‘Holy Moments’ in 2026
To the Editor: As this New Year dawns, so also dawns that annual mental activity known as Making New Year’s Resolutions. For a number of years growing up, I would resolve to not get poison oak. It usually worked.
Please allow me now to suggest a New Year’s Resolution for you to ponder and consider. It is called a “random act of kindness” or one might perhaps call it “A Holy Moment.” Read on before you tune me out.
“Holy” has an Anglo-Saxon base: sound, whole, happy; a generalized intensive as in, “This is a holy action” — a sound, happy action. You will come to realize the reality of this as you begin to engage in your own Holy Moments.
Personal example: I was walking down an aisle in Safeway, heading to the pharmacy, when I saw a lady, rather small in stature, attempting to stand on the bottom shelf to reach an item on the top shelf. I smiled and asked if I might help. She indicated the items and, upon setting them in her shopping cart, she gave me the biggest smile and a grateful, “Thank you, sir!”
That two minutes MADE MY DAY!
It really is quite easy. Just set your mind each day, as it begins, to be aware, be ready, be sensitive to create “holy moments.” It may surprise you how often and how little effort is required to engage in a random act of kindness, a holy moment.
Some of you may not have much canvas of your life left to paint, so resolve to make 2026 a year of bold strokes and bright colors as you go about painting holy moments in your fellow citizens’ lives.
Happy New Year!
William Shreeve, Eureka
