I’m thinking positive. I love my family, present and past, and honor their love, their sacrifices, their humor and their love of science and God . . . stars that shine in the dark night, love and light against all odds!

I’m thinking positive. I love my friends, present and past — they double my joys and halve my sorrows. We come together to laugh, to cry; to celebrate, to mourn; to work and play and sing and dance and create a space for peace amid the chaos! Is it folly?

I’m thinking positive. I love my beloved community, a beautiful mosaic that repels the Rockwools of the world, and welcomes the artists, historians and artisans of the world, present and past. Settled by our First Nation brothers and sisters on the banks of the Potomac — thank you, please forgive us! Our immigrant brothers and sisters who rode the seas and lands to settle here — thank you, we forgive you! Built by our African enslaved brothers and sisters — thank you, please forgive us!

I’m thinking positive. I love my beloved state of West Virginia, wild and wonderful! We work to keep her so, and to stop the greed and avarice that blights her mountain tops and her people. We can rise to end poverty, addictions and ignorance with science and love . . . and we will!

I’m thinking positive. I love this country. May we work to create a more perfect union. May we reckon with and learn from our past . . . “forgive them father, for they know not what they do.” May we live in the present, mindfully. May we vote for love, inclusion, breath, life, education, freedom from fear and ignorance, a brighter future for our children’s children’s children . . . “we hold these truths to be self evident that all men [and women] are created equal . . . endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights . . . among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!”

I’m thinking positive. I love this sweet, beautiful garden we were given. “Thank you for the world so sweet; thank you for the food we eat; thank you for the birds that sing; thank you god for everything!” Were we born to use her all up? Or cherish her, love our maker, and “carry forward an ever advancing civilization?” We came from our first mother and father; we gathered in families, then tribes, then cities, then states, then nations; now we are one world, connected in a world-wide web. Those wiser and more positive than I envisioned a world where we live together as “waves of one sea, as leaves of one tree, as flowers of one garden.”

I’m thinking positive today — a choice. The time has come for us to live together in love, in peace, in unity . . . to live, to love, to work, to play, to sing, to build, to be together. Love always wins!

Ardyth Gilbertson, of Shepherdstown