Thaw

"...as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before." - Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice

I'm afraid it is too soon to yell from the mountain tops, but I did feel a spirit of Spring in the air this morning when I started my car and it didn't sound like a garbage compactor with something lodged inside it.  

I opened my door to the smell of water - wet puddles growing along the road.  I saw pavement on our street that has otherwise been a luge runway.  I could run out and start my car without a jacket.  My hands didn't break into a million pieces without gloves on.  Water is dripping off the long icicles above our doorway.  Slush has taken the place of icy snowy embankments.  

Hope is a practice.  It's moments like this where I remember the importance of hope in all things.  It's not an emotion to cover all sins, but one to carry you through to new light even if the tunnel seems particularly long and dark.  

My friend gave me a book of poems by Mary Oliver, which I've been reading through lately and pasting on this blog.  Funny enough, one of my favorite podcasts On Being has recently recorded her reading her poems herself.   

They are here and they are lovely. 

May we all hope for the thaw of so many things. 

A Little Bit on Hope

From a walk through Millbrook Village, New Jersey yesterday.
I love the long shadows of winter and that bright blue sky. 

The other day on my drive down to New Jersey I was listening to an On Being episode with Quaker singer Carrie Newcomer.  It was the Thanksgiving episode where the interview was woven in and out of her folksy music; it was the perfect peaceful combination to listen to after a stressful semester.  

Do you ever hear something or think something and feel the need to write it down before you forget it?  During this episode, Carrie spoke about hope and I went back and found the transcript online to remember the words exactly.  It goes like this:

"And then there's like a hope that's gritty - It's like, the kind of hope that gets up every morning and chooses to try to make the world just a kinder place in your own way.  And the next morning gets up, and does it again.  And the next morning, gets up, and you have been disappointed.  And you do it again.  I wanted to write about the kind of hope that's faithful, that kind that Niebuhr talked about: 'anything worth doing will probably not be achieved in one lifetime... so we are saved by hope.'  And that's a harder kind of hope to live with, because it's easier to be cynical.  I mean, when you're cynical, you're never disappointed."

When I think about hope, Emily Dickinson's poem pops into my head.  Her rendition of hope is this:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers - (314)

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul - 

And sings the tune without words - 

And never stops - at all - 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - 

And sore must be the storm - 

That could abash the little Bird -

That kept so many warm - 

I've heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest sea - 

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

I like holding the two of these together, thinking of hope as a belief that is a choice and requires faith, but also something that rests and perches inside of us.  

Here's Carrie singing Betty's Diner, a Joni Mitchell-esque song about people in a diner.  Being in New Jersey, where there's a silver diner melting on the corner of most towns, it seems appropriate to post this one.

Here's to hope!