This year my simple Christmas wish seems more urgent than before. War is raging in a part of Europe that should have seen the last of its share of trenches and artillery bombardments in 1945; instead, it’s a modern war zone, with innocents killed, infrastructure wantonly destroyed, people displaced, and cruelty reigning, just to satisfy the messianic complex of a deranged tyrant.
And the risk of escalation remains very real: 2023 may not be a good year for many of us.
As always, I cannot think of more appropriate words on December 24 than those uttered by Frank Borman, commander of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the Moon (and the first vehicle in the history of humanity that carried humans to a spot cut off from all other humans who ever lived, as they disappeared behind the far side of the Moon):
[G]ood night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.