Happy Holidays from my heart

I try not to do too many serious things but this is from my heart. . .

This week marks the winter’s Solstice. Many of us here on the Northern Frontier get a three-day weekend, will have family get-togethers or spend time with our friends during this Holiday Season. We may barbecue (I still do even with the snow as a relocated Southerner) and drink beer (yes, conservatives will mock the liberals for drinking imported beer, liberals will mock conservatives for drinking overly fizzy domestic beer.) and I will typically be hoisting a Guinness and drink a little Crown during this festive season.

It is our chance to reflect on another summer gone by, the time at the river fishing, the travels, the long days of sunshine and warm weather. For some, it was the end of a summer break and time they returned to school. For some moderate independents, it will be another reminder that we American adults go year after year without real vacations, as the Europeans - those who survived the heat - come back from their months off.

Fall has come and gone now, the snow has fallen and the nights grew longer. Football and Basketball seasons are going strong, and the holidays are with us now.

Millions of us will travel, trying to get home to family and friends. For many of those who take planes will probably think of 9/11, the threat that still remains and worry about what may happen again. They may drink a bit more on our flights to get through, always with the memory of days that have passed.

But in the end, we will spend the holidays enjoying ourselves with people we care about.

At some point, I would ask each of you to take a look up at the sky, whether it be during the day, in the dark of night, whether the sky is gray or sunny, and think of the soldiers who are, right as you look, sitting out in the scorching Iraqi desert looking up at the same sky themselves.

They are 20 year old boys, 25 year old women, 35 year old fathers, who are thinking about what it would be like to be home with their friends and families this Holiday Season. They are thinking about how they used to look back, on past times, at the summers they had enjoyed together “back in the world”. They are thinking about the people they miss. And they are thinking about the scorching, hostile conditions they are in right now and the threats and challenges they face even as they look up at the sky for a moment, and will face again the next day and the next.

For us back home it can be easy to come to think of these people - our brothers and sisters and friends - as just troops, as those people talked about by the politicians, as those who are argued over, as those who we hear about dying in ones and twos almost each and every day now.

They are normal people, just like you and me, probably scared at times and they are brave. They are strong and sometimes sad, and all are proud. For are all Honorable men and women, our soldiers.

But most importantly, they are our brothers and sisters. They are not “troops” but people just like us, and they are really sitting out in the desert day after day after day, with their mission in sight. It is not just an “American” thing but it is a world effort to allow people the choice to live free.

So, this Holiday Season, regardless of what you think of the war in Iraq or elsewhere, regardless of what other activities you are caught up in, take a moment, look up at the sky above, and say a prayer for our family that is over in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Liberia and so many other places in the world. They are there protecting everything we enjoy and sometimes take for granted.

Whether or not the missions of the moment are exactly the right ones or the strategies perfect, these are our other selves and we must keep them in our thoughts, keep them in our prayers, and not forget they are there for a single moment.

Look up at the “Big Dipper” or the Moon - it is the same one they will see in just a little while. Blow them a kiss - the winds will carry it there within just a matter of hours.

And then, after you have spent your moment thinking about them, said your prayer, and blown your kiss, resolve in your heart to do everything in your power from that moment on to ensure the best for them.

For me it is not about the politics of any given side but the people who give of themselves everyday helping others to experience freedom and all that it entails.

And what will you do for the families back home who are so worried each day, the mother who can't sleep at night because her little boy is curled up in 120 degree heat resting before another day when a guerilla attack might take his life or the brother of a soldier who works as a cashier at the store where you live. The fathers who are too proud to admit they worry.

Share your kind words to them as well as words of thanks. Let them know the gratitude you have for what they and their children are going through.

The Holidays are a time for family and reflection of the season’s meaning. It is a time to give thanks for our blessings and another year among friends. I hope for each of you great things in the coming year and with the required efforts of labor and love that next year will be better than this one for everyone.

God Bless.

Ice