how do you practice hope?

“Hope” is not something

I can hold in my hand,

or something I can purchase,

or own.

“Hope” is a verb,

it is something I practice,

and it is something I do.

--Pam Ferguson capturing the sense of a message from FCNL's Joe Volk

Practicing Hope

03/16/11 13:53 , Categories: Uncategorized

Winter is slowly morphing into spring and it isn’t coming soon enough. I am a person that in the depth of winter forgets I ever lived through a spring before. It feels like the cold, frozen tundra will never ever yield again to plant life and I will never see another warm summer to plant and grow.

This past winter has been more difficult than most in Indiana. In addition to record breaking cold and snow and ice, I’ve been weighed under with difficult situations: food pantry struggles, family struggles, Yearly Meeting controversies, and friends I’m trying to support through difficult days. It has been one very long winter and I want to give up, give in, and wallow in hopelessness and despair. It seems easier than digging into my soul to nurture hope and life.

The tragedy in Japan captures so much of my attention these days as disaster after disaster happens to husbands and wives, children, mothers and fathers, and aunts and uncles, and I am overwhelmed with a humanity I am not able to touch and help. I watch the videos of the tsunami as it powered its way across farmland and through hospitals and homes and I struggle to comprehend the incredible power and destruction of something so simple and so life-giving as water...

I have been surprised by life. I never expected life to be so full of experiences and blessings. I’ve seen the pygmies dance, awoken to the Muslim call to prayer, and been to the source of the Nile.…I’ve smelled incense from sandalwood, frankincense, and myrrh, and I’ve smelled open sewers, burning trash, rotting flesh, drying fish, and camel dung.…My husband, Ron, and I co-pastor a Quaker meeting in eastern Indiana. Read full bio...

Read Pam's entire devotional essay here:

http://www.barclaypress.com/pamferguson.php/2011/03/16/new-life

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the 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.

--Emily Dickinson