As I Look in Your Eyes

Based on our past our future might look discouraging
Yet I choose to hope the young will have better sense
Than their elders whose hatreds have been so intense
When the young speak of their dreams it is encouraging

And anyone could do better than we have done

Although my generation never listened to me
So my effect on things was limited at best
They liked my books as they shook their heads at the rest
But the young know that they hold the keys of destiny

That the world can be saved that its people are one

Although now it is dying the young know they must save
This home of ours because it is the only one we
Have ever known and they alone can do it: be brave
My young friends the hope of our world belongs to you

As I look in your eyes I see I am young too

+Steven Curtis Lance



Copyright MMVI

As my Grandma used to say, "were it not for hope the heart would break," and indeed it would; we have to hope to live. The old saying "where there is life there is hope" can just as easily be reversed: "where there is hope there is life."

I do see hope in the youth of today, and my solidarity with them gives me hope: as I look in their eyes I see I am young too. Hope is evergreen, "springs eternal," and is the engine of all progress, growth, and social evolution. Anyone who hopes is young, in that they can still grow, learn, and change; anyone who can still hope is still alive.

I am a complete misfit and outsider, but I still have hope, and it is rekindled every time I talk to one of my kids, biological or spiritual. And maybe it is not such a bad thing to be an outsider to the present power structure of society, given how it operates and what it has done and is doing.

I know the hour is desperately late, but the young know this too, and I believe they will help us make the necessary changes. I have to hope that we will not be too late, as I contemplate Earth Day 2006.

Respect and solidarity, and hope,

+Stevie

Fiat justitia ruat mundus: dum spiro spero