Hope that carries you

While the world convulses in reaction to a global downturn, while once productive towns appear more like ghosttowns in the absence of the thriving industries that built them and hard working citizens contemplate where to look next for a source to feed their families, it is the indomitable human spirit that must once again rise up, not give up.

In one of my favourite pieces of poetry, Marge Piercy (author of Circles on the Water) writes...
"I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart
who pull like water buffalo with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward
who do what has to be done, again and again."

Such people must surely be undergirded by a compelling sense of hope, fuelling their every step. When the soul aches and the mind tires of presenting new arguments why it is reasonable to keep going, hope is the little patch of blue sky piercing through the dark grey overhead. These people, who Marge Piercy says 'pull...with massive patience,' have no choice really but to find blue sky...for what good has settling for dark clouds ever done us.

Former President Kim of South Korea responded to Steven Covey,author of The 8th Habit, when asked why he refused to cooperate with the military junta in the north by saying '...if you kill me, I will only die once, but if I cooperate with you, I will die 100 tmes a day every day for the rest of my life." I believe that those who live with hope say that they would rather, often in the face of ridicule, embrace an envisaged reality based on hope rather than except the thick, darkness that threatens to be the order of the day.

Such people are surely the ones who Elizabeth Barrette thought of when she wrote that 'Hope is folding paper cranes even when your hands get cramped, your eyes tired, working past blisters and paper cuts, simply because something in you insists on opening its wings.'