[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 214 (Thursday, December 18, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H6029]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         COUNTING BLESSINGS AND CELEBRATING LIGHT OVER DARKNESS

  (Ms. DEAN of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. DEAN of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I try to slow down at this 
time of the year, a season of giving thanks, coming together, and 
counting blessings. It is a season, regardless of one's faith--maybe 
really because of all of our faith traditions--to celebrate light, 
light over darkness.
  For 75 years, my community of Abington, Pennsylvania, has hosted an 
interfaith Thanksgiving service. This year, hundreds gathered at 
Temple-Beth Am, warmly welcomed by Rabbi Robert Leib.
  Pastors and priests, rabbis and imams, we were young and old, faith 
leaders and civic leaders, and what was clear from the readings and 
beautiful song is our different faiths have so much more in common. It 
is a common call to lift one another, welcome the stranger, feed the 
hungry, mourn with those who mourn, to love one another, price peache 
over conflict, and recognize our common humanity. It is ``Tikkun 
olam''; ``repair the world.''
  This season, as we have come by a way we did not know to the end of 
another year, I am counting blessings and focusing on the light.

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