Where does February lead after Valentine's Day? After last weeks flurry of assembling classroom valentines and treats, a morning meditation brought me a scripture from St. Paul, the essence of his teachings: Corinthians 13:13, "and now abide faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love." But rather than the obvious focus on Love with all the Valentine energy, I have been reflecting on the "precursors" to love: faith and hope. Faith and hope lead us to our capacity to Love. Something in me settled with a focus on hope. Saturday then brought further complexity, with a weather alert and another series of storms headed for Southern California this week.
Consider hope. Hope often seems the weaker path in our reckoning with Nature and the turbulence of climate, let alone the conflicts of the social order/disorder. Hope for reconciliation, hope for peace, hope for simply our future. Few of us can move forward in life carrying hopelessness. Daring, choosing to be hopeful seems risky when our hope is not grounded in something of the factual, tangible world. On the other hand hopelessness will simply not motivate us to pursue avenues, experiences, and interactions that reinforce hope. What we read, what we listen to, the social media clips and videos that we watch, inevitably feed and alter our perspective, our "take on life". Community social influence is powerful. Early human beings who bonded into groups, reinforced belonging with shared viewpoints--that reinforcement is still very much there, but the scope is so much more complex. The way we access information and the sheer amount of information is beyond previous generations with single, simple group bonding. "Facts" can and do contradict in the vast modern range of information and communication. Hope is the expectation of Good. Hope is not so much about ignoring facts, but it can be strengthened by a focus on positive facts and their potential. As humans, we collectively build our expectations on the facts we choose to absorb.
Yet ultimately, hope has a deeper inner source, that doesn't reveal all of Life's mechanisms. It is that still quiet inner urge that lifts us into life again and again. As Emily Dickinson wrote, "Hope, is the thing with feathers", our inner bird-like silent song that lifts us again and again. Hope is the source of human resilience. In the worst of times, Hope rises in the heart.
"I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me."
Hope feeds our hearts and prepares us to Love. Maybe this is a good time to trust it. (Susan Nettleton)
for poetry: https://www.hopeisthething.com/the-poem https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48601/yellow-glove