December 4, 2023
Holiday Greetings,
If you are getting this, you are important to
me. I hope you all understand that. I also understand that doesn’t mean we are
currently close. The world is a little
weird these days, or maybe only I am a little weird these days. Only time will tell on that one.
It seems we all struggle—with money, work,
relationships, health, and even with accepting that change is a constant. I have always felt like the same person; the
same child that worshipped my father and thought my mother was so beautiful and
good, the same teenager that thought that I was going to grow into a beautiful
and popular girl, the same young woman that just wanted a career and a family
and a little picket fence. Amazingly, I
was also aware of who I actually was, a girl too nerdy and prone to loving
solitude to be popular, too unusual looking to be traditionally pretty, too in
love with telling my truth to ever be very politically correct. I knew that when I was 7, I know that
still. But the hopes and dreams were as
regular as any other person’s. Don’t we
all just dream of being happy and loved for who we are? Are any of us really different than that?
This year, I would wish upon a star, the
north star, the star on top of the tree, a star cookie or a TV star or whatever
star appears first to me, for peace---world peace, personal peace, the
peace-of-mind of a baby sleeping in its parent’s arms, full and warm and
safe.
Peace.
No angry words, no hurtful words, no
jealousy, no fear of being hurt, no violence, no need to escape from pain,
suffering, or hopelessness. No war,
either between nations or religions, or between individuals that just want to
win, to be winners, to make someone else a loser.
Peace.
When despair
grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives
may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great
heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. Wendell Berry
Wishing you all love and peace, Debbie Giles
