Christmas Wishes from a Special Guest Blogger

Today's post is by a special guest blogger, though this was written well before any blog existed. Before the internet existed. Heck, even before I existed, though I was on the way. Today's guest blogger is my mother, Lisa Jeanne. This piece was often included in outgoing Christmas cards to family and friends and though she has not been with us for nearly a decade, her words are as powerful as ever. Perhaps more so given these troubled times. They deserve to be shared with a wider audience this holiday season. So without further ado, please enjoy:

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We wish for you what we wish for ourselves--a Christmastime of thoughtfulness and rest, of assessment and compassion. A time to look back on the year just passed and sort out wastefulness from growth. A time to plan a new year of work informed by respect for individual worth and love for one another. A Christmastime of realizing that time is all there is--and is not too late to change our lives. 

We wish for all of us the courage to hold on to a vision of a world in which children are born wanted and loved with enough food and care and shelter to grow up whole. The vision of all people as perfectable and transcendent--free of social prisons of sex and race--and remarkable for the hopes and dreams and capabilities that exist in unique and unrepeatable combinations in each of us. 

This Christmastime it is too late to justify suffering with the promise of rewards in some other world. Too late for nationalism, for racism, for violence, or for the belief that one can win only if another has truly lost. Too late even for brotherhood of man because it has excluded the sisterhood of woman, and therefore the humanity in us all. 

At last we begin. We look into the god in each of us and say YES. We celebrate the world outside us. We say peace on Earth, good will to people. 

Melissa Jeanne, 1966

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Merry Christmas to those who celebrate the season, and a Happy New Year to all.