Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Anne Mackin

Hope

I’m glad to be asked to think about hope during this beautiful period of spring when I’m experiencing hope as a form of religious gratitude for every green bud and shoot that reminds me that the good weather, beauty, and easy living of summer are gradually returning, along with parts of normal pre-COVID life.

Hope seems to me to be the basis of most spiritual life. I remember my grandmother kneeling with me at my bedside when I was 3 or 4, and teaching me that I could talk to God. This gave me the childish hope of a comforting adult presence in Heaven, caring about me and listening to me and my childish hopes and requests. Over six decades, I’ve grown into the hope of greater connection to the Divine elements of a vast, complex, and mysterious universe.

A religious community like Saint John’s shows us the value of human interconnection: learning from others, joining together to give to and help others who may have less reason to be hopeful than we have, in the knowledge that fate may sort us into the other category at any time. COVID has certainly reminded us how easily tragedy, uncertainty, and despair can strike. Those periods in our lives are times when hope is most important and hardest to come by, and the help of others most important in sustaining our hope and gratitude. One of my hopes right now is to remember this and to have the time, community, understanding or resources with which to help while still having the time to cultivate the inner peace that sustains me and makes me feel hopeful.