Possibilities (M.A. Reilly, 2014)
Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a practice that becomes spiritual muscle memory. It’s a renewable resource for moving through life as it is, not as we wish it to be.
Krista Tippett. Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living (p. 233).
I.
I have been driving--feeling the road beneath the tires and I cannot say what makes me wonder this but I do: Is being hopeful the same thing as feeling hopeful? The question lingers, stays with me. Smoke to the mind, curling between synapses.
I ask others and most seem to weigh in with a more positive nod towards feeling hopeful as opposed to being hopeful.
I cannot say more as I do not know.
II.
In the country of my birth, dóchas means hope and given our history, the Irish are a hopeful people. We have learned to disconnect hope from probability and anchor it, instead, to possibility.
All things are possible.
III.
Seamus Heaney, a patron saint of sorts, wrote:
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
IV.
It is March. Spring is a whisper away and all things feel possible today.
And there, on the slim horizon, just out of reach we can see justice rising up like the true warrior she is.
And I like to imagine that Seamus and my dear sweet Rob are taking tea somewhere beyond here and talking about hope and history.
Hear the rhyme.
Hear it.
