#299 – Dick Bernard: A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You and Yours

The Christmas cards above and below (they were like today’s picture postcards) were saved by my Grandmother and Grandfather Busch at their North Dakota farm in the early 1900s*.
This year, my annual Christmas Reflection can be found here. It is easily the longest I have done (the 33rd in a series beginning 1977), with several parts.
It is the one I least expected to do.
If you go no further than this page, here are what I take as my essential learnings from this years recollection:
First, not one of us – not a single one of us – is an island unto ourselves. We are part of something much greater: a community.
Further, our community is everyone, everywhere, a world without borders, whether we know those persons personally, or expect that we’ll ever meet in any way.
Our world is our community.
Second, back then – my reflection is about the years 1963-65 – the last thing Barbara and I could do was to express our gratitude. Our struggle was to simply survive from one day to the next. One of us did survive, the other did not.
Third, it is never too late to say ‘thank you’.
God Bless Us All. Every One.


* – A story about these century old postcards can be found here.