The last couple of months in the year are usually when work winds down, or rushes ahead a bit, in order for us to have additional time around the holidays to spend with friends and relatives. It's not often the time when we launch a significant project.
Some of the time we've set aside may be spent with people we haven't seen in quite a while, so there may be a lot of catching up to do. In other cases we might meet people for the first time and want to know more about them, get to the point where we feel at ease, maybe even discover we have many common interests.
During this time, we don't want to lose the natural joy of the holiday season by allowing the world's sense of stress to mar our relationships with family and friends. As we renew and deepen our ties with one another, we're helped significantly by understanding better the most important relationship in our lives, yet one that may not get all the attention it deserves. It's our relationship to God, our Father-Mother. We should remember, too, that just as an occasional "hello" among family or friends isn't likely to go deep enough to strengthen a human bond, a brief or sporadic approach to knowing God better can also leave us wanting more.
