`Dearest Nicholas,
May the grace of God find you with smiling joy and deep bliss. May the blessings of Jesus Christ be upon you and may you find peace throughout the New Year.
I want to give you a letter from your Father for Christmas. You are very important to me and I don’t get enough opportunities to tell you. So I will use this time, this special time, to let you know how much I care about you.
It has been a crazy year for me and I feel a bit disconnected from you and the family. I know this will change once I get settled in the new house but for now it feels like I haven’t been there for you over the last many months. Just so you know it has not been intentional. I miss our jam sessions, hikes, camping trips, hang outs, hang ins, left outs and right ins. I miss seeing you playing your guitar. It is my hope that we can once again have the lazy moments necessary to make these things possible. It is my hope that we can recapture some of this lost time.
Well, I have got that out of my system. What up Nick? You seem to be in the soup this year. You are emerging from your dreamy teenage years into adulthood where things are different and unfamiliar. Your faith is changing, growing and rooting. Your mystery is deepening, I am not sure what that means but I feel intuitively its truth. The slow patience of God is leading you along, partially blinded partly seeing. Believe me Nick you are on the right path.
I am fascinated to see your struggle with the church. I am not talking about K2 but the institutional body of rules, beliefs, customs, standards, and social expectations. I am not fascinated out of any ill will toward the fundamentalist belief structure, which I abhor, but more the way God threads the needle of Love through our lives. How God sculpts our souls. This is a slow process with not many remarkable outward events, but the slow and steady progression of experience, ideas, precepts and principles. You will come out of this time stronger with a much deeper faith.
Speaking of faith, I have been in the struggle for years now. I have been patient, I have been a seeker, always the seeker. I have been curious and inquisitive. Looking for the face of God, seeking the sound of Love and remaining in awe. I am happy to tell you that this year God showed his face to me. It was an unimaginable beautiful bliss. Infinite and ancient. I have been born again in spirit, the spirit of Love. My patient faith has become a knowledge, a knowing. The growing. The Showing. Leads to the Knowing. Flowing endlessly above, about, and below-ing.
Please understand this confession does not make me a fundamentalist Christian. As you know Real God transcends all religious confinements. The Real Love that exists here and now is far beyond any attempts to describe it. It does call one to action though, I am feeling pulled by it.
Well, enough of that. I want you to know that I love you now and forever! You have been a grand inspiration to me over the years and I am looking forward to watching you grow and mature into a fantastic person just like ME!!! Ha ha !!!! I love you!!! Merry Christmas!!!
Love Dad.
Christmas day, 2008.