Hope

“I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience….. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”

― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

_____________________________________________

It is dark

a frigid wind blows

freshly fallen snow

across frozen ground

a dead world

dark, cold, and rigid

walking I am bent forward

fighting the wind

eyes down

cursing the darkness and the cold

but then light grows

slowly, weakly

and I see the tracks of a deer

and then a covey of quail scurrying into the brush

overhead a flock of honkers

make their patterned way south

I see the world come alive

sometimes our souls feel like winterscape

life seems cold and hard

sometimes bitter

all seems out of control

messy

hopeless

we are bent forward into the wind of despair

sometimes all we can do is keep walking

with “revolutionary patience”

all we can do

is keep looking for the light

and keep our eyes wide open for signs of life

and hope