As we move into 2014, how many things will be left undone from 2013? Is there such a thing as beginning again? Ralph Waldo Emerson advised: Finish each day (year) and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day (this coming year is a new year); you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Phil Sweet is a long-time friend of UUFDC, and a marvelous and insightful story-teller. He served as minister of Hope Church in Sturgeon Bay and two rural churches in western Minnesota.