needed to get done before that could become a reality. As a result, I started and dilgently worked my way through it all, finishing up just this past week.

Now I can make the change in a way that makes me excited as opposed to anxious. I am grateful for being granted the time and space to do what I needed to do and to discern. I began the process of retiring on the sixth anniversary of starting in my present position. That date happens to be the Solemnity of the Immculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. I have no doubt her intercession has been instrumental in the events of my life over the past year. I am always grateful for and to her.

Because I have been preoccupied with accomplishing so many mundane tasks, I don't have a lot to write about. I have already finished my first book of 2026. I read Ian Rankin's next to most recent John Rebus novel: A Song for Dark Times. Rankin's novels do not disappoint (me). I just started Nijay Gupta's Strange Religion: How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling.

And now a song for dark times for our traditio. It's the Scottish band Jesus and Mary Chain- Rankin is Scottish and the dean of Tartan Noir. Off their still excellent Darklands album, "Deep One Perfect Morning." This is dedicated to John Rebus.