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Posts from the ‘Hope’ Category

Feb 10

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Sunshine and Hope

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”― Anne Frank, Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex

Rest, sunshine and beauty
To restore, bind and heal
To overcome the chaos
To not accept things as they are
To chart the path back to humanity
The journey forward in love, compassion, kindness
Offer hope, peace, joy
Improve the world
One act at a time, right where you are
Defy and define the darkness
Cast light.

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”― Anne Frank

Feb 1

Any Given Circumstances

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

To choose, again and again
To respond
To keep going
To channel energy, attention, focus
To create, build, transform
Infinite hope, right action
Kindness, generosity, small acts
These are what changes the world, one person at a time
What can I do?
Love through words and actions, daily

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

 

Dec 13

Bright Hope

“Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He’s made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, “Let’s go do that together.”― Bob Goff

“Being engaged is a way of doing life, a way of living and loving. It’s about going to extremes and expressing the bright hope that life offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels darkness with light. That’s what I want my life to be all about – full of abandon, whimsy, and in love.”― Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World

A deeper listening
To hear the soft reply
In words and silence
Silence especially
So much to say, to reveal
Hardened dry topsoil tilled
Seeds planted
Nourished in fertile rich soil
Winter rest
Hibernation, rooting, germination
The nonwork work
Waiting, abiding, anticipation
Promise of spring
For new life to rise to the surface
Due time, not our time
Always on time
To bud
To unfold
To bloom
Full abandon, whimsy, love.
Bright, bursting hope.

“You don’t need a plan; you just need to be present.”― Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World

Nov 13

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The Action of Hope

“But hope can heal us, for hope unsettles us with the passionate unrest that propels us toward great things, and it is imagination that gives us the entrance ticket into the hope-filled world of possibility.”― The Irish Jesuits

“The only recognizable feature of hope is action.”― Grace Paley

Fall to winter.
Short days.
Long nights.
Cold winds.
Downshift to second gear.
Slowing.
Resisting.
Resting.
Light brighter in the dark.
When it makes no sense is when joy makes the most sense.
Where it does its work.
Beauty, hope, kindness – healing balms.
Life jackets to keep our head above water.
Ropes that pull us through when we are too tired to push.
Detours, delays, potholes, four-way stops where no one knows whose turn it is.
This is the stuff of life.
We choose daily to participate or spectate.
To criticize or create.
To judge or love.
Channel, guide, direct your energy, attention, time, ability.
Laughter is a sister of light.
Shaking us from complacency, self-pity, licking our wounds into the present moment.
Engage with life fully.
The whole messy thing.
Cast light, love, peace.

“The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.”― Adrienne Rich

Nov 6

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Imparting Hope

“Imparting hope to others has nothing to do with exhorting or cheering them on. It has everything to do with relationships that honor the soul, encourage the heart, inspire the mind, quicken the step, and heal the wounds we suffer along the way.”― Parker J. Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, & Getting Old

Mother Teresa’s Anyway Poem

“People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.”

Love well today.
Each day.
Kindness, generosity, resilience, empathy, compassion, hope, love.
These are what bind, heal, last, survive, sustain, overcome, teach, thrive, build, rebuild, unite.
The good fight of love.

“The highest form of love is the love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference.”― Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

Nov 5

Shovel Ready

“When we ask God to move a mountain, God may give us a shovel.”― Shane Claiborne

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”― Frank Herbert, Dune

Love over fear.
Hope over despair.
Kindness, joy, light.
Build, create, contribute, invite, welcome, connect, understand, inquire, transform.
To choose daily, consistently, no matter the “facts.”
Keep digging, climbing, going.

“I made a decision a long time ago that I was going to choose joy. I even painted a big rectangle on my wall and printed it in big letters so I wouldn’t forget to make that choice every day. The major word in that rectangle isn’t joy, it’s CHOOSE. It’s looking around me when life is difficult and trading every complaint I have for something beautiful in my life that far outweighs it. I know, it’s that Pollyanna personified thing again, but living joyful beats being cynical any day of the week.”― Jessica N. Turner, The Fringe Hours: Making Time for You

Oct 8

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Komorebi

Komorebi – Japanese for “sunlight leaking through trees”

“The luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful. It can’t help it.”― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

Sunlight leaking through.
Luminous, brilliant.
To have eyes to see anew.
Curiosity to question.
Moxie to demand more.
To go deeper.
Hard-earned hope.
Warrior.
Resilience and grit.
Hope is a muscle.
Flex it daily.

“Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth.
Hopefulness is not a neutral position.
It’s adversarial.
It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.” – Nick Cave

Sep 19

1 Comment

Absurd Hope

“Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.”― Walter Brueggemann

“May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers,
half-truths and superficial relationships,
so that we will live deeply in our hearts.
May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression
and exploitation of people and the earth,
so that we will work for justice, equity and peace.
May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer,
so that we will reach out our hands
to comfort them and change their pain to joy.
And may God bless us with the foolishness to think that
we can make a difference in our world,
so that we will do the things which others say cannot be done.” – Sister Ruth Fox

To be in the world and not of it.
To not succumb to fear.
To keep swinging.
To stay in the game rather than spectate.
To contribute rather than criticize.
To care rather than numb.
To not accept the status quo.
To character not flash.
To delineate, see through, understand.
To principles not rhetoric.
To laughter, light, awe, wonder, beauty.
To compassion, heart, kindness, resilience, optimism, joy, love.
Absurd, radical, gritty, tough, foolish, brilliant hope.
Lighthouse in the night.
To do things which others say cannot be done.
Fight the good fight.

“Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.”― Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

Jul 25

Double Down

“After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.”― Gerard Manley Hopkins

“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”― Eckhart Tolle

Optimism.
Kindness.
Generosity.
Delight.
Joy.
Fresh eyes.
Wandering down unfamiliar paths.
Putting down old to make space for new.
Explore, inquire and listen
Guided by love, not stalled in fear.
Double down on these.
Hope with a blueprint.

“If you don’t become the ocean, you will get seasick every day.” – Leonard Cohen

Feb 3

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Defiant Hope

“Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“…And we pray, not for new
earth or heaven, but to be quiet
in heart, and in eye clear.
What we need is here.”― Wendell Berry

Five to one, positive to overcome negative.
Watch and guard what you take in.
What you put out.
Thoughts that lead to words to action or inaction.
Vitriol or encouragement?
Enthusiasm or apathy?
Generosity or ego?
Care, optimism, love, gratitude, kindness, peace, joy.
Offer these in abundance, without reserve, overflowing.
Small thoughts, words, acts.
The stuff of transformation and fruition.
A smile, eye to eye contact, reaching out, opening up, letting go.
Hope is strength, not weakness.
It understands reality, the odds, difficulty.
And chooses to respond rather than react.
To give rather than take.
To engage rather than sit idle.
Defiant hope, a powerful act, practice and commitment.
Be defiant daily.

“Hope is not naive, and hope is not an opiate. Hope may be the single greatest act of defiance against a politics of pessimism and against a culture of despair.”― Sharon Brous

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