On Facebook, my colleague the Reverend Meg Riley invited everyone she knew to join her in expressing #30DaysOfGratitude during the month of November. I thought it would be a good practice for me and so I did it. Then this morning, she let us know that she was going to continue on but with a new focus. She invited everyone to join her for #31DaysOfHope. I decid
ed to take that one on too.
So, for December, I’ll post some poems or prose each day and comment, too, on a few moments that give me hope. You can find it daily on my personal Facebook page, or find the link on our congregation’s Facebook page.
For today, I share Denise Levertov’s “For the New Year 1981,” a poem I used in an AIDS Day vigil in Spokane too many years ago. There were around 30 or 40 of us there, standing in the cold dark under I-90 next to the chapel where the MCC congregation met. We lit candles and shared prayers, and remembered those who had died. Levertov’s words still speak today to how hope lives and grows.
For the New Year, 1981
I have a small grain of hope–
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.
I need more.
I break off a fragment
to send you.
Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.
Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.
Only so, by division,
will hope increase,
like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source–
clumsy and earth-covered–
of grace.
Denise Levertov
You are positively invited to join in the practice. You can email your hopeful thought for the day, or post it on Facebook and tag me if you’d like to have it shared more broadly. I’ll include other hopeful words here on the blog every day.
Sending you all love and hope in this wintry season,
Linda
