HOPE

Hope is the engine that drives us to the positive side of life. It is a force unto itself.

Speaking of Force, Princess Leia has her own take on hope in Star Wars, The Last Jedi:

"Hope is like the sun - if you only believe in it when you can see it you will never make it through the night."

Emily Dickinson wrote of its constancy:

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all.”

Thomas Merton’s core philosophy was hope in connection and interpersonal relationships. Shunning religious regulation and tradition of the East and West, he sought common ground in core spiritual concepts and universal truths such as kindness and compassion.

“Do not depend on the hope of results...You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

What do you hope for? Are you envisioning your journey with hope of a particular material thing as your goal, or a physical place as your destination? With whom does your dream unite you at the end of your journey?

Are you hopeful for relationship? Are you hopeful for community? Are you forgetting to look ahead at who will share your destination circumstances, contributing to your life and activities?

Hope can be a tremendous source of energy and motivation. It carries us through the valleys we experience, and allows us to feel spiritual resilience until our feet are planted firmly again. We might just take care that we are not using hope as a substitute for completing our vision for our next chapter of life. Using hope for its intended purpose, we can plan and prepare our spirit for reconnection with others. In that reconnection, we reunite with the practice of self-reliance, because, and I repeat Princess Leia’s admonition...

“If you only believe in it when you can see it you will never make it through the night."

Let us navigate in hope through our night of the spirit, and then, with the strength we gain through the light of day, rejoin the community on whom we rely for fellowship, and the people on whom we rely for love.