96. You've got mail

Friday's mail brought two checks (yay!), two requests for donations ('tis the season), a postcard (handwritten mail!), the Arkansas Arts Center's quarterly bulletin (note to self: check out those three new shows you haven't seen yet), and an Advent devotional (with three of the five reflections titled as questions: What Is Your Hope This Christmas? Have You Found the Luxury of Quiet? Are You Highly Favored, Greatly Troubled, or Both?).

That stack through the mail slot reminds me of many gifts I am thankful for:

Meaningful work, and compensation for it.

Friends who reach out through slow mail.

Knowing someone by her handwriting. (Please let that kind of knowledge of one another not be doomed to extinction.)

Postcards themselves —  still relatively cheap to send, with beautiful or inspiring or silly pictures, and a finite amount of space to write in.

All kinds of nonprofits and the good work they do in the world.

Art House America, its ethos, the consistently good and thoughtful and contemplative writing on its blog, and the people I've been introduced to through it.

The Arkansas Arts Center, the exhibits they assemble, the classes they offer, the lectures and other programming they present, and all the ways that they promote and draw people toward the arts.

The H.E. Butt Foundation and all the good things under its umbrella, especially the Laity Lodge retreat center and the The High Calling website. And the people I've met through each. (And the wonders of HEB grocery stores.)

Questions. Good questions. Timely questions. Uncomfortable questions. Questions that wait.

Poetry. Its music, its play, its work, its silences. And the ways we were invited to play with, listen to, enter poems the last two times I visited Laity Lodge.

What good thing has your mail brought?