Merry Christmas 2021! May the hope, love, joy, and peace of the newborn Christ be with you!
Léa la versión española aquí: Navidad 2021
Maligayang Pasko is the wrong Filipino greeting for Christmas.
See https://www.illouminate.us/en/maligayang-pasko-feliz-pascua-happy-easter/
Certainly, this was a year of recovery from last year’s challenges. Nevertheless, this year had its own challenges. Nevertheless, we rose to those challenges.
Last year, Gus and Jordan’s wedding date was the first day that assemblies were allowed in church. This year, they celebrated their first anniversary, enjoying life together as a couple. Jim enjoys the great outdoors through his many cycling activities and events. This was a big year for Antonio as he achieved his global certification as a spiritual director with superlative distinction. Read more about us through our individual page links.
Gus and Jim celebrated their joint birthday at the Musang Filipino Restaurant in Seattle. https://www.musangseattle.com/
This was a year of recovery from last year’s startlingly epizootic lifestyle changes. Yet we remain vigilant of the ongoing pandemic. The world has certainly changed, and our ways have ineluctably matriculated to virtual interaction. Video conferences are now the norm when physical gatherings are impossible. Surely, the old ways of physical interaction have been restricted, but it opened up new ways of interaction.
The virtual interactions enabled and paved the way to new virtual or nomadic lifestyles. Demand for recreational vehicles increased while manufacturers’ capacities were limited by a broken global supply chain, driving prices up. When we think of what is impossible, the glass of water looks half-empty. When we think of what is possible, the same glass of water looks half-full.
Organizations that couldn’t adapt to the virtual world had challenges sustaining. In this high-tech world, we still need to retain high-touch interactions. Futuristic author John Naisbit wrote about this as early as 1999 in his book, High Tech High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning. High-tech is not a wall that keeps us isolated or insulated. We should use technology as an opportunity and enabler of human interaction. The break room conversations that used to happen in the workplace still need to happen informally through video conferences by opening the conference room early, keeping it open later, and providing breakout rooms for those who desire to connect.
Remember not the events of the past,
Isaiah 43:18-19
the things of long ago consider not;
See, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
When God closes a door, He always opens a window. It is through prayer that we find the open windows. And it usually takes finding a series of windows before we finally see the light.
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light!
Isaiah 9:2
Antonio has been writing a Christmas letter for the past 45 years! Some people have even been collecting them. It has evolved from handwritten to typewritten to printed and finally, this is the first year that it is entirely virtual right here on this website. With a broken supply chain and more aggravated postal delays or non-delivery that we had experienced in many years past, just about everyone now online, and virtual gatherings being the new normal, it was time to make it virtual. https://www.illouminate.us/en/christmas-2021. You can view last year’s and future years’ letters simply by changing the year. The letter is published in Christmas Season, not earlier during Advent.
May the New Year 2022 bring you light for the path ahead!