Holding on
to Hope
“Hope is
not the conviction that something will turn out well but the
certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns
out.”
Vaclav
Havel
My grandmother would say
this about the times in which we live: “Well, that don't make a
lick of sense.” And she would be right. We humans thought for a
while there that we had it all figured out—if we kept everything
tightly controlled, and under the gun to stay that way, we could keep
it going in one direction forever. Boy! Were we wrong!
Here's the deal—it is
the nature of all animals to seek freedom. Last week, I had a very
sweet encounter with a female brown thrush. Her nest is in the oak
tree outside my downstairs screen porch, and she mistakenly flew in
through the open dog-door. She could see her nest through the screen,
and was flinging herself against it like crazy trying to escape. I
corralled the dogs inside and propped the screen door open so she
could fly out. All she had to do was look in a different direction to
see the open door, but she was entirely focused on the nest. Five
minutes later, she was still battering herself against the screen. So
I approached her very slowly, and said, “Let me help you.” She
looked me right in the eye, and did not fly away. She let me wrap a
soft t-shirt around her and carry her to the open door.
We are animals—we want
to be free, but we don't always know how to achieve it. We still seem
to think that freedom requires powering over others, keeping them
tightly controlled at gunpoint. We have seen repeatedly that the guys
with the biggest guns and the biggest armies don't always win, but we
still don't believe it. Like the brown thrush, we will never stop
seeking freedom, but we refuse to turn in a different direction and
see the open door.
What's happening in our
world today may or may not turn out well—certainly, many people are
learning the very steep price of seeking freedom. Only hind-sight
will tell us whether any of it makes sense. In the meantime, let us
hold on to hope, and do what we can to assist one another.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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