Dear ones,

My Christmas holidays have been celebrated in Round Rock, Texas with my youngest child, Susan, and her family.

Surely you can guess how quiet my evenings are in Eugene. Embroidery, a book with the classical music station of the University of Oregon, KWAX, keeping me company.

Surely you can guess that many evenings are not so quiet in Round Rock. What a delight to hear all kinds of sounds with two dogs beside me. Paige, almost 11, at the piano playing Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer", Perry, almost 13, playing air hockey with his friend, Alex. Tom watching a bowl game as Susan chops vegetables for another delicious dinner. I have been blessed to be able to enjoy all kinds of "noises".

Another wondrous blessing is that Marcus , now 14, has completed the three years of chemotherapy and is in remission. He is playing on two basketball teams as an eighth grader, improvising solos with the jazz band and taking geometry at the nearby high school. Your prayers and good thoughts are part of these last three years. May his 2003 be filled with good heath.

The flowers on this page are part of the unfinished embroidery, my piece of Tangible Hope. Each blossom holds its own story. The Forsythia was embroidered in eleven hours in Bernalillo, New Mexico on September 11, 2001, for example.

I am not the only one who has held the "hopes and fears of all the years" along my heart for 2002's twelve months filled with Grace and grief, delights and despair as we look at the Earth and all who on it dwell.

Today a young mother concluded her email to me with this summary of her feelings which echo mine.

"I don't know how to bring peace to Korea or the Middle East or Afganistan. I know that I an tired of people and places being blown up - that's not the answer. I do not want my son to go to war. I don't want anyone to have to fight. How do you get to peace, the question for the year. May 2003 hold the answer"

with Love,

Justine