It seems only yesterday that I touched down from last year's trip to Guadeloupe & Antigua, yet, here we are again preparing for our celebration of Messiah's coming.

The trip was an unanticipated foreboding of this past year: I found Guadeloupe to be striking yet dull, rich in its natural beauty yet stark in the contrast between wealthy tourists and impoverished natives, full of holiday noise yet empty of productive communication. In fact, I wish as much to avoid the cacophony of Guadeloupe in the future as I do to rediscover the profound simplicity or Tahiti. Happily, Antigua was a brilliant gem at the end of the trip: 365 beaches and an infinity of crisp and cordial warmth.

In just such a way, this past year has been flat so far as significant events are concerned, yet of great value in terms of new insights I've been granted:

While my particular career experience has confirmed the notion that the world of commerce is amoral and concerned uniquely with bottom-line results, I sense an increasing awareness and acceptance of social accountability on the part of the business community. Although my work with the Parolee Employment Program of my personnel club has yet to bear concrete fruit, the increasing number of requests I am receiving to share my experiences at the jail indicates that the public is developing an awkward awareness of hitherto avoided societal horrors.

The few happy news I've received from my former inmates and their associates - one now working as a union member for incredible wages on a skyscraper project- another now in the army and planning his wedding; another headed for his journeyman electrician status and developing a strong family life - only more starkly show the frustration of seeing thousands of men and women pass through the jail as if on a merry-go-round or roulette wheel.

We hear and cringe at the huge noises of insoluble international chaos. This is countered by the inestimable satisfaction I've gotten from helping to put Jessica's new home in Brookline (actually closer than her and Claudine's former apartment in Boston) in order. The painting, cleaning, repairing are now almost done; the great improvement in the apartment's appearance is paralleled by Jessica's enthusiasm for her new acquaintances, her challenging school-work, and her budding musical interest (recorder and flute). She spent the summer with relatives in Belgium and Switzerland and with her cousins in a fishing village in Italy while Diney was continuing her doctoral studies in Brussels.

Although a recent disturbance by the inmates at the jail has temporarily reversed much of the progress of the past several years, the episode has given me a greater awareness of one or our basic errors in dealing with "prison reform": while valid cries are heard that the jail is hopelessly anachronistic and counter-productive - to the point that it ought to be torn down - my inmates continue to wait two years before their trial begins if the charge is murder (leading ultimately to acquittal in the majority of cases). While prostitutes and drug-users crowd our jails, professional racketeers and drug pushers remain free. Such contrasts have led me to conclude that we are treating symptoms rather than illnesses, that we are shuttering a few retailers while leaving the grotesque wholesalers untouched.

I don't deny that social headaches need aspirin; but we must start doing major surgery on insidious public tumors. We can't stop the pimps and dealers, the numbers-players and non-supporters, until we attack the social, political, and legal pariahs.

So, the year has been for me one more of subjective sensitizing than of objective sparkle. Though I don't deny the value of such, I'm looking forward with faith and hope to the coming year, when the Christmass will usher in greater love and prosperity among us as individuals, as citizens, and as joyful servants of our Master.

I'm fortifying myself for next year's pilgrimage by leaving right after Christmass services at the jail for Caracas and Aruba, then on to Curacao to begin the New Year. May you have similar opportunity to prepare yourself for our future, beginning anew.