First Day of a New Year

Thanks to Maggie Mesneak Wick
for posting this sweet card,
to Peter Bunder for the excerpt from Sanders,
and to Gerry McCartney for typing it up!
"I write these last few paragraphs on the first day of a new year. Thin snow covers our patch of Indiana and the day has dawned clear. With early sunlight streaming through the windows, Ruth and I take down the Christmas decorations, wrap the homemade ornaments in tissue paper, loop the colored lights into bundles, and store everything away in the attic. I carry the tree out the back door and across the yard, leaving a trail of needles the whole way . . .

" 'Memory grips the past' as my friend wrote to me, 'and hope grips the future.' I think of the scarlet seeds quietly burning against the cold, black dirt, waiting for spring. I think of my children, and of the children they may have one day, and of those children's children, on and on, like the ridge upon ridge of mountains stretching out before me as far as I can see.

"I think of my students hard at work, learning what our clever species has already discovered, and adding their own new knowledge to the store. I imagine the host of ancestors, humans and non-humans, whose lives and labors have made this moment possible for those of us who breathe. I draw a breath, savor it, and bless them all" (190).

from Hunting for Hope
by Scott Russell Sanders