December Prayer
A timeless & universal Mattie poem,
and a message from Mama Peace.
As we conclude our 2025 theme - “A Time for Compassion” - and look ahead to our 2026 theme - “A Time for Courage” - we share a timeless holiday poem Mattie wrote at age nine.
Each December, Mattie offered a message of peace meant to bring children and adults - around the block and around the world - together in shared hope and commitment to peace.
This year, Mattie’s Peace Foundation explored compassion as an everyday truth: more than empathy, compassion is awareness of a challenge, an attitude of concern, and action that is meaningful and supportive.
As the year unfolded, we also recognized that compassion - as a pathway to peace - requires courage.
Courage is not fearlessness, but strength during adversity.
Believing in goodness and potential - in ourselves and others – takes courage. So, too, does the choice to peacefully and positively persevere - and come together to cultivate compassionate change.
In "For Our World" - the peace passage Mattie penned on September 11, 2001 and which we explored line by line this year - Mattie reminds us that we are "a mosaic of gifts” and he encourages us to "pray - differently, yet together" in the pursuit of personal and community peace.
In his earlier December Prayer poem, he invites us to “say a prayer, this season, together - for peace.”
Peace is not about agreement or sameness; it is about being with each other – in compassionate and supportive and non-judgmental ways: choices which take courage.
The Board of Directors of Mattie's Peace Foundation is diverse in faith. And we are praying - differently, yet together - for peace, for each of you, and for our world.
We look forward to exploring “A Time for Courage” with you in the coming year.
And we thank you for supporting our mission to cultivate peace, purpose, and play in a world full of challenges - and also full of compassionate, courageous people.
Peace matters, and so do you.
- Jeni Stepanek, PhD (Mama Peace).
