publishing peace

A  new world calls across the ocean A new world calls across the sky A new world whispers in the shadows Time to fly, time to fly Just a few days, and we're not in Kansas anymore, folks. Well, actually, I've never been to Kansas. I've never been to Paris either. But I'm not going to Kansas, I'm going to Paris. Kansas feels safer right now. They speak English in Kansas. They have a lot of corn fields. I can get behind that. Paris has been a dream of mine. If I'm being honest, I never thought I would see it in person. Especially not by myself. Of course, if you'd asked me in high school, a solo trip to Paris was probably the best, most ideal situation ever, of all time. I loved being alone. But now? It's about one moment The moment before it all becomes clear And in that one moment You start to believe there's nothing to fear It's about one second And just when you're on the verge of success The sky starts to change And the wind

More than two thousand years ago, a man approached the base of a mountain. I don’t know what he looked like, but I can imagine -- sweating, a tightness in his eyes, sun-weathered face, dirt on his heels. A tension about him, an urgency. And maybe -- I can’t tell you for sure, but maybe -- every step he took he struggled with the boy in his arms. His reason for approaching the mountain. His only son. I’d like to think that perhaps, at his side, there came a woman, the mother of the child. Perhaps the burden was just as visibly part of her as it was with this father. Perhaps she watched, constantly worried, as the nights grew cold, as they journeyed toward their last chance. Presumably, they had suffered alongside this child for years. Every day it was a different trial -- sometimes, he fell into fire, sometimes into water, and always these parents had to be vigilant so that they could save their precious son from himself. It’s hard for me to imagine how they must hav

An author's note: These words were not written for you to read, but I felt impressed to share them with you. Please know that as you do, you are reading things that I have fought incredibly hard to learn. You are reading a lot of who I am in the very corners of me, too, seeing a part of myself that, for all my openness and desire for authenticity and vulnerability, I don’t divulge often -- in part because it’s so honest, so authentic, that I worry that people will misinterpret it, twist it into something less pure than it is. I don't write these words to manipulate your feelings for the sake of it, or to appear to you in any particular way, or to make you think of me differently; these words are simply the truths that I know, written to the children I believe I will one day be blessed to have, and they come from the deepest part of my soul. To my dear ones: I'm currently twenty-one, and I think about you every single day. Sometimes with a lot of impatience. I d