Elizabeth has been sharing with me her thoughts about issues of purpose, place, and community for her generation. I am hopeful that I will get her to write some blogs on these concerns early next year.

In the meantime, I find myself being inspired by moments, often unexpected, when these elements of purpose, place, and community pull themselves together in joyful unity.

It is hard to miss that Reina, a siberian husky, is made for our snowy world. Moment to moment she beautifully reflects the magic of finding one’s purpose and place and creating community as well.

There are prosaic things that suggest right place like the fact she never has to stop and chew the snow off her foot pads like our goldens, or the comical but also amazing way she can dig into the snow and find what she is looking for (98% of the time this appears to be dear poop).

But in truth, her every moment in the snow reflects a joyful alignment of where she is with who she is and I love how her joy has made the other dogs (and me) enjoy each other and the snow more than ever.

It’s dog community at its best, though sometimes Riley needs to break away and ask me for the refueling offered by a dog biscuit.

Yesterday brought another moment when I got to see someone else in an inspired and right place wallowing in inspired and joyful community.

As members of the chocolate tribe, all of us in the office decided to have our Christmas lunch at Burdick’s in Walpole, NH. It’s a wonderful place famous for its chocolate. Settling into our table, we noticed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns at a nearby table with a lively group of companions. As Mr Burns is one of the people who helped create Burdicks, we were grateful to him for creating a welcoming place to celebrate each other (and chocolate).

And as we heard the exuberant conversation bursting from his table all through lunch, it was hard to miss the example he gave us of joyful purpose ( what great new topic beckons him onward in his work?), place ( this warm space he created for all of us), and community ( at his table and so many others there were friends he stopped to embrace on his way out).

That was nice! To have inspiration to keep evolving right purpose, right community in the right place come from several snowy walks with the dogs and a chocolate capped holiday lunch.

Here are the twenty somethings at our table with Ken Burns a dot at the back of the shot.