The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author.

I heard a holiday story. I thought I'd share of a family that invited a little bit larger

number of guests than usual last year. It was quite hectic and frantic for the mom

who was trying to get everything together last minute. Finally, everybody arrived. They all

sat down to eat. She said to her six-year-old daughter, honey, why don't you say the blessing

tonight? The little girl said, but I don't know what to say. She said, well, just say what

you hear mommy say. Oh Lord, why did I invite all these people for dinners?

So here we are. We're entering the season. It's really, as most of us know, it's across the

board pretty much a different faiths whether we're talking about Kwanzaa or the Christians,

or the Jews or Buddhist Hindus. The same spirit around now of kind of lighting the candle that has

to do with the light that lives in all of us, sensing a collectivity and a love and a belonging.

I like this hezetic story. Jewish Rabbi asks his pupils how they can tell when the night

had ended and the day had begun, because that's the time for the holy prayers. They came up with

different kinds of responses. Is it when you can see an animal in the distance until whether it's

a sheep or a dog? No, said the Rabbi. Is it when you can clearly see the lines in your own palm?

You can see a tree in the distance until if it's a figure or a paratory. And each time the

Rabbi said no. So finally they said, okay, so what's the answer? And his response is this.

It's when you can look on the face of an e-man or woman and see that they are your sister

or your brother until then it is still night.

So we have this this call from really our own hearts and from all the different

faces. It's really about sensing our connectedness. The Zen teaching is this that really being

enlightened means to be intimate with all things with all beings. So we start sensing what

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