No Excuses Given
With the warm weather and the lack of snow and being in the grips of a total lockdown this year, it's hard to believe as I write this that a week from now it will be Christmas Eve. If you're like me, you might well be wondering just what joy there is to be found in Christmas this year. Wouldn't it be better just to get the whole thing behind us so we can move and get on with our lives?
Bah! Humbug!
That would be easy enough, just to cancel the whole thing. There's always an excuse not to do something. There are plenty of excuses this year. But excuses don't bring a smile to anyone's face or joy to anyone's heart. If we are going to give up on the value of a smile or the importance of joy this time of year, then I don't know what's left for us as a society. These are not luxuries, these are true essentials.
Helen and her staff and volunteers at Stardale don't subscribe to the theory of excuses. Don't forget, we're the ones who MacGyvered a stage play into a film script and made a movie with a cast of young, inexperienced girls (whose words we used to create the script) and came up with an award winning film! This year, of all years! We had a thousand excuses to give up on the whole project. Who would have blamed us? Yet everyone involved with that film kept it moving forward because we did not accept that letting the girls down and not validating the work they did all winter was a viable option.
Our Indigenous people have been living on a steady diet of excuses and apologies and broken promises since the ink dried on the treaties. We don't agree with this at Stardale. We don't accept a policy of inaction over action. We like to think of our program as one place, at least, where our participants won't come away empty handed, disappointed, fed another excuse of why something didn't happen.
You see the photos we have posted from our visitation to many of our girls' homes. What do you notice the most? The smiles? The joy written plainly across their faces? It's the look anyone can have this time of year, no matter who you are, when you realize that Santa came after all despite the dire circumstances our world finds itself in.
I would submit that the joy you see on our girls' faces has not so much to do with the things they received as with the fact that someone took the time and the trouble to bring them. Maybe that's all any of us needs to be able to feel: some sense of joy and contentment, knowing that someone cares about us. That someone took the time, went to the trouble, drove through the night to do something special for you. Just for you. And that can come from anywhere, from anyone; from family, from friends, from a random act of kindness from a stranger.
What's important is that it comes from someone. This year, as in other years, it came from Helen and her wonderful staff and amazing volunteers.
No excuses given. None needed.
Merry Christmas, everyone! Thank you for reading these blog posts all year and for your ongoing support of the Stardale Program!