What do we tell our children today?
How do we protect them from a world where children get hurt?

Where cruelty, intolerance and unfathomable hatred live,
Scarring our cities with their vengeance.

What do we tell our children today?
When parents grieve losses that we only allow to exist,
In our worst nightmares.

What do we tell our children today?

We show them.

We show them the good that rises,
On the wings of the better angels of our nature.

We show them by our example;
Helping those in need and tending to the sick and wounded,
Offering the light of hope where there is sorrow and pain.

We show them that we won’t give in,
To those that wish for us to live in fear.

We show them that we are the beauty and the light that our world needs;
Not ‘we’ as defined by any race, religion or faith,
But as humanity;
Bound together by a common language and creed,
Of love, compassion and care.

Because we can see a world without them,
Where fear, division and hatred reign and take us hostage.

We see,

Syria

Paris

London

Manchester

And amidst the carnage and the violence,
We hold our loved ones tighter.

Because in those moments we know,
That our love is our greatest strength,
Our greatest protection,
Our greatest hope.

And we never forget.