Sydney kneels next to Pete’s legs. “Okay, so I think we all have to put our hands on this pointer-thing.”

Life—even with its inevitable trauma, pain, grief, misery, and death—is a gift. A gift we sabotage when we imprison ourselves in our fears of punishment, failure, and abandonment; in our need for approval; in shame and blame; in superiority and inferiority; in our need for power and control. To celebrate the gift of life is to find the gift in everything that happens, even the parts that are difficult, that we’re not sure we can survive. To celebrate life, period. To live with joy, love, and passion.” To choose love is to become kind and good and loving for you. To stop rehashing the past. To stop apologizing for not being there to save everyone. It means saying, “I did the best I could.””

Over the course of an hour, you will be taken on a magical journey by host Khorin Khorin Gurav through twelve individual but connected tales that celebrate stories and the power they can have. Sydney lives in a peach-colored stucco home straight out of the twentieth century. Hardly haunted house material. Still, my stomach squirms. The law prohibits the selling of items that perpetuate belief in the supernatural. The thing is, forbidding teenagers to dabble in anything supernatural only guarantees that they will. I fell in love with ‘The Gifts’ from the opening in the Shropshire woods through to its dramatic conclusion. I found Liz Hyder’s writing beautiful and loved the imagery of these mysterious transformations. There was an earthquake in California, the second one in a month, another riot broke out at a fetal modification clinic in Chicago, a drive-by shooting in Tallahassee, which is like, twenty minutes from where we live, and the unrest in north Africa continues to escalate. Dad thinks it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. gets involved. Dad thinks if we don’t get Egypt under control as soon as possible, we’ll have World War III on our hands. I think he should read the newspaper to himself. But he insists Pete and I know what’s going on in the world.

I can’t say that everything happens for a reason, that there’s a purpose in injustice or suffering. But I can say that pain, hardship, and suffering are the gift that helps us grow and learn and become who we are meant to be.” She leads Pete over to the small crowd lounging around a coffee table. There are five juniors. Two seniors. A bowl of candy, a bag of pretzels, and a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff. Pete squeezes in on the couch and Sydney sits on his knee like the two are a couple. Elliana—a girl with an eyebrow ring and fluorescent colored bracelets covering both of her wrists—shoots daggers at Sydney. there’s much I’ve gained and lost and almost lost. All of it has taught me how much I have, and how to celebrate each precious moment, without waiting for someone else’s permission or approval. I am reminded again and again: to choose hope is to choose life. Hope does not guarantee anything about what will happen in the future... But choosing hope affects what gets my attention every day."Sydney hops off Pete’s knee and pulls the drapes across the large picture window. The swinging vertical blinds chop apart the waning daylight. In London, there are rumours that the body of a 'fallen angel' was found in the Thames. An ambitious surgeon, desperate to make a name for himself, is gripped by a dangerous obsession. Desperate to find a live ‘specimen’ he is willing to do anything achieve his goal. You could have died, too, somehow. Perhaps there’ve been times when you’ve wanted to. But you didn’t. Hope is the conviction that you survived all that you survived so that you can be a good role model. An ambassador for freedom. A person who focuses not on what you’ve lost, but on what’s still here for you, on the work you’re called to do.” If we decide something’s hopeless or impossible, it will be. If we take action, who knows what we might manifest? Hope is curiosity writ large. A willingness to cultivate within yourself whatever kindles light, and to shine that light into the darkest places.” Mary, a woman with high aspirations, becomes suspicious of Edward when she is asked to investigate a rumour about the Angel of the Thames. Wanting to further her career as a writer (in a time when she has to write under a male pseudonym), Mary enlists the help of her long time friend, Richard, to get to the bottom of what’s going on.