Especially peace is hopeful. Those who are different in culture, ideology, race, religion, class, education, gender, sexual preference. A society can be judged by the way it protects or fails to protect its most vulnerable members. And I believe that this society, racked with violence, rife with neglect, is being tested and found seriously wanting. When we spend as much time talking and listening to one another as we do mesmerized by our television sets, when we are as angry about the steady diet of violence being fed our children as we would be if poison were being slipped into their food, when we are as willing to live our ideals as we are to teach them to our children, then we will begin to see the rewards of peace.
Peace requires a hopeful heart.
We can't have it unless we have the capacity, first, to hope for it. Let us give our children hope. Let's fill them with stories that tell them, over and over again, that peace is important, possible, worth striving for. Let's give them stories that allow them to understand the differences that separate us, to experience the humanity that connects us. Let's give our children stories that empower them.