Let me start by sending you to a poem, “Hope” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

Now that you’ve read what it says, so nicely and concisely, I’m going to talk about hope at more length.

Hope leads us from where we are, a place where we can’t see how things are going to work out, to that unknown future where, quite possibly, things really do work out. We can’t know in advance what that future will look like and there are no guarantees–except perhaps that if we don‘t keep moving, we will never get there.

There are two things I want to say about hope. The first is that sometimes we despair because we think we know more than we do. We think we know what is required to save the day, and also that we are unequal to the task. So we lose hope.

In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is faced with a nearly impossible task. Go to Mordor? “One does not simply walk into Mordor”, as the popular quotation from the movie goes. Much less does one walk in while carrying the One Ring and hope to escape detection long enough to drop it in Mount Doom.

But Frodo accepts the task anyway, “though I do not know the way.”

You know how the story goes. There are others who can show him the way, even the way into Mordor. Help comes from unexpected sources, and in very unexpected ways. Frodo can anticipate none of this. And as he plods forward through the hostile wasteland that is Mordor, he has no way to know that in the White City, Aragorn has learned Frodo is alive and is planning desperate measures to keep Sauron from looking his way.

The day always needs saving, from one threat or another, but you aren’t responsible for saving it. Only for doing your bit.

The second thing I want to say about hope is that it is amazing what we can accomplish together when we have a clear, urgent goal.

Here I’ll move into real examples. Remember the Tham Luang cave rescue? (If not, there are documentaries you can watch.) Twelve kids and their soccer coach were stranded in a cave in Thailand. The Royal Thai Navy Seals and expert divers and rescue workers from all over the world put their skills to work to get them out. The route was long and incredibly difficult, and one diver died in the process. But they did get the kids out.

And then there are the Covid vaccines. People all over the world poured knowledge, skills, and funding into the effort, and the vaccines were developed faster than we had any reason to expect. Death rates dropped, and family gatherings recommenced.

Working together is harder when the goal isn’t as clear as “get the kids out of the cave” or as urgent as “because huge numbers of people are dying daily right now and all our lives have been turned upside down.” But hard isn’t impossible. And again, it isn’t all on your shoulders. Other people are also at work.

To be clear, these examples could have gone very differently. The kids could have died in the cave or on the way out. We could still be waiting for a vaccine for Covid. The point is not that we always succeed when we devote ourselves to a task–we don’t–but that we sometimes do manage incredible feats. Therein lies hope.

I’m going to end with a couple of lines from a song. I like these lines because they seem counterintuitive at first. So, from “Trip Around the Sun”, (I prefer Jimmy Buffet, but here’s Stephen Bruton as well)

“I’m just hanging on while this old world keeps spinning.

And it’s good to know it’s out of my control…”

Can you imagine being responsible for keeping the earth spinning?

Till next post.

P.S. I want to thank the neighbor around the block who periodically inscribes poems on the sidewalk in chalk. I think this started during the pandemic, and I have enjoyed both the poems I recognized and the opportunity to discover some new favorites. “Hope” is a new favorite.