My wish in sharing this is not to give you sadness.
It's not to give you images of horror.

My wish for you is hope.
My wish for you is vision. Clear vision and understanding.
My wish for you is hope. Hope for us.
Hope that we can do better.
Hope that we can be better.

Hope that we can remember. Not just at the holidays. Not just when we see media images.
Hope that we can remember always that we are the priviliged. We are ones.
We can do better. We can change.
We can stand up and we can speak the truth.
We can look in the mirror and we can understand our role. That we can understand the need for a new way.
That it isn't something that happens "There"
That no war is rightous.
That Just because it doesn't say "Made in a factory by a 9 year old boy" DOES NOT mean that is made by a happy grandmother is Switzerland. That no plastic walmart toy is.

It's hope. Yes Hope.
Hope for you. Hope for me.
Hope that we remember that nothing is free. Nothing is cheap. Except Freedom.
Yes, that's right. Freedom does not come of money. It does not come of war. It does not come of pain.
Freedom comes of changed minds.

It comes of freed minds. Freed souls. You cannot free anyones but your own, but you may inspire.
The flight of your soul may inspire and lift thousands and by the thousands shall lift millions.

You need not rescue or heal a child. You need only give them the hope that they may... because you do.

This is my hope for you. For me.
For us all.
Free your soul. Walk through the pain, look it in the face, hear it's words. Fear is the only evil and you do not need it.
Knowing will never hurt you it can only free you of the fear of what lurks in the shadows. My wish is that you will look bravely inward and find that unaskable, unthinkable, unfathomable and ask, see understand. Don't look away, but let it seep out into the light... through your tears...through your questions...through your sobs or your screams...but let it disolve in the light and the power of you. Be thankful if you will, but don't believe that because it is "there" it could never be here.

My wish for you is hope.

I love you.

In this Christmas let us remember not what was but what could be.