Death in Syria, collapse in Greece,
fires in Colorado, famine in the Sudan,
tornados in Missouri; murder in Norway:
the list is endless.

Where are the uplifting stories?
Where are the tales of human heroism
that lift us beyond our everyday blues ,
the stories that reveal the true range
of human experience?

Are we the shackled prisoners of a media
obsessed with the belief that the only thing
that sells is grief and despair?

To overcome evil, we must be vigilant
about the abuses we humans bestow upon one another,
and stalwart against the forces of nature.

We cannot stick our head in a bucket of flowers
and hope that things get better.

We need inspiration.

We need stories of triumph and victory.

We need to imagine and create.

Our imagination is a book of inspiration;
On its pages are found the stories of shared love,
creativity, hope, and universal promise.

Ours is the story of lives imperceptibly bound.

Where then is our hope?

It is found in our children, our future,
a new generation moving out into
and experiencing their worlds.

It is found in the creative outpouring of strangers
ever reminding us that the true nature of humanity
is to seek higher ground and to share with one another
the voice of our inner genius.

It is found in the artistic,

the storytellers,

and the spiritual.

The stories that diminish us will one day
be supplanted by those that lift us up.,
for ours is a story of the capacity to love,
to overcome,
and we shall, as one,
persevere.