№ 632. Elections 2022: Letter to a Young Activist

 

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything…

…The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important

....All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love....

№ 610. Hope

Off The Leash Daily Dog Cartoons

 

I grew up with an optimist, and I married an optimist, but even the sunniest human being is barely more than a neophyte where hope is concerned. In any household, the true master of hope is the family dog.

№ 608. It’s never too Late

Pickles

 

Vera Jiji, 93, at her home in New York with her cello. “It has given me a way to communicate without using words,” she said.

№ 607. Happy 2022!

President Snow: Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained. 

 

№ 578. Intermission

 

Hope is created at the intersections of 1) passion – a desire for something vital, 2) perseverance – the need to prevail against great odds, and 3) faith – the belief that there could be something greater beyond those odds. When a leader, organization, or even country is facing its darkest days, like the ones we are in today feel like, hope is what gets us through. And while leaders can’t just “give hope” like a pill or “click here for hope” icon, what they can do is create the safe conditions in which people can discover it for themselves.

№ 527. Hope

 

Orange County Register

 

Life blooms. Hope claws up and out. 

From dark rotten things, 

both seek light and wait for rain.

 

№ 487. Working From Home: Hope

I'm stealing this quote from a post of a law school teacher.

Paul Gaugin on Vincent Van Gogh

№ 388. In Media Res

Poppies
Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
in this world that doesn’t

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it’s done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

№ 346. January: A New Hope

(A perennial favorite homily among Fr. James Donelan, S.J.'s faithful--a good read & inspiring thoughts on New Year)

IF you were to enter a home in ancient Rome, you would find in the doorway a dog with two heads. A statue, of course. It is Janus, the Roman god of the doorway. One head looked to the past, the other to the future. Since the first month of the year has this two-fold function, it acts as a bridge between past and future, the Romans called it January. It is a demanding month, a frightening month, perhaps more frightening than a birthday. It requires more than remembering to put the right year on our letters and our checks. It is a threshold, a passage, and every threshold makes us pause. Every passage leaves us different from the way we were.

№ 345. Prayer for the New Year

Prayer for the New Year

№ 344. Christmas Carol

What's a cure for old age and death? For chaos? For pandora's bane?

When world peace is a sight unseen in a galaxy far, far away, when death and sickness come bearing down on our doorposts, what's the proper response?

The year 2017 will come to a close soon. Like in so many years before it, people will again hope for a better year, for a better world.

World peace will always be a cliche. Climate change may soon be a tired slogan on a fake campaign platform. Gender fairness is so 1990s as one writer admitted.

Humankind is a never ending craft.

№ 213. The Piano

I am laying down the piano.
Its voices are cords knotted on my thin frame.