winter

My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Remember it’s time for justice and peace to kiss and truth and kindness to embrace.
Remember it’s time for us to turn and face each other, ourselves, and God again.
Remember it’s time to hasten that day!...

Hope is catching and it is loose in the land, set loose by words and impassioned belief that
God is paying attention to what is going on in history, and that God has plans, as [God]
always has for those ... made to live in peace...

Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air...

Hope spreads around the earth, brightening all things,
Even hate, which crouches breeding in dark corridors...

We beckon this good season to wait awhile with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you to stay awhile with us.

Surely the holy one is not deaf.
He hears the delicate bells that ring
On the feet of an insect as it walks.

God is so free and so marvelous {doing} wonders where people despair... tak{ing} what is little and lowly and mak{ing} it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly... God marches right in {and} chooses people as... instruments and performs... wonders where one would least expect them.

Jesus came to us as a child so that we might come to understand not only that nothing we do is insignificant, but that every small thing we do has within it the power to change the world.

The proper response, as Hanukkah teaches, is not to curse the darkness but to light a candle.

All that is necessary
To make this world a better place
To live is to love as
Christ loves, as Buddha loved.

Peace is inside all of us.
We just need to share it.

In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will...

Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power
and come in your weakness
in any case
and make all things new.