Where I've found my hint of hope recently.......on our small acreage we have new fawns, new cottontail bunnies, new jackrabbit youngsters, and some newly hatched road runners!!!! YES!!! Hope does persist!! The world renews!!
Small beginnings, that's what you said. They're everywhere around us, if only we should begin to look for them. Much like your glorious peonies, much can come from small beginnings.
Checking in from Manitoba, where the wildfires and smoke continue... I feel tears prick my eyes each morning as I drink my coffee and read more stories in the newspaper of the devastation and the pain of 17,000 evacuated folks, losing their homes and so much more... But I have hope in seeing folks in my city and province, coming together to do their best to care for them and serve them in beautiful ways.
Pray for us when you smell that smoke.
Thanks for your words, "Much as I might—we might—wish for some magic spell, some all-transformative moment, that sends evil scurrying and rights every wrong, what we have instead are fragments of good and scraps of grace. Somehow, though, hope is always there." They are the reminder I need this week.
My spark of hope this week is related to that little town of Park Rapids, where my family counts back six generations. Although I and many family members live elsewhere in the country, we return as often as possible in the summers. I get the privilege of working with the lake association on lake and shoreland management; although it’s very different from my day job, it’s work that invigorates me and gives me hope.
I spent a week at the beach and it was needed. I had lots of quiet and naps. Hope is needed. Hope for me comes in small moments no big flares just being able to admire beauty in nature and beauty in people. Seeing the helpers who keep trying gives me hope.
We saw the wildfire smoke all the way down here in Missouri, so I've been thinking about the interconnection of everything, too. Getting wildfire smoke from Canada and migrating indigo buntings from Central America... borders seem very unreal in the face of nature.
I would love to visit the headwaters of the Mississippi someday, since we live near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. (The Missouri headwaters, out in Montana, are very cool!) It's dizzying sometimes to think about the ripple effect of everything, but it's also an encouragement to keep focusing on the small things that we can do. Thank you for this!
I just finished your book which is one of the things giving me hope! Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful writing with us. That last chapter (& the acknowledgements) will stay with me a long time.
In the midst of the deep grief that comes from the loss of a beloved father, and now being a member of the ‘orphan’s club’, taking my 14 month old grandson to his swimming lesson this morning and seeing the joy and excitement as well as fear in his beautiful face and body gives me hope. My dad taught me how to swim. I was so afraid of water as a child that my hair had to be washed Meryl Streep style in Out of Africa. My brother and the other kids would be jumping and splashing in the pool whilst I clung to the edge hating every moment of it. It was dad’s patience and encouragement that gave me the courage to just go for it. I put my head in the water and let go…. No one ever expected this frightened child to one day swim for Singapore or that water would become my safe space. I taught my son how to swim. I never dreamt nor dared to hope that I would one day teach my grandchild. I think of dad whenever I enter the pool with my grandson, the hours spent taking me to 5:30am training sessions and the thousands of ways he showed us unconditional love. Those in the ‘orphan’s club’ have this one deep ache in common - the loss of true unconditional human love that only parents give. It’s not the same if you still have one parent. The hope is found in the parts of dad in his great grandson that he held out to meet at Christmas. The hope is found in this beautiful circle of life. It is found in the way we pay it forward to the next generation. It is found in all this messy love multiplying like those loaves and fishes. And thank you Jeff- Good Soil sustained me on the awful flight back to Singapore knowing that my wonderful dad would no longer be there to greet me and through the jet lagged sleepless nights after the day time rituals of death - wake, funeral, cremation and internment. It made me smile, laugh, cry, ponder and everything in between.
Right now, the rainy season--which finally seems to have gotten started about a month later than usual--is giving me hope. I am thankful for the grace of an in-the-flesh picture of washed fresh and made new every time it rains. Today, the rains have come in waves, and as I've worked around the house, it has been a joy to watch the rain wash the city more than once--a great reminder we don't have to wait until tomorrow to start over.
Thanks for this piece Jeff. Re. what gives me hope: I like to think about how, as our eyes slowly adjust to darkness, they become more able to make out points of light. It's a powerful metaphor I think, and tells us why we should resist the temptation to bury our heads in the sand during dark times.
Where I've found my hint of hope recently.......on our small acreage we have new fawns, new cottontail bunnies, new jackrabbit youngsters, and some newly hatched road runners!!!! YES!!! Hope does persist!! The world renews!!
Small beginnings, that's what you said. They're everywhere around us, if only we should begin to look for them. Much like your glorious peonies, much can come from small beginnings.
Checking in from Manitoba, where the wildfires and smoke continue... I feel tears prick my eyes each morning as I drink my coffee and read more stories in the newspaper of the devastation and the pain of 17,000 evacuated folks, losing their homes and so much more... But I have hope in seeing folks in my city and province, coming together to do their best to care for them and serve them in beautiful ways.
Pray for us when you smell that smoke.
Thanks for your words, "Much as I might—we might—wish for some magic spell, some all-transformative moment, that sends evil scurrying and rights every wrong, what we have instead are fragments of good and scraps of grace. Somehow, though, hope is always there." They are the reminder I need this week.
My spark of hope this week is related to that little town of Park Rapids, where my family counts back six generations. Although I and many family members live elsewhere in the country, we return as often as possible in the summers. I get the privilege of working with the lake association on lake and shoreland management; although it’s very different from my day job, it’s work that invigorates me and gives me hope.
I spent a week at the beach and it was needed. I had lots of quiet and naps. Hope is needed. Hope for me comes in small moments no big flares just being able to admire beauty in nature and beauty in people. Seeing the helpers who keep trying gives me hope.
So helpful! You write as if words were all the music we could ever need tomorrow our hearts soar!
Itasca is one of my favorite places; did you happen to get a chance to try the huckleberry ice cream?
We saw the wildfire smoke all the way down here in Missouri, so I've been thinking about the interconnection of everything, too. Getting wildfire smoke from Canada and migrating indigo buntings from Central America... borders seem very unreal in the face of nature.
I would love to visit the headwaters of the Mississippi someday, since we live near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. (The Missouri headwaters, out in Montana, are very cool!) It's dizzying sometimes to think about the ripple effect of everything, but it's also an encouragement to keep focusing on the small things that we can do. Thank you for this!
I just finished your book which is one of the things giving me hope! Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful writing with us. That last chapter (& the acknowledgements) will stay with me a long time.
In the midst of the deep grief that comes from the loss of a beloved father, and now being a member of the ‘orphan’s club’, taking my 14 month old grandson to his swimming lesson this morning and seeing the joy and excitement as well as fear in his beautiful face and body gives me hope. My dad taught me how to swim. I was so afraid of water as a child that my hair had to be washed Meryl Streep style in Out of Africa. My brother and the other kids would be jumping and splashing in the pool whilst I clung to the edge hating every moment of it. It was dad’s patience and encouragement that gave me the courage to just go for it. I put my head in the water and let go…. No one ever expected this frightened child to one day swim for Singapore or that water would become my safe space. I taught my son how to swim. I never dreamt nor dared to hope that I would one day teach my grandchild. I think of dad whenever I enter the pool with my grandson, the hours spent taking me to 5:30am training sessions and the thousands of ways he showed us unconditional love. Those in the ‘orphan’s club’ have this one deep ache in common - the loss of true unconditional human love that only parents give. It’s not the same if you still have one parent. The hope is found in the parts of dad in his great grandson that he held out to meet at Christmas. The hope is found in this beautiful circle of life. It is found in the way we pay it forward to the next generation. It is found in all this messy love multiplying like those loaves and fishes. And thank you Jeff- Good Soil sustained me on the awful flight back to Singapore knowing that my wonderful dad would no longer be there to greet me and through the jet lagged sleepless nights after the day time rituals of death - wake, funeral, cremation and internment. It made me smile, laugh, cry, ponder and everything in between.
Right now, the rainy season--which finally seems to have gotten started about a month later than usual--is giving me hope. I am thankful for the grace of an in-the-flesh picture of washed fresh and made new every time it rains. Today, the rains have come in waves, and as I've worked around the house, it has been a joy to watch the rain wash the city more than once--a great reminder we don't have to wait until tomorrow to start over.
Thanks for this piece Jeff. Re. what gives me hope: I like to think about how, as our eyes slowly adjust to darkness, they become more able to make out points of light. It's a powerful metaphor I think, and tells us why we should resist the temptation to bury our heads in the sand during dark times.
Oh and I love the sentiment in this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOS7OiLE11c&list=RDVOS7OiLE11c&start_radio=1