An imperfect year ends with hope for tomorrow

Heidi Stevens, Tribune News Service

At the start of 2025, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde led a prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral. President Donald Trump had just taken the oath of office, and Budde had a plea. “I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away,” she said. “And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.” The president, we now know, would not heed her call. But as we look back on 2025, Budde’s plea was a light we can follow to better, brighter days. On my list of 25 things I’m carrying into 2026, her words sit at the top.

The other 24, in no particular order:

1. This Chicago Bears season. They keep winning, which is fun. But the city’s absolute dumbfounded jubilation — The Wiener's Circle deals! The shirtless coach! The packed stands when it’s below zero and they’re playing the Cleveland Browns! — is everything.

2. Interviewing author Catherine Newman at a Glenview Public Library event and feeling the hum of love and curiosity and collective humanity that radiates from a room full of readers.

3. Watching Early Birds co-founder Susie Lee address a silent, rapt crowd gathered at the Park West for one of the dance parties she created. Lee was in a wheelchair and her voice was ravaged by cancer. She whispered into the microphone about the beauty of sisterhood and we heard her loud and clear. “Even in times of s--- and despair,” she told us, “there’s always room for joy and connection.” That was her last Early Birds. She died on Aug. 3 at age 49.

4. My karaoke nights with girlfriends, in the spirit of making room for joy and connection, and in honor of our friend who narrowly survived a brain aneurysm.

5. Watching the Leo High School choir represent Chicago so joyfully and purposefully on “America’s Got Talent” and beyond — including a visit from former President Barack Obama, who joined them in song. (Full disclosure: I joined Leo’s advisory council in January 2025.)

6. Speaking of singing: Working at a coffee shop on a stressful, deadline-packed day and hearing the baristas bust out in harmonized perfection to “Last Christmas” by Wham!

7. Speaking of coffee shops: Working at another one on another stressful, deadline-packed day and hearing a girl next to me tell her friend, “Oh my God, stop ruining your own day.” Truly epic life advice.

8. Seeing Coldplay with my kids a week after the CEO Jumbotron incident. Because what happens at a Coldplay concert is never supposed to stay at a Coldplay concert. The band's shows are love and joy and looking out for each other and imagining a world where we remember that’s the whole point.

9. Seeing Luke Combs at Lollapalooza singing Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and wearing a Ryne Sandberg jersey in honor of the beloved Cubs player who had died three days prior.

10. Cheering for my friends (and strangers) at the Chicago Marathon and being so inspired by the collective, collaborative energy that I went home and signed up to run in 2026. (With my daughter!)

11. Watching Sam, the man in charge of maintenance at my apartment building, pull a dog treat out of his shirt pocket every time I’m on an elevator with him and a dog. If we arrive at the dog’s floor too quickly, Sam holds the elevator button to keep the doors from opening until every last crumb is gobbled.

12. Your examples of small, kind things you’ve witnessed after I shared mine about Sam.

13. Demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes to protest the cruelty of the current administration. “Tactical frivolity,” it’s been dubbed.

14. Dan Savage on his podcast, reminding us: “Anyone who tells you that making time for joy is a distraction or a betrayal has no idea what they’re talking about. During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon and we danced all night. And it was the dance that kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.”

15. Every act of resistance that reminds us what we’re fighting for.