Forgiveness is a complex experience that changes an offended
person's spiritual feelings, emotions, thoughts, actions, and
self-confidence level. I believe learning to forgive the hurts
and grudges of our life may be an important step for us to feel
more hopeful and spiritually connected and less depressed.
Beneath yet another blanket of gently falling snow, I find myself pondering the warming glow of hope. Endless gray days, dying yearling deer, and seemingly lifeless forest encroach upon my heart. I know that spring will come, with its joyful melodies and vibrant hues and teeming life. Likewise that winter holds its own still beauty, paring down the landscape so we can see its silhouettes more clearly. Yet at times our world seems too far cast in winter's thrall to be able to remember and envision its renewal. How does one hold on to hope amid the chill of our inhumanities and senseless overpowering of the earth? From whence does hope come? How can we cradle our hands around it to protect it from the snuffing winds and cynical voices? To choose hope is to tap into the memory of faithfulness and to wait with gratitude for seeds of possibility hidden beneath the snow.
Hope is the foundation or beginning step of faith and an essential expression of love. It provides the formless general aspiration for that which is higher and better, and then faith fills out the picture with the specific shape that a better self or a better world would take. As the expression of love, it sends that image out to the loved one and to the universe. By hoping you are taking an active part in the process by which the present creates the future.
Hope is a human act of commitment to and investment in the future. Hope is an act of human courage that refuses to cherish the present too much or be reduced to despair by present circumstance. Hope is the capacity to relinquish the present for the sake of what is imagined to be a reachable future...
Sureness about God's large resolve...is a summons...Now is the time for yielding justice, for foolish forgiveness, for outrageous generosity, for elaborate hospitality. None of these acts can come from fear, anxiety, or despair. But they are all acts that evoke new futures that the fearful think are impossible. Hope in the end is a contradiction of the dominant version of reality...it is at the root of human well-being, for ourselves as for all our would-be neighbors.
~ Walter Brueggemann in Sojourners Magazine, Dec 2013
I see in [these] folks the human capacity for change, for redemption, for forgiveness. I believe that every one of us, made in God's image as we are, has that capacity. Our challenge is to learn to call it forth in each person. Our hope is that we will succeed.
~ Shelley Douglass in Sojourners Magazine, Dec 2013
How shall the mighty river
reach the tiny seed?
See it rise silently
to the sun's yearning,
sail from a winter's cloud
flake after silent flake
piling up layer upon layer
until the thaw of spring
to meet the seedling's need.
Make tender, Lord, my heart:
release through gentleness
Thine own tremendous power
hid in the snowflake's art.
There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
Suddenly an influx of light, though it was late, filled my room. I looked out and saw that the pond was already calm and full of hope as on a summer evening, though the ice was dissolved but yesterday. There seemed to be some intelligence in the pond which responded to the unseen serenity in a distant horizon.
Look deeply into your life.
Search out the hidden things
within your circumstances.
The beauty is there.
Comfort and forgiveness are available.
Hope is always waiting
for you to find.
Dusty cobblestones glow in the darkness
I walk out thinking the moon is illuminating them
but the sky is only pinkness
A city engulfed in its own smog and light
Red sky prophesies say this is the end of days
A lone frog singing says the days will last
Outside I am overcome
Inside I am too big for my own cage
Shining intensity at my own smog
It glows too brightly
to see the moon
or stars beyond
I wait for a shift
For things to end
Or for a miracle
that will come
and clean everything
Like the rain
the frog is calling
Wild winter winds depart
in a final, dying howl.
Blackbird returns, a red-winged
oracle of spring,
announcing new life and renewed light,
shimmering with possibilities
of ever-circling Hope.
~ from “Red-Winged Blackbird” in POEMS OF OTHER WORLDS by Richard Bachtold
Greetings dear friends! Having recently returned from a trip to Israel and Istanbul, I find myself pondering how we nurture compassion within ourselves? What makes one choose gracious hospitality and open gestures of the heart? Bedouin camel herder, Palestinian shopkeeper, Hassidic father, Israeli soldier, Kurdish innkeeper —such a tapestry of religions, beliefs, ways of life, hopes, and fears. Whether we interact through simple kindness and respect or fear and antagonism depends on what we see in the other. Do we look with eyes of the heart to find our common humanity? Do we put relationships in the context of I–Thou or do we build walls and establish divides of right and wrong? Do we allow our eyes to meet and spark a connection or do we turn away? What inner work will help ignite the fire of love?
It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love others. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection, and filled with reverence for the solitude of others. Solitude and silence teach me to love others for what they are, not for what they say.
It has been well observed that though nations may differ from nations, communities from communities, and people from people, human nature is the same everywhere. As there is but one sun that warms and gives light to the earth, there is but one God who teaches us to love one another and care for each other.
