Recently I was invited to a dinner given by Rob Radtke and Mike Smith of the Episcopal Relief & Development Fund. Our group of 15 was asked the question, “As a person of faith, what gives you hope?” Then each was to share his or her response during dinner, á la the style of a Jeffersonian dinner. Such a question! How to answer in a few minutes?
I turned to poetry, where just a few words can express so very much. I had been reading The Pillow Book, written in 1002 by Sei Shōnagon, a lady-in-waiting for the Japanese empress Teishi. Her delightful lists described that which defies description, such as “Rare Things” and “Disturbing Things.” I decided to follow her format. My list would be “Hopeful Things.”
It was an incredible practice, this listing of things that give hope. I highly recommend it. And if you find yourself facing a list of hopeful things that is blank, may the sun rising the next day be a start.
Hopeful Things
The chime of the alarm announcing a new day which might be the first one for being on time the rest of my life.
The voting rights and affordable care acts, Title IX, and recognition of the marriage of gays.
The bunch of organic arugula, buttery, green heaven with a pepper bite, which helps support Nicolas, who just bought the land upon which it was grown.
The fall of apartheid and the Berlin wall.
Sarah, her lifelong desire for a child buried deep under the reality of her elder age. Then three messengers tell her that she will conceive and are actually right.
On a lone sidewalk, I move toward a scowling, young, black man, baggy trousers nearly falling from his slim hips. I offer a smiling nod to his loves and dreams and bask in the warmth of the grin he returns.
I walk the dog on an early January morning, shivering under three layers of clothing, and remember that, come July, I will be wearing only shorts and a tank top.
My high school daughter is at the grocery store for jambalaya ingredients for a group class project. She directs the two guys, one Japanese-American and the other Pakistani, to find items on the list from the fourth member’s old family recipe of African American descent. She gets to the last item, “Minute Rice,” and the two guys just stare back, “We’re Asian. We don’t do Minute Rice.”
I walk the dog on an early July morning, sweating despite bared extremities, and remember that, come January, I will be wearing a down coat over two pairs of yoga pants.
The Pascal mystery as told in terms of cancer but applicable in a broader sense. The diagnosis, Good Friday, a death to life as once lived followed by Saturday’s dark tomb of not knowing what will come next. But don’t forget Sunday, when life, in a form unimaginable before, blooms into existence.
Our US of A president, lanky in black suit with prominent ears under cropped graying hair, begins, in the midst of a tragic eulogy, to sing “Amazing Grace” acapella, slightly off key.
The only thing constant is change, and intention has great power in guiding its course.
Sophia Brothers Peterman
