Happy New Year friends! Here in upstate New York, we just came through some of the coldest temps on record in our area. Now the sun is shining on a very, very bright morning. I am feeling energized and ready for a better new year. 2017 was a hard one in America and around the world. My prayer for 2018 is that each of us (with our diversity of ideas and values and backgrounds) warms our heart toward the other. Albert Einstein famously said that "no problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it." So let's work on our own consciousness. Let's extend our consciousness (if that word doesn't work for you, you could substitute it with intelligence+curiosity) far and wide, making sure the news we receive is broad, inclusive, and accurate. Let's make kindness and civility active verbs in our daily lives. We can and must be bigger than our dogma and our fears. We can be fierce and loving, strong and soft, bold and forgiving. We can be all about love without being wimps. Love knows no political party, no gender, no race, no nation. Love has backbone; love has boundaries; love does no harm but takes no shit. Let's try to be loving and bold in 2018. That's my resolution.