This TED Talk was a stretch for me. I have never stepped on South American soil, nor do I understand the complex issues around guerrilla warfare. But I do know conflict. 

The speaker, Jose Sokoloff, is from Columbia, and clearly loves his country. Yet the bitter fighting has continued for fifty years. Thousands of families were broken by the recruitment of their young.

The government has created strategies through politics, the military and the legal system. But they had no method for communicating with soldiers deep in the jungle.  The people who are bearing arms felt trapped by the system even if they thought they understood what they were doing. To leave felt scarier than staying. 

For the past eight years Sokoloff has tried novel ways to reach the deployed soldiers. One is to cover huge trees with Christmas lights, and hang a sign.

"If Christmas can come to the jungle, you can come home. Demobilize."

Another was to publish photographs of these people as young children, with messages from their mothers to come home. Most of the army feels afraid to leave, sure that they will be rejected by their families.

"Before you were a soldier, you were my child. Come home." 

They collected messages for the guerrilla, and loaded them on to boats, along with candy and toys. Then they floated them down the river where the squadrons were hidden.

These efforts contributed to a person demobilizing every six hours.

Most of us have unresolved conflict in our lives. We try to ignore that person we refuse to reconcile with, or feel unable to. Yet there is a softening at Christmas that helps miracles ripen. 

What could happen if we unearthed a photograph of us with the person we no longer speak to, before the siege sucked the life out of our friendship? We could tuck it into an envelope, with a message of peace. 

The light that shone above Bethlehem can also illuminate the dark corners of our past. ​