Dear Precious World,

We simply didn’t see it coming: your illness, your brokenness, your sadness.  2020 was not at all the year any of us expected.  A microscopic virus versus a planet. Something so small unraveling something so big.  Yet here we are, ALL of us, captive citizens to the place we call home.  We can’t walk away from this battle and it’s cacophony of side effects. No matter our opinions, our biases, our backgrounds or our passions, we are all affected by this malady in a myriad of ways.  It’s repercussions live among us, even as we look to the hope of a new calendar year. 

Today we all come together to sit on the front steps of 2021. I am hopeful that healing can be found in the collective sigh of relief we all exhaled as the clock struck midnight around the world.   We all long to turn our backs on a year defined by sickness and turn our faces to the horizon that is the blank new page of January 2021.  And while we can’t really start the year with a do over I cling to the hope that we can come together to heal our brokenness. Slowly but surely we can claw our way back to something that resembles a unifying spirit to heal our infirm world.  

So, Happy New Year World and Get Well Soon.  I wish you a year of healing, empathy and  unity. It may sound a bit too much like rainbows and butterflies to say that I hope 2021 ushers in a rebirth and reset but I am choosing to land on the side of optimism. Together we are not the lost cause that some proclaim we are. I remain hopeful that 2021 will give us all more good days than bad, more hope than despair, and more healing than sickness.