Dear Ones,

I have to admit that I’m a little unsure of my capacity to muse on this month’s theme, choosing hope.  After all, for some (many?) of us, hope doesn’t feel like a choice, especially when it’s packaged as it often is this time of year, as a soothing reassurance that everything will be ok.  But what if hope is more like what the theologian Jürgen Moltmann offers: “Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart.”  What if, rather than a calming force, hope is our own response to what we believe should be true in the world?  What if a hopeful perspective about what the future might bring, creates change in us – which then brings change in the world? 

This month’s Soul Matters packet compilers put it like this: “When we believe that a new day is possible, we don’t just sit down and wait to see what happens.  We get up and go out to meet the light.  When hope convinces us that there are unseen forces working for the good, we begin to look around more closely, and in doing so, we notice that darkness and pain are not all that is there.  When hope’s holy impatience gets into our bones, we start acting as if we are worthy of that new day now.  Which in turn changes others by convincing them that we all have waited long enough.”  This reminds me of the “Earthseed” credo in Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower: “All that you touch is change.  All you change, changes you.”  Can we choose to believe this?

This holiday season, no matter what your faith journey tells you might be true about God / Spirit / the Holy / the Universe, my wish is that it brings you hope that a new day is possible, and that hope is transformational for you.

In faith and love,

Karen