Hope
It’s the fourth week of gift-giving in December! We just past the Winter Solstice on December 21. Christmas is December 25, and Hanukkah begins at sundown on the same day. Kwanza begins the day after on December 26. Even if you don’t practice any of these traditions, you are surrounded by the secular practice of giving gifts. All these celebrations bring with them the gift of hope. Today, I offer hope, the one commodity the world will never get enough of. Like all gifts, use it, embody it, then offer it to someone else. Enjoy! ~ Lyn
Hope
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Hope 〰️
Lynn bore my name (different spelling) but little other resemblance. Several years older than me, she was fragile, bleached blond, and wore bright lipstick. Her first floor apartment in this quintessential New England town was adorned with antiques, Persian rugs, artwork, and other remnants of wealth. Her weathered face revealed hard times but her kind eyes suggested hope.
Episcopalian by birth, Lynn began volunteering at our Congregational thrift shop and eventually walked through the old wooden doors of the historic church I served one Sunday morning. She and I arrived at about the same time, and we fit together like a glove.
A year or so into our tenure, she began whispering to me before or after church, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.” The first time she said this, I stopped in my tracks at the unfamiliar refrain. I grinned and thanked her for the message. It was beautiful and touched my heart on the spot.
The next week, Lynn looked at me and asked me to repeat the words. “Hope is …?” Memorizing things has never my strength and I stared blankly back at her, keenly aware I had failed the test. A kind tutor, she reminded me what she had already taught me, and I said the words again, that day, and many times over the course of the next year. Week after week, Lynn quizzed me until finally Emily Dickenson’s verse was written on my heart.
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.
I never learned all the troubles that gave rise to hope in Lynn’s life but I do know she was a beacon of light for me and many others. I’ve never forgotten her gift to me, and today I pass it on.
Maybe you already have the gift of hope and you don’t need it from me. Take it anyway, wrap it up, and give it away to someone else. The world can never have too much hope — it’s the glue that holds us together when life is tough. Like a tiny songbird, it perches somewhere deep inside you, persistent in the face of hardship, calling you forward to better times. It’s in you but not of you.
Can you hear it? Can you feel it? Hope.
Speaking of Gifts
There’s still time …
Many people have found my memoir, Crazy: Reclaiming Life from the Shadow of Traumatic Memory, hopeful. Give yourself a gift and order it from Amazon. Read it over the holiday break and fill up your bucket of hope. And while you’re at it, leave a rating or review 👍.
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“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops at all.”
~ Emily Dickenson
Lyn