Category: hope
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Dreams
In honor of Juneteenth, I offer one of my favorite poems by Langston Hughes. Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. –Joy
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Hope and confidence
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence,” Helen Keller once said.
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Love is stronger
“Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain,” the priest and writer Henri Nouwen once said. ”The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves…
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Blessed are you
My friend Kerry Smith, a Methodist minister, shared this blessing in her church newsletter. Kerry found it on Kate Bowler’s podcast. Blessed are you, dear one, who have been told you are too big, too loud, too brown, too weird, too old, too much. You belong here. Blessed are you, you who navigate your workplace…
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Counting our blessings
Throughout the pandemic, my husband Jerry and I have counted our blessings. We have plenty of money to buy food, our children and their spouses are doing fine, and we communicate with friends with letters and text messages and on the phone, on FaceTime and on Zoom. We have been not been ill with COVID.…
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Go to bed
I feel most discouraged at night. When I share my anxiety with my husband Jerry, his refrain always is: “Go to bed.” And, I always feel better in the morning. As the writer Barbara Kingsolver says, “Hope is a renewable option. If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get…
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Look for the light
“For there is always light,” writes poet Amanda Gorman. “If we’re brave enough to see it If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
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Open your soul
Our country needs more compassion–and more hope. “We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts,” President Joe Biden said in his inaugural address. “If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we’re willing to stand in the other person’s shoes, as my mom would say, just for…
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May your hope have feathers
May there be hope perching in your soul! May your hope have feathers so that it can be your companion during the next year. As Emily Dickinson said, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.”
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Where hope lies
“The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself,” James Baldwin once said.