We can truly be successful only in the work to which we have been called. The work is not ours. It is God's, and we are privileged to be worked through by God . . . How foolish, then, for anyone to think and proclaim that he has a certain work to do for God. God may have a certain work to do through him, that is if he is sufficiently humble, but that is quite a different thing . . .
Until the culture recognizes the legitimacy of growing down, each person in the culture struggles blindly to make sense of the darkness that the soul requires to deepen into life.
If you wish to love you must learn to see again...You must tear away from your being the roots of society that have penetrated to the marrow. You must drop out. Externally everything will go on as before, you will continue to be in the world, but no longer of it...And in your heart you will now be free at last and utterly alone...There is no one there by your side, absolutely no one. At first it will seem unbearable, but that is only because you are unaccustomed to aloneness. But if you manage to stay there for a while the desert will suddenly blossom into Love.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. 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, excerpt from "The Wild Geese" in THE SELECTED POEMS OF WENDELL BERRY
Dear Friends ~ The willow stump, cracked and gray, has sprouted fresh fronds. They wave brightly above the old tree's broken trunk like a vibrant pennant. Meanwhile, the long-unpruned pear tree is grandly and boldly attired in abundant white blossoms. Brilliant yellow finches and glossy cowbirds adorn the feeder once again. Such heralds of Earth's faithful renewal, of the cycles that are always ending and beginning again, cry out profound and essential news. In this time of climate crisis, cultural turmoil, and now the coronavirus, hope takes on a deeper, more intense hue. I wonder if it is the moment now to dig in soul ground, in the bowels of what we know. Ancient wisdom from every spiritual tradition beckons us to kneel down into the mystery of that dark hummus and dig with open hands. Who knows what we may find? A tap root, an anchor, a wellspring, a seed that one day will grow? ~ Lindsay
Our human compassion binds us the one to the other
– not in pity or
patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common
suffering into hope for the future.
~ Nelson Mandela in a Message at Healing & Reconciliation Service, December, 2000
In the practice of conscious love you begin to
discover...a hope that is related not to outcome
but to a wellspring... a source of strength that
wells up from deep within you independent of all
outcomes... It is a hope that can never be taken
away from you because it is love itself working in
you, conferring the strength to stay present...
~ Cynthia Bourgeault, in LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH
So in the end I am left only with hope.
I hope the nights are transformative.
I hope every dawn brings deeper love,
for each of us individually and for
the world as a whole. I hope that
John of the Cross was right when
he said the intellect is transformed
into faith, and the will into love
and the memory into – hope.
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision...This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, know that they hold future promise...We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities...We are prophets of a future not our own.
~ John Cardinal Dearden, homily written by Fr. Ken Untener
Hope locates itself in the premises that we don't know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act...Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable.
...If we can stay in touch with ourselves, if
we can find the connection to our deeper
selves, we can find this deeper level of
hope that truly should be called
imagination...in the depths of each person
there is a greater self and a core
imagination that is truly the source of
one's life.
~ Michael Meade in LIVING MYTH podcast, Episode 167, "The Second Level of Hope"
Is it possible to see the future as dark and darkening further; to reject false hope and
desperate pseudo-optimism without collapsing into despair?...if you don't feel despair, in
times like these, you are not fully alive. But there has to be something beyond despair,
too; or rather, something that accompanies it, like a companion on the road....I am
going to pick up [my scythe] and go and find some grass to mow. I am going to cut
great swaths of it...I am going to walk ahead, following the ground... I am going to
breathe the still-clean air and listen to the still-singing birds and reflect on the fact that
the earth is older and harder than the machine that is eating it—that it is indeed more
resilient than fragile—and that change comes quickly when it comes, and that
knowledge is not the same as wisdom.
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope within or we don't; it is a
dimension of the soul not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the
world or estimate of the situation. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the
heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored
somewhere beyond its horizons.
Hope is what sits by a window and waits for one more
dawn, despite the fact that there is not one ounce of
proof in tonight's black, black sky that it can possibly
come.
~ Joan Chittister in SCARRED BY STRUGGLE, TRANSFORMED BY HOPE
Active hope is a practice...It is something we do rather than have. Since active hope
doesn't require our optimism, we can apply it even in areas where we feel hopeless.
The guiding impetus is intention; we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or
express.
Hide not from Love, O friends,
sink not into the sea of despair,
the mire of hatred.
Awaken, O my heart, that I drown not
in fear!
Too long have I sailed where'ere
the winds have blown!
Drop anchor!
Dear Friends ~ Spring has arrived in all its glory. As I walk the labyrinth at Still Point, the Friends of Silence retreat house where Nan Merrill's library lives, I'm reminded time and again that "This is Holy Ground," both secretly and brazenly transforming itself in all seasons. Winter was mild in West Virginia with crocuses up early by the front step. March brought hints of the transformation to come. Shadowed by the dark clouds of Corona Virus spreading through the world, daffodils bloomed in profusion down by the pond and at the woods' edge.
...Open my eyes to the moments of resurrection that surround me every day. There is always something rising, opening to new life, budding and blossoming, forgiving and transforming. Teach me to live awake that I may recognize the renaissance being celebrated in my midst at every moment. Make me a disciple of joy. Amen.
We carried our grief
to the ocean's edge,
sat quiet in the sand;
the sorrow softened
as the waves washed
over them and the
brilliance of the
morning sun upon
the shimmering waters
filled our hearts
with wonder.
Women are spinners and weavers; we are the ones who spin the threads and weave them into meaning and pattern. Like silkworms, we create those threads out of our own substance, pulling the strong, fine fibers out of our own hearts and wombs. It's time to make some new threads; time to strengthen the frayed wild edges of our own being and then weave ourselves back into the fabric of our culture. Once we knew the patterns for weaving the world; we can piece them together again...we can remake the world. This is what women do. This is our work.
A blessing is a form of grace; it is invisible. Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness. There are no limits to it... For one who believes in it, a blessing can signal the start of a journey of transformation. It belongs to the same realm as the inner life— its effect becomes only indirectly visible in the changed quality of one's experience. Where before gravity and deadness had prevailed, there is now a new sense of animation and lightness. Where there was grief, a new sense of presence comes alive. In the wall of blindness a window of vision opens.
~ John O'Donohue,"To Retrieve the Lost Art of Blessing," in TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US
So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years...Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts...Practice resurrection.
~ Wendell Berry, excerpt from "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"
