Here we go again. Daylight savings time. Spring forward, right? I can never remember. All I know is that we lose an hour of sleep this weekend and that seems massively unjust. I think we can all agree that none of us get enough sleep these days.

But more to the point, who are we to think we control time? Time may be relative but it is not controllable. At least not by us. Time is God’s way of making sure everything in the universe doesn’t happen all at once. If God is anything he is the Great Timekeeper for only he exists outside of it.

Time moves inexorably and in one immutable direction—forward. Physicists call it the arrow of time and there is no real tinkering with it. It is infinitely divisible, even fragmentable, but never stoppable and certainly not reversible.

Yet tinker we do, adding an hour here, subtracting one there. But it is all an illusion, a trick of the mind, like setting your watch ahead 10 minutes so you’re never really late. We are just monkeying around with our clocks, not with time. It reminds me a little of Alice in Wonderland, of which Tim Burton has directed a reputedly brilliant new movie version that I plan to see this weekend, if I can find the time.

All we are doing this weekend is shifting daylight, shuffling the diurnal deck of 24 cards. Yet I don’t think it is the hours that matter. Life occurs in the moment, doesn’t it, where awe and beauty and love and peace intersect? Living life in the moment—which is hard for us humans who are so hyper-aware of time—is a way of living in grace, for every moment of time is its own miracle, a miracle of regeneration and birth, the very tide that sweeps us through life.

There are those who say that far in the cosmic future the universe will succumb to entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, and that everything will stop, even time. Maybe so. Until then, we have the moment.

So forgive me if I ignore my alarm clock and sleep in this weekend—and live in the moment a little longer.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

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Millie and I got up late to the mountains last night. It was a dark, cloud-covered sky with a stiff wind lashing the bare trees above a landscape of unbroken white.

I made a fire to warm up the house, unloaded the car, gave Mille a petite dejeuner as a reward for the ardors of our trip up the Taconic parkway (and the fact that I wanted her to sleep in).

Alas it was not to be. Around 3:30 a.m. her furious barking woke me. I lay still for a while hoping it would subside and not wanting to give in. Probably just a deer crashing though the woods. Or maybe a fox inspecting our back porch.

Finally I gave in, donned my winter hiking boots, a Pendleton robe, and a Yankee cap, grabbed a flashlight and let Millie loose out the back door.

Immediately she tore off toward the far reaches of the yard with me tromping in pursuit. At the end of our property she barked furiously into the woods. As I came up on her in the dark she turned. Her eyes glowed red and I couldn't help but laugh.

The sky was no longer gray. A meniscus moon was out and a spray of stars. As cold as it was, it was a warm cold. All at once I felt it: spring. It was a genuine spring night in early March, a middle-of-the-night promise of relief to come. Maybe that's what Millie was so excited about.

I led my big Golden Retriever back to the house where we shared a snack of crackers and cheese in the glow of the open refrigerator door. Soon we went back to bed.

I'm writing this today from my favorite Great Barrington coffee spot, Uncommon Grounds. It really feels like spring up here. I hadn't expected it at all, which makes it all the more wonderful. But Millie knew.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

It’s snowing like crazy here in the east, a perfect day to kick back and watch the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

The games took me surprise this time. I didn’t think I’d get so into them. Four years ago I hardly watched anything from Torino except for some of the snowboarding and the men’s downhill skiing. That’s where I was introduced to Mr. Bode Miller of the U.S. men’s ski team. Everyone agreed he was a lock for gold, the best skier in the world.

In Torino Miller was more party animal than world-class athlete and all his downhill partying got the media attention his skiing should have…with good reason. On the mountain his efforts were sloppy and indifferent and he never came close to medaling. He let his sport, his team and his country down. Bode didn’t seem to care.

It was infuriating to witness. I kept asking myself, how could he blow this? Did we expect too much of him? In fact I was surprised how long my disgust with Bode lingered. I found myself resenting his performance long after the games were over. Finally, though, I forgot all about Bode Miller.

I was a little surprised, then, that he was skiing for the U.S. again in Vancouver. Hadn’t we seen enough of him? 

Those of you who are as sleep-deprived as I am from watching the games until midnight or later know what Bode’s done this time around: won a medal of each hue—gold, silver and bronze. With nary a word about his nightlife. They say he’s settled down and grown up. Perhaps Bode realizes this could be his last Olympics. He also has the responsibility of a two-year-old daughter now, and that’s enough to focus anyone. 

Bode Miller is my hero of these games. Not because of all those medals but because he personifies the possibility of personal change. Of redemption. Maybe Torino humbled him or forced him to take a closer look at his life. Certainly he’s shown humility in winning. He doesn’t look like the old Bode. He’s a little paunchy now, and a bit more mellow. Yet when he’s on the course his performance is breakneck—intense and determined, unafraid of either failure or success. The very things we expected of him four years ago, an expectation he seemed to disrespect.

These games have been full of inspiring moments. To me, nothing is more uplifting than to see a person change, because change is the hardest thing and not everyone can make the most of a second chance. Bode has.

I’m curious: Who in your life has undergone inspiring personal change? Have you? I’d love to know. Meanwhile, it’s back to Vancouver.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

By now you’ve all had time to read the February issue of GUIDEPOSTS with Rascal Flatts singer Gary LeVox on the cover. My question to you: What did you love best?

I fall in love with every issue of the magazine. But not love at first sight. Actually, when the editorial team first starts putting the pieces of an issue together I usually have a momentary spasm of panic and despair: These stories aren’t as good as last month! It’s finally happened…we’ve run out of great stories! After 65 years! On my watch! 

I look through the manuscripts and interviews and photo shoots and think about all the work that needs to be done and how it’s all got to come together somehow so that it lifts and inspires you readers, each and every story.

Then the issue takes form. I start learning more about our narrators and their lives, the things they dream and pray for, the challenges they face and the triumphs they achieve. Slowly but surely the issue comes alive with their real-life stories of hope and inspiration. Soon I am thinking about their stories all the time.

By the end of the production month I’m in love and I don’t send the magazine off to the printer until I’m absolutely convinced it’s the best issue of GUIDEPOSTS we’ve ever done.

Then it starts all over again.

In my editor’s note this issue I said that James Brown’s story was my favorite to edit. But what I’d love to hear from you is which story or feature you loved most and why.

And speaking of love, Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, from all of us at GUIDEPOSTS.

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Watch our two love-inspired videos and see what people on the streets of NYC said when we asked them about their most romantic Valentine's Day and their favorite romantic movies!

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

Millie and I arrived up in the mountains last night right before midnight, the temperature in single digits and the house not much warmer until I lit a fire. 

Millie trolled the property for recent (furry) visitors, her nose trawling through the powdery snow while I hauled our stuff inside. I came up here to my house in the Berkshires to work on my book that will be released at year’s end, so I better start thinking about wrapping things up, don’t you agree?

But first came this blog and I just couldn’t think of what to blog about. I had some ideas scattered across scraps of papers…Don’t forget Haiti…Never trust the groundhog…Valentine's?...Circle of Inspiration video and launch of this exciting product….

In the morning I thought getting out in the woods would help me excavate an idea from my brain and, besides, I’d promised Millie a hike up East Mountain on the Appalachian Trail if the snowpack wasn’t too deep. 

We started out in late morning when the temperature rose above 20. The snow was manageable and the woods muffled and still.

Before long we crossed a little creek, the water still burbling under a carapace of ice. Millie wanted to test the ice but I warned her away.

Above the creek the trail steepened and we were both breathing hard, Millie taking the lead and looking back at me periodically with what can only be described as a grin. 

Finally the trail breaking got too arduous for both of us and we turned off down an old logging trail and headed toward a closed summer camp so Millie could have some wide spaces to run in. I found a ball to toss and she was in heaven.

So was I. And that is what my blog is finally about…finding the moments of heaven in life when all is still and white and perfect—so perfect we could live in them forever.
     
Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

In my last posting I said that it was impossible to ignore human suffering on the scale that is occurring in Haiti. I still believe that to be true. However, it is all too easy, I’m afraid, to become inured to it.

You can see it happening. Ten days later other stories and events are eclipsing the historic calamity of the earthquake…a political upset in Massachusetts by a relatively unknown state senator who—gasp!—once posed nude for a women’s magazine; the fate of health care legislation; a photo purporting to show Tiger Woods at a sexual addiction rehab; two great NFL championship matchups on tap for Sunday.

Slowly but surely the stories from Haiti are pushed further back in the TV news lineups and off the front pages as our lives, at least, return to normal. Every once in a while there is a miraculous rescue or some other properly dramatic event that gets played up, a kind of a media aftershock.

I guess it’s only natural. How much footage of rubble and tent cities can a person see without it all blurring into a kind of tragic still life? The world moves on; it can’t help itself. I wonder how long it took the Romans in 79 A.D. to stop talking about the molten destruction of Pompeii and return to their gossip and political intrigue and wondering who was doing battle at the Coliseum that weekend. Probably not long.

Humans have short attention spans, I suppose, a kind of defense mechanism that protects us from being trapped in fear or overwhelmed by pity. We distance ourselves from the intensity of tragedy.

Yet for the people of Haiti there is no distance. Their suffering does not diminish because we pay less attention to it, a lesson I hope we learned from Katrina. It is now that the real work begins, the long hard struggle back from disaster. The numbers almost defy comprehension: 200,000 dead and two million homeless in a country where the average annual income is $400 (yes, four hundred dollars) and life expectancy is 53…and that was before the quake.

So as the reporters and news anchors withdraw and move on the next big thing, the relief workers and other professionals move in, led by the U.S. military. In effect we now have a third front after Iraq and Afghanistan, though this is a war against time. The enemy is starvation and homelessness and despair. And it will be as challenging for our troops as any crisis they have faced.

GUIDEPOSTS, though a non-profit company with an outreach division, does not really do disaster relief per se. But one way we can help is by helping the helpers with magazines, books and pamphlets. We are especially good at getting these inspirational materials to military chaplains. If you would like to support us in this activity, go to the Guideposts Foundation website and learn more about our programs. And don’t forget to visit OurPrayer.org. Because prayer is the greatest relief effort of all.

Post a prayer for the victims and their loved ones and find out how you can help with disaster relief through these organizations.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

I’ve retreated to my house in the Berkshires to do some work on a book, and I'm writing this blog from my aforementioned favorite coffeehouse, Uncommon Grounds. 

I usually come to the Berkshires for solitude, an escape from the daily world. But I cannot purge from my mind the hellish images coming out of Haiti.

There is no escaping the reality of human suffering on that scale. Every so often I see something I recognize and time seems to contract. Haiti is only about an hour from Miami or New Orleans. That one of the poorest places on earth exists within the long shadow of our affluence is disturbing.

Then I see rescuers working with sniffer dogs and it nearly makes me cry when one of the dogs locates a trapped little girl who is subsequently rescued. How incredible this alliance of man and dog. During the search for bodies in the toxic rubble of the World Trade Center the sniffer dogs grew increasingly despondent at the lack of survivors. Eventually volunteers had to crawl into the rubble so the dogs could “find” them in order that the dogs would not succumb to despair.

This weekend will be the hardest period for Haitians. Conditions are worsening and relief is still just a trickle due to nightmarish logistical obstacles. We must keep praying, praying, praying.  

Post a prayer for the victims and their loved ones and find out how you can help with disaster relief through these organizations.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

I hadn’t thought about Haiti in years. Then came the news this morning of the horrific earthquake.

I visited Haiti once. Actually, I wandered there more than anything, and hung out for an indefinite period. I was at an age when I could do that

I don’t know what I was looking for but I knew no one else went there which was a good reason to go. I wish I could say I was doing humanitarian work or something noble but I wasn’t. I was just wandering.

Instantly when I heard about the disaster my senses went to instant recall. The crowds, the incredible aromas arising from the carts of street vendors, the tap-tap busses, the music.

I also remembered the appalling poverty and the suffering the people bore every day, vast neighborhoods of dilapidated houses packed with human beings. I could only imagine the destruction even a modest heave of the earth would do. But this….

This is a time when everyone must reach out and do whatever can be done, we who have so much. I remember walking past Club Med in Port-au-Prince and feeling embarrassed and ashamed at the barbed wire that ringed its walls. It seemed so wrong to come into someone else’s country and do that. In the end we are all one people, God’s people, and there should be no walls, especially at a time like this.

Pray we surely must. But we must also take action and reach out in any way we can. President Obama has called this disaster “incomprehensible.” Only our compassion can make it less so.

Post a prayer for the victims and their loved ones and find out how you can help with disaster relief through these organizations.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

January always feels like a slow run-up to the coming year…everyone still trying to recover from the holidays, dark when you get up in the morning and dark when you get home from work…cold.  Very cold this year. 

I woke up to a freezing morning the other day only to see on the news that it was colder in Atlanta than in New York and it wasn’t going to get better any time soon. 

There is a terrible chill afflicting the south. I’m from Michigan and we like to brag about how the cold doesn’t affect us. In fact, we claim to love it. But my heart goes out to all you Southerners who aren’t prepared for this kind of arctic blast. People are truly suffering. 

We’ll try to keep you a little warmer with our thoughts and prayers. Maybe some of you could post a response and let us know how you are doing.

This is also a month when many people struggle with depression, a kind of deep-freeze of the spirit. I think it can be especially trying for people who are not usually prone to the blues yet find themselves sluggish, out-of-sorts, and generally feeling bleak. 

It can happen to anyone and the good news is that for most people it usually goes away. And perhaps the best antidote is knowing that others go through rough patches too. You are not alone and courage is a resource we can all share.

There is a story in this month’s issue of GUIDEPOSTS that I found incredibly moving. Written by Therese Borchard, it chronicles her medical battle with severe clinical depressive illness and the startling spiritual awakening that helped her recover, for depression can sometimes be as much a condition of the soul as of the mind. 

For other uplifting articles on depression, just type the word into the search box at Guideposts.com or go to this archive. I’ve always found that a good story makes me feel better.

And if you want to feel motivated, read this month’s cover story by Tammie Temple and check out our New Healthy You program. Tammie is proof that you can change your life.  

Well, I’m going to bundle up now and take Millie down to the Chelsea Waterside Dog Run. It’s never too cold for her! And while even my Michigan blood cools a bit in the face of the gusts whipping off the Hudson River, I can’t tell you how much it will lift my spirits to see the dogs play. Hope you have a wonderful day and find for yourself a touch of warmth. 

P.S. I was hoping to reach 10,000 fans on the GUIDEPOSTS Facebook page by Jan. 1. We almost made it. Don’t forget to tell your friends about GUIDEPOSTS online. Thanks.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

I like typing the date of a new year for the first time, especially this year, as above, with all those wonderful binary ones and zeros when you annotate it. It feels so new and immediate, like you’ve turned over the annual odometer. A fresh, exhilarating start.

I’m glad I live in this hemisphere. It just feels right that a new year should start off with a dose of crisp cold air. I stayed out a little longer this morning on my walk with Millie because the chill was good. It woke me up.  

Last year I said that my New Year's resolution was to not make any resolutions and I’ve pretty much stuck to it, thank you. The temptation to project ourselves into the future is never stronger than at the beginning of a year…all the things we are going to do differently or better or more of; all the things we’re going to do less of, or not at all. And that’s fine.

Human beings are planners even if we are in far less control of our plans than we like to think. There’s that old Jewish saying, right? “Man plans, God laughs.” 

So I am going to try to honor one resolution in 2010. That is, to live in the moment as much as humanly possible, to experience the wonders and mysteries, the joy and even the pain of life as it happens.  

No dwelling on the past or fretting about the future. Life is in the Moment; it does not really exist outside the present. And when you think about it, the Moment is huge. Billions of people are experiencing it. Time is complicated yet the Moment spans the universe, a throbbing cosmic heartbeat. So it is no small thing to live in it. 

Moments are a series of virtually eternal occurrences, and it is in that eternalness that God lives. So if I am to truly experience living, and to connect with the divine in my life, I must try to do it more in the Moment.

It’s a resolution that I will probably break repeatedly. Yet for the Moment, I’m keeping it. Happy New Moment.  

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

It's Christmas and we really shouldn’t be sitting here staring at our computer screens, should we? Still, I want to say a quick Merry Christmas to everyone.

This time of year we get a lot of cards and prayers and even a few gifts sent to the GUIDEPOSTS offices from you wonderful folks. We don’t always get the chance to thank you individually for your kindness but I want you to know how touched and grateful we are. And not just for the greetings of the season but for your support throughout the year. 

Without you we wouldn’t have a GUIDEPOSTS magazine or a Guideposts.com. You are more than an audience, more than customers—you are our partners, participants in our success. For that we are incredibly grateful. 

Okay, it's time to eat. There's a big, fat capon roasting in the oven that needs some attention and I plan to provide it. What are you having? I’ll tell you one thing, no matter how good the food is, sitting down to the table with the people we love most is the greatest meal of all, one that feeds our souls.

Merry Christmas.

P.S. I meant to send thanks from Millie as well for all the cards and treats you’ve sent in to her. I’m attaching one of her favorite e-cards. Enjoy. 

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

My apologies, but this will have to be quick. We’re getting ready for our office Christmas party and I only have a few minutes. 

I don’t think GUIDEPOSTS has ever cancelled a Christmas party but we talked about it this year. The economy being what it is, and our troops fighting difficult wars overseas, it felt like it might be the wrong year to be celebrating. We asked ourselves, Should we really be having a good time while the world seems to be so full of strife and uncertainty?

Yet what are we celebrating at Christmas? Yes, there are the gifts and the food and family get-togethers. But those are just the trappings of Christmas.

When I cut through all the commercial craziness of Christmas I remember that what we are celebrating, with reverence and awe, is the birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem. 

Wasn’t that child brought into a world riven with conflict? A world on the brink of political and economic chaos? Were the issues of that day so different from the issues of our own? Joseph and Mary didn’t go to Bethlehem for a vacation. They were ordered to go there by the Roman emperor to be counted in a census. 

It must have been a considerable hardship for a young carpenter and his pregnant wife. And all around them the world was in flux. No one could have known that in a humble stable the world was to be reborn.  

A savior was born not into a world of peace and prosperity but into a difficult world that needed him. And we still need him and so we celebrate his immaculate presence in our lives.

We’ve scaled back our party but we didn’t cancel it. Joy is at the center of the season, in good times and bad. So if you’ll excuse me, I have a little party to go to.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

I’m getting too old for birthdays.

Years ago I vowed I would never get to the point where I cringed at the prospect of another birthday. I would always revel in the celebration of another year of life no matter how old I got.

But when I hit my 50s it happened: birthday denial. This morning, as I do every morning on my walk with Millie, I stopped at our corner store to buy a newspaper. Today, though, I couldn’t help but stare in alarm at the little calendar at the checkout that says, “If you were born after this date don’t try to buy cigarettes from us!”

The date was appallingly recent. I mean it was in the '90s! There were kids born practically yesterday who were running around trying to buy cigarettes. A few of them were legally old enough! I suddenly felt terribly elderly.

There are still societies on earth (somewhere) that revere age, where men wait through their middle years eager for streaks of gray to appear in their beards. Then they’ve arrived. Age confers status. Old guys are cool. In our society status is conferred by “Just for Men” hair dye and pharmaceutical products that help men regain their…well, nevermind.

The point is we fight not against getting old—against going gently into that good night and railing against the dying light, as Dylan Thomas would have it, against the creeping shadow of mortality itself—no, we battle against not appearing sufficiently youthful and hip.

We chase a lost, magical moment in our lives when we were at some perfect age, so perfect we didn’t even realize it at the time, and now all we can do is stand back and gaze at the high-water mark. 

I was depressing myself by the time I got back to the apartment and fed Millie her breakfast. You can probably guess by now that today is my birthday. I turned on my computer. At least I could check my horoscope, the only day of the year I actually do. As you grow older you will appreciate the finer things in life, it said. Yeah, like dentures and bunion surgery.

I glanced at my inbox and wondered if I was seeing things. The screen was full of messages on my Facebook account. I started opening them, one after the other, “Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday….” And pretty soon I was laughing.

This is the first birthday where I have had an active Facebook account, and of course everyone on FB knows your birthday (at least the day and month). Yet still it was amazing to hear from all sorts of people who I never usually hear from on my birthday, old friends and people I barely knew.

Something about all those greetings pulled me out of my absurd birthday funk. All at once I felt part of the human race, part of a greater plan.

We are meant to grow older and to grow. God gives us the time to know ourselves and to know him. Life is a process of change. Who wants to stand still in some mythical moment of perfect youth?

If the price for change and growth and wisdom is getting old, it is a cosmic bargain. My friends had reminded me: It’s time to celebrate another year of life and get ready for new one.

P.S. Speaking of Facebook, did you know we now have an ANGELS ON EARTH Facebook page? Check it out. And if you really want to give me a birthday wish, tell a friend about our GUIDEPOSTS FB page. As I said last week, I want to get to 10,000 fans by year’s end.     

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.