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Stress and uncertainty give us an opportunity to become something more than we expect, if we are open to it. Hope can keep us sane and happy. I aim to be guilty of an irrational sense of hopefulness!
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So, it’s the day after Thanksgiving? Did you eat too much?
Remember, each day is a new beginning. If you screw up, overeat, overspend,
Start over again tomorrow! 🙂
Picture by A Perfect Heart
Here are two passages on hope that I read recently. I hope you enjoy them. (No pun intended!)
From Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats – then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water – seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed. She had been asked to be part of her son’s life.
From “The Hope that Springs from the Mustard Seed” by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.
Failure counts for nothing; defeat, disappointment – these matter nothing at all, so long as hope sits patiently , stirring the embers, watching and tending the fire, coaxing the flame, never despairing and never leaving the wind to work its will. That the clouds should come up over the sky, or that darkness should encircle the earth, brings no real terrors, for we are sure that the dawn will come out again and that the sun will break through with its golden glory.
Butterflies and Bunny Rabbits 