Happy and Peaceful, New Year

On this New Year Day, I'm sharing something from the bottom of my heart, an offering of hope,

requesting peace and understanding

to be ours in 2010.

For Christmas, Joe received Mitch Albom's , Have A Little Faith, from our daughter, Sydney. You might recognize the author's name from an earlier work, Tuesdays with Morrie. Joe devoured the book rather quickly and seeing his obvious pleasure, I'm now doing the same.

Already, I could share a handful of dog-eared passages that are especially meaningful to me but for now I just want to bend your ear, maybe your heart, towards this one simple exchange from page 161. Here, an aging Rabbi is explaining how he has tolerated other beliefs throughout his ministry while so often, his own faith has been anything but accepted.

"Look, I know what I believe. It's in my soul. But I constantly tell our people: you should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we don't know everything. And since we don't know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else."

He sighed.

"I'm not being original here, Mitch. Most religions teach us to love our neighbor."

See, I told you. What gripped me was not a flashy lightbulb moment that accompanies a 'Wow, never thought of that before' kind of experience with bells, whistles or even a handful of leftover, New Year's fireworks kind of 'Ah-ha', attached. This is just a replay of the simple biblical instruction of how we can choose to live in peace...

Love you neighbor as yourself.

Happy New Year to everyone,

and by all means and

most sincerely,

may

peace be ignited.