Hope, as Emily Dickinson once observed, is a bundle of contradictions. It's frail, yet it survives in the harshest lands; it's small and flighty, yet it perches in our very souls where it cannot be dislodged. Its trilling keeps us warm, and yet it never asks even a crumb in return.
Especially today when we remember that all hopes have a day to flounder and even to fail, that little bird looks more like a farmhouse canary whose neck has been wrung than it does like a phoenix whose lament eases the burden of loss.
During times like these, it's easy to believe that selfish and powerful men have won the long game. Through treachery and corrupt tricks, by taking advantage of others' decency and by leveraging their own power, they'll roll back the hardwon progress of people who don't sit at the board with them. They'll get their damnable wars and send the rest of us to fight them; they'll get rid of everyone who's not like them, and they'll teach us to be grateful for the chance to eat their scraps and pick through their garbage. It's easy to believe that we're headed into darkness where there is no sun, no trees, no grass, no moon and no stars.
Screw that. I'm going to keep my hope and keep listening to that little bird singing its heart out, even if the singing is an empty reflex. I'm going to learn wisdom from a marshwiggle.
Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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