Signs of Hope
The powerful and wondrous gift of grace encourages all of us to seek to experience the sense of hope and connection we have come to appreciate.
-Katie Mahon and Joan Luise Hill in The Miracle Collectors
Hope is in the air. As we look toward Memorial Day, honoring those who gave their lives in the hope of freedom and justice and for a world where we could live in peace, I know that hope is still alive. I saw it on a recent trip to Mexico (OK, I may be crazy, but there was an important wedding to attend), when a much smaller local gentleman helped the 6’5” heavyset American to his feet after he fell hard onto his knees having tripped over the threshold entering the Cancun Airport. I read about it in the teacher in Rigby, Idaho who ran back in and disarmed the shooter at her elementary school after she had orchestrated the safe exit of her own classroom full of students. I feel it in the hugs now freely dispensed from friends who haven’t been seen for over a year and in smiles and conversation from the people at my favorite haunts that have recently reopened. After a year of lockdown, hope and connection and survival all seem like miracles to me.
Spring has long been known as a time of rebirth, but this year that rebirth is not the sole purview of Mother Nature. It is a time for all of us to be renewed, to rekindle our love for one another, to consider the lessons of quarantine and social distancing, and to cut to the chase of what’s important and what just takes up time in our lives. What is our “one thing”? How can we be useful, find meaning, deepen connection? We can’t work toward a better world if we don’t have hope that things can be better than they are.
We have been handed the opportunity to take up the mantle of hope for ourselves and for one another. How can we rise to the occasion or be the miracle for someone else like so many who have gone before us have done? Hope doesn’t require selflessness; it requires thought and thoughtful delegation of our time, our talents, and sometimes even our treasure. Hope is a tie that binds us together. This month I’ll be giving the Commencement address (in person!) at the high school I graduated from fifty short years ago, and as I look at the diverse faces of the graduates and those who love them, I know that beside pride and joy, I’ll see the visual manifestation of hope - and I’ll rejoice. (Joan)