Happy New Year!

For myself, this year is starting off like every other 'New Year' - I am filled with longing for the world to somehow cast off its destructive attitudes and give us all the gift of hope; for world leaders to look to the welfare of its neediest citizens. As I listen to news reports, that doesn't seem very likely; Big media tends to focus most of its energy in highlighting all of the worst that mankind is capable of. Small town media, on the other hand, brings us that hope in the form of uplifting stories that it prints of caring people who make a positive difference, and of events that lift us all as individuals and members of a community. Let's all aspire to love and to hope:

The Loom

The peddlers of woe

Are bending their bows,

Filling their quivers with fears;

The weavers of doom

Are  warping their looms

With  the delicate threads of our tears;

They add warp and weft

With fingers so deft,

Creating their coats of despair,

While we shiver and wait

In our uncertain state

For a glimmer of hope to appear.

Those peddlers know well

That fear and woe sells,

Though it takes a sad toll on the soul;

What a price we all pay

When  greed leads the way,

But there could be an alternate goal;

Let us pick up our shields

Where they lie in the fields

Of our dreams and our hopes for tomorrow,

And fend off the foe,

Tell those merchants of woe

That we don't want their weapons of sorrow.

What a beautiful garment

We all could create,

One incredibly vast in its scope;

Strong and divine,

To enfold all mankind,

On a loom strung with love, filled with hope.

   Love is our shield

And hope is our loom