When I first began to work on the image I have used on this page it immediately epitomized for me what the  theme of this page should be. It isn't my being fanciful or waxing like a pollyanna. It's plain good old fashioned common sense. These fragile flowers find a way to overcome and endure the cold, the hardships and the obstacles, and so shall we, keeping in mind that ' the future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope'.

We are facing  dark days and problems ahead which can, and do, appear insurmountable at times. But if life has taught me anything it is that when things seem impossible and incapable of getting any worse having the will to find a way to overcome is as simple as  looking within for that spark of hope which allows us to cope and refuse to give up. Someone once said  that 'hope is like a road in the country. There was never a road, but when people walk on it, the road comes into existence'.

I read the naysayers and gloom merchants spout off these days, scorning any who champion the cause of hope or those who encourage it, and I pity them. How barren their souls must be. Without hope they are cynical robots so consumed with anger and resentment that their one goal is to make the worst possible scenario come to fruition simply for the satisfaction of saying 'I told you so.' They are by far the biggest enemy we face at the moment. They would spread the disease which is devouring them because they believe there is comfort in having everyone as beaten down as they are themselves.

Instead of seeing the possibility of the hope embodied in the new and quite amazing man who is about to assume control of the Leadership of the Free World,  thanks to the wisdom of the majority of Americans, and who has already inspired millions to believe in hope again, they have already begun their campaign to extinguish that spark before it can ignite a movement of change and renewal which  is an almost unimaginable task  for even a miracle worker and this man is not that, he is simply a man who is willing to give it his all and try.

He cannot and will not be able to do it alone. He needs each and every one of us to find that spark of hope which demands we also make the effort and leave the naysayers and gloom merchants to moan and carp on their own. Lord knows, they are their own worst enemies. We cannot allow them to infect us with their venomous and hate filled rhetoric.

My first instinct when I read this offal these days is to engage them in debate or administer a good swift kick to their posteriors because I'm convinced that's where their brains reside but that would be an exercise in futility and there is no time for such  a useless waste of time. There is far too much to be done to assure that we create that road of hope I mention above.

The message of this parable says it all. It doesn't take a miracle worker, it only takes someone reminding us of those precious values and traditions which we have forgotten or cast aside in the past several decades.  It's called going forward together.

Robert F. Kennedy once said ... " It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an ideal or strikes out against an injustice, he or she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. "