HOPE
Sometimes it gets a little banged around
Friends,
I went to an event last week where we were to “write down what brings us to our knees”, place that in a bowl, and then to pick a stone with a word on it. When I reached into the bowl, I intentionally reached for a stone I felt calling to me. It was not the top stone.
The word I got was HOPE. The stone has a weight to it. It is smooth, almost glassy and shiny. The word covers most of the face of the rock. HOPE. I like how it is uneven and thinner on the top while thicker and smooth on the bottom.
I needed that word to carry me and so I have had it in my pocket everyday. Except, when I opened the washer door yesterday, I saw that stone laying plainly in view. I had forgotten to take it out of my pocket before washing my shorts. My first thought was “at least it wasn’t chapstick!” But there was my hope… washed but battered around. It was still smooth, cool to the touch, and the writing was still there which was a surprise to me. What was different, was some tiny spots of roughness on the top where it had been tossed around and hit the sides of the washer.
As I thought about this I found it a metaphor for how I am feeling now. And, maybe this stone is more genuine, somehow more authentic. HOPE has been tossed around, bruised, and still it is worth carrying. I can still feel the coolness, the smoothness, and the little rough edges. It is there to remind me that our hope may get bruised or tumbled around, and yet, it is still worth carrying, touching, and holding in our pocket.
Peace and make it a happy 4th,
Jace
The Gardener 85
Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.
Rabindarnath Tagore
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45667/the-gardener-85
Sometimes
Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
Sheenagh Pugh
https://www.oatridge.co.uk/poems/s/sheenagh-pugh-sometimes.php#google_vignetteA House Called Tomorrow
You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries
And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step
Everyone who has come before you,
All the yous that you have been,
The mothers of your mother,
The fathers of your father.
If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:
The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.
We simply would not be here
If that were so.
You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.
You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward
Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise. But think:
When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—
It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.
From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,
The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies
All in service to a simple idea:
That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,
Is ourselves. And that’s all we need
To start. That’s everything we require to keep going.
Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.
Be good, then better. Write books. Cure disease.
Make us proud. Make yourself proud.
And those who came before you? When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause.
Alberto Ríos
https://poets.org/poem/house-called-tomorrow
Thanks Jace, this July 4th my hope is feeling very banged around. Your reminder is timely.