Cleansing

The first snow of the season, that I can remember, is falling gently outside. The land is covered with a thin white blanket that grows thicker by the hour. We are now in the last portion of the year. It seems appropriate that the baptism of the year occur now. It has been an eventful year, filled with promise and birth and growth and disappointment and foreboding and war and pestilence and famine. It is as if the sky is saying "Go in peace 2008, your sins are forgiven and you will be remembered as just an ordinary year. There is a new white quire ready for 2009. Go in peace and sin no more.". Now all we have to do is make it through this month. Sixty-seven years ago we were in the same condition. Two thousand years ago a man of peace was born. Ninety years ago the war to end all wars was fought. That war had one day of peace right in the middle. On a certain Christmas Day the German and English soldiers refused to fight each other and had a soccer match instead. That day has troubled the sleep of generals ever since. Sixty-seven years ago another war to end all wars was born. Two thousand years and still no peace, sixty-seven years and new wars have been born and borne. We commemorate the birth of that peaceful man with a song about playing a drum for him. We march off to war to the sound of that drum. Perhaps it would be more fitting to have a soccer match to celebrate that day when the light of peace and brotherhood first glimmered forth from a humble stable in a long ravaged land. Eisenhower "The people of the world want peace and some day their governments are going to have to step aside and let them have it.". Two thousand years is a long time to learn a lesson. I just hope that we can make it through this month and start the new year with a clean slate, a clean conscience, and clean hands. The man of peace said "Turn the other cheek.", not "Lock and Load.". The CEOs of this country should be more worried about the eye of a needle than the balance sheet. The snow will melt soon, will the year 2009 be a year of a clean sheet? I hope so!