A new year has begun and the time is now for action. I truly believe that 2017 will be filled with the spiritual adventures I have been searching for and it will give the me the opportunity of being the spiritual adventurer I have always hoped to be. I have been floundering for far too long in finding my purpose. Honestly, I still do not know what my purpose is so I have created a purpose.

The mission I have created to follow through with this year is no great adventure. It is more of an example of subtle activism. My purpose this year and I hope for years to come is to share blessings with others. As often as I can, I give silent blessings to those who pass me, live across the country, and even the other side of the world. Now I plan to share those blessings in the form of cards that I have created.

These cards are part of what I call my Mailbox Mission. I have been sending individual cards to addresses throughout the United States, one per day for the last two months. Actually, a couple of years ago; I started this but I barely kept it up for a month. This year, my intention it to send one mailbox mission blessing a day. However, those are not the only blessings I intend to send in the mail. My intention for the next two years, is to send blessings to each member of the 115^th United States Congress. I am also making my mission to send blessings for another special group, that is to each of the permanent missions (193) and permanent observers (2) to the United Nations.

I have already sent over a hundred blessings in the last three months. I’ll admit I was a little inconsistent in November and December but in January I only missed one day (a Sunday) for the individual household blessing. I have kept pace for the U.S. Congress blessings and the United Nations blessings. My goal is to send a daily blessing (Monday-Saturday) for the U.S. House of Representatives and a weekly blessing for the U.S Senate. The United Nations blessings are daily (Monday-Saturday) and should be completed by the end of August. You can stay up to date with the blessings on my Twitter account @ImaSprtlAdvntr. You can find the different blessings with the following hashtags; #mailboxmission; #mailboxmissionusc (U.S. Congress); #mailboxmissionun (United Nations).

Choosing where each of the blessings is quite interesting. For the U.S. Congress and United Nations blessings, I have created little paper squares with each state and district number for the U.S. House of Representatives and the states with Jr./Sr. for each U.S. Senator. The United Nations project I put the simple name of each country and then I tweet their formal name. For the individual household blessings, I have form business cards that I have written an arbitrarily researched address on each (I have begun with 10/state). Each have their own drawstring bag with an attached label and on the label a prayer I say when I pick the blessing for the day. I believe it is a great way to start the day.

However, the mailbox mission is not the only way I intend to share blessings. I have created these colorful business cards that I put varying blessings onto them. I leave them at restaurants where I eat. I leave them when I say hello to anyone as I go about my daily business and I pass them out at community gatherings. I must confess, this has become more of a challenge for me than anticipated. It is still in “work in progress” stage. It is easy for me to leave a blessing at a restaurant but more difficult to have one, two, or more on hand when passing by and saying hello to someone

Another project that I am taking on and is a more personal project is what I call “Letters of Fellowship”. These are letters to individuals within my community or those beyond my everyday community. These are letters that I intend to share a little bit of myself to each person, thank the recipient for the work they do, and hopefully find some common ground. Most are public figures near and far. I have no expectation of receiving replies but my hope is that individual or those around that person will be inspired to connect and build bridges with others outside of their comfort zone. My intent is to send one letter a week but I am sorry to report that I have only written one letter as of this posting. My hope is to speed up my writing and send multiple letters over a short period of time – yes, I would like to “catch up”. Of all the actions I intend to take this year, this is truly the most social experiment of them all.

All that I have described are actions I know I can do and at the same time be a bit of a challenge. It is how you move forward. You don’t have to leap out of your comfort zone – small baby steps will do. What actions are you taking this year to move forward in your spiritual journey?