hope's daughters

"Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as they are."
-St Augustine (HT: peter)

emotions: positive v negative

I found this Atlantic article on happiness so interesting.... (thankfully the conclusions are mostly not easy pat answers... ie: we're complicated!!) but here's one part of it:

“...positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.”

It makes me think of two other thoughts:

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable." CS Lewis

And from Foy Vance’s Two Shades of Hope...
“Now hope deals the hardest blows
Yet I cannot help myself but hope”

For some reason I’m more hopeful these days... I think it’s because I’m just about to enter a new chapter of life, which fits with what the article says about positive emotions being more ‘future-oriented’... but it does sometimes seem wonderful and terrifying in equal proportions.

in dark and empty skies

The Van Morrison refrain at the end of Foy’s gig was “oh no, never let the spirit die” ... it made me think of a lyrics my pastor quoted in a sermon a couple of weeks ago... can’t even remember what point he was making, although I think it was in relation to the hope / resurrection, but all I wrote down were these words from this Dylan song...

“Oh, the tree of life is growing
Where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation shines
In dark and empty skies”

i can only imagine

The sunset was stunning today on my drive home . . . it made me think of heaven. And a few quotes...

"I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then it has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits, but it is only lovelier for that." (Gilead p65)

but it's hope / glimpses of so much more than a sunset...

"Jesus, unlike the founder of any other major faith, holds out hope for ordinary human life. Our future is not an etheral impersonal form of consciousness. We will not float through the air but rather will eat, embrace, sing, laugh and dance in the kingdom of God, in degrees of power, glory and joy that we can't at present imagine." (The Prodigal God p104)

valleys and springs

And how blessed all those in whom you live,

whose lives become roads you travel;

They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks,

discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain!

God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain,

and at the last turn—Zion! God in full view!

Ps 84:5-7 (the message)



I love this verse... the recognition that life is full of both the lonesome valleys and the cool springs on this journey. Yet the amazing hope of what is ahead...

Speaking of mountain - the countdown has begun. 1 month till cape town... wahey! Here's link to photo below. Can't wait!

politics and peace

For some reason, I'm fascinated with the US elections at the minute. I'm not really sure why... I just find it so interesting... the issues, the personalities, the debates, the late night vote counts, the newspapers' analysis etc. Just to the get in the politics mood, I've watched loads of West Wing on my week off.. maybe a little too much... I feel like I still have Aaron Sorkin's quick dialogue bouncing around my head and feel as if I should be walking through corridors somewhere while discussing how to resolve the tragedy that's unfolding in Kenya. I've liked some of Obama's speeches this week... maybe it's cause i've been thinking about hope recently and he seems to talk about it all the time. Yesterday in his victory in SC he said, "While we breathe, we will hope..."

Talking about a different hope, CH Spurgeon said that "Hope itself is like a star... only to be discovered in the night of adversity."

*****
I've also been thinking about contentment today. I'm starting a new semester tomorrow and I do have a peace that I'm still in the right place... even if I'm sometimes still restless for something else, something more...
Francis Schaeffer said "When I am not contented, it's because I am not letting God be God, or I have ceased to be thankful."
On the other hand, Max Lucado states that "Unhappiness on earth cultivates a hunger for heaven. By gracing us with a deep dissatisfaction, God holds our attention..."

I'm not sure which of those two perspectives I'm thinking today... Maybe both: I need to let God be God, but continue to thirst too for the deeper, the higher...

So, back to Spurgeon, (who said that contentment is one of the flowers of heaven...) my prayer for the start of a new term is this:
"May there come over [my] spirit a deep calm as when Christ hushed both winds and waves. May [I] feel not only resignation to your will but delight in it."

hope

Over the last few months I've had a bit of the winter blues echoing the first few lines of this song Moving Pictures, Silent Film...

Oh wake me please when this is over
Oh when the ice is melted away
And the hunger returns...

I have to say that today, I feel awake and a hunger has returned. The ice is melting (even if I’m dreaming of the African sunshine). A new chapter-- I know it sounds cliché for the new year and all that, but somehow life seems more hopeful that it has in a while. I know I’m probably just swayed by feelings and tomorrow I may return to winter lethargy. But today I stand up and stretch, ready for all that is ahead. I can hear clearly the songbird of hope that Emily Dickinson talks about:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops, at all

And sweetest, in the Gale, is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb of Me.

And I know hope does not disappoint. So, here’s to 2008 and HOPEfully a new start to this blog’s ramblings…

i need something

I feel a bit like I'm jumping on the bandwagon with this song/music... but I like this guy (and his dreadlocks!). Don't really know exactly what he's talking about, but feel as if people/society often identity with this idea of longing for 'something to believe in.../someone to put (their) trust in'. check out newton faulkner's 'i need something':


it's got me thinking about music and its influence on my life. I tend to listen to music/go in search of new music that fits with how I'm feeling or what I'm thinking about. But maybe as the guy below suggests, maybe songs like this are trying to get at the core of who we are but are only telling one side of the story without any hope...
or maybe it's just music... or maybe I'm just procrastinating doing my back pain essay thinking about it.

dream deferred?

A Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

I remember reading this poem first when I was 17. I remember thinking that I didn’t really understand what he was talking about. I supposed at that age, I was just beginning to dream… I read this in the context of a play that I loved: A Raisin in the Sun.
I have days now, though, that I do feel as if some of my dreams have been deferred. I don’t know if it’s because I’m still a student and feel as if I’m always looking towards finishing this phase of my life…(even though I'm loving my classes at the minute!) But then sometime I think that my dreams were (and maybe are) so short-sighted and that I’m so impatient. What is the hurry? Why can’t I fully live in the present with all that is happening and all that I know God is teaching me. It comes back to the idea of ‘waiting for the Lord’. But then sometimes I wonder if my dreams are really just my dreams and that I need to be willing to wait for Him to show me what his dream is for me…
As long as in my waiting, I don't let dreams dry up like "a raisin in the sun . . ."

pilgrim

"Then came the sound of a musical instrument, from behind it seemed, very sweet and very short, as if it were one plucking of a string or one note of a bell, and after it a full clear voice - and it sounded so high and strange that he thought it was very far away, further than a star. The voice said, Come. Then John saw that there was a stone wall beside the road in that part: but it had (what he had never seen in a garden wall before) a window. There was no glass in the window and no bars; it was just a square hole in the wall. Through it he saw a green wood full of primroses; and he remembered suddenly how he had gone into another wood to pull primroses, as a child, very long ago - so long that even in the moment of remembering the memory still seemed out of reach. While he strained to grasp it, there came to him from beyond the wood a sweetness and a pang so piercing that instantly he forgot his father's house and his mother, and the fear of the Landlord, and the burden of the rules. All the furniture of his mind was taken away..."
(excerpt: The Island, Pilgrim's Regress)
"The twilight was now far advanced and they were in sight of the brook...
Be sure it was not for nothing that the Landlord has knit our hearts closely to time and place - to one friend rather than another and one shire more than all the land."
(excerpt: The Brook, Pilgrim's Regress)
-CS Lewis

sunset

took a wee dander to the park today to watch the sun set. it is definitely my favourite time of day... when the shadows get longer and everything turns a funny colour before the sun disappears... there's something about going to the park by yourself that i love. it forces you to be quiet; it inevitably forces you to think about something other than the trivial.

yay for sunshine! even if it is still crisp and cold it gives a whisper of hope of spring being around the corner...