No surprises.

This is the final post of the calendar year, posted automatically while I'm attending an annual gathering of young Jesuits at Colombiere Center in Clarkston, Michigan (for a report on last year's meeting, click here). This evening, my brother Jesuits and I will celebrate New Year's Eve with a service of Eucharistic adoration and benediction ending in the traditional Te Deum, a festive dinner, and a late-night gathering for drinks and snacks to mark the passage from one year to another.

Though I look forward to this evening's festivities, I generally think of New Year's Eve as an opportunity for reflection rather than celebration - a time to pause and examine how one has lived one's life over the past twelve months and to consider what may happen in the next twelve. In harmony with this view of New Year's Eve, my innate preference is to spend at least part of the evening in quiet solitude - reading, perhaps listening to some music, and thinking about the year just ended and the year about to begin.

I don't know a thing about the Alcantara Piano Quartet, an ensemble you can see and hear in the above video, but their instrumental version of Radiohead's "No Surprises" strikes me as appropriate music for New Year's Eve. To all readers, I extend my best wishes for today and the coming year. See you in 2011! AMDG.