Peace on earth, good will toward all

Peace on earth. Dare we hope?

Does it exist anywhere in the world today? Anywhere, in a world where what passes for discourse is more like an exchange of rude names cast in self-gratified snarls? Anywhere, in a world where the classes glare warily at each other across ever-widening chasms of economic distress?

Anywhere, in a society scratching and clawing for electronic notepads while, around the corner, the ranks of the homeless swell? Or pouring its resources into entertainment and sports arenas while its children and schools cry constantly for attention?

Peace on earth. Is it all commercial pretense?

Of course not. Of course it exists.

And of course you know where to find it.

You can sense it in one long breath tonight, exhaled slowly amid flickering candles at midnight, while an organ drones a soft carol. You'll marvel at it tomorrow morning as you slip away from a roomful of chaotic delight to feel the crunch of snow beneath your feet on an eerily quiet suburban sidewalk. You'll feel it in the momentary brush of hands with a daughter, brother, father, grandmother, friend.

Sure, there is peace on earth. And it is not reserved for Christians alone, nor for this one day only.

It lives in a Villa Park mosque where Muslims lay out their prayer mats at dawn and day's end. It throbs in Palatine where Sikhs break bread together in a temple basement and talk of work and school and family, just as Jews do in temples a few miles away in Buffalo Grove. It saturates the living room in any suburb where the most secular atheist shares a bowl of popcorn and a video with family or friends in a quiet evening at home.

Yes, it even lurks in a momentary exchange of greetings between customer and cashier at a 24-hour Walmart.

It abides in every heart and human soul.

It has its challenges, to be sure.

It can't escape wars and the rumors thereof. It is besieged by petty emotional rages, even among friends, and gets buried by noise and crowds and toys and candy and sweaters we don't want and big screens we do want and insults and disappointments and songs heard too many times and parents who don't understand us and kids who just won't listen and gloats and scorn and hunger and tears and the rush of shoppers, cars and semis along expressways that just can't be slowed.

But it is there.

It's in you now. Today. Tonight. Tomorrow.

We take time to remember. We have this one day. It honors one man, but it exists for all men. And all women. And all boys and all girls. And all times and all places.

Peace on earth. We have no need for hope of it. We have the very thing itself.