On hope...

It comes at the least expected times. I can be at a red light, mindlessly waiting for the chance to go and catch a runner in my peripheral vision and feel the same surge of motivation she feels. In the way her music sounds in her ear, something sounds in my wounded depths and says ‘go’. For that instant a sense of infinite accomplishment and possibility lies just within reach if not submerges me. The light changing from red to green becomes the universe’s cordial invitation to go and become. What exactly constitutes that sound escapes my comprehension.

I’m reminded of the Sufi poet, Rumi:

“What was said to the rose that made it open

was said to me here in my chest.”

Perhaps it was that what of which Rumi speaks that gave a sense of purpose and intention to pressing on the gas pedal and pressing confidently forward. I imagine it to be the sweetest of songs. A melody composed of moments someone decided to put their feet on the ground instead of sleep in, dance when chairs were open for sitting, or sing when speaking would have sufficed. Its symphonic timbre resounds within my bones, reverberates and knows that anything less than possible simply is not.

Do you remember Shawshake Redemption? Andy tells a resistant Red in prison:

“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

Good never dies. Hope lives forever. Hope is a fabric woven into the warmth and promise of forever’s safety. If hope is in anyway part of what is sung to the rose, who am I not to sing along, or at the very least listen? Hope illuminates the street when some misguided joker thought he could throw rocks at the streetlights. No one has aim good enough to extinguish that light. Why? Because the rocks they throw cannot make a martyr of the light. There’s a back up generator that they don’t see, and when she woke up this morning, tied her running shoes, and placed her headphones in her ears, a thousand roses bloomed the moment her feet hit the sidewalk as her presence demandingly whispered that we grow.

“Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow! Grow!" – the Talmud