When I am truly hot and in need of something to drink, I’m not thinking sparkling water, crushed ice, and a twist of lime, please.  I’m thinking water, from a garden hose, in a glass, from the sink tap in the scoop of my hand (a most useful skill my mother taught us at a young age.) Water, plain and true.

Rodin, Kandinsky, Matisse…all lovely inspiration.  So too the view out the end of the hallway and the sculpture of feline musculature draped across my lap.

A radical and significant change in certain governments could be a great source of hope.  Some courts making decisions preventing certain actions might also offer hope. But I can’t really wait for that to find hope in the current world circumstance…Any more than I can readily go steep in the textures of a Matisse original.  For me, I think the hope that sustains, that nourishes me by way of having access to it, being able to take it in through my senses, is much smaller and much more local.

Watching the workers at the Halifax Public Gardens dig up and preserve flower bulbs for next season.  Freezing soup and knowing it is available to thaw or to gift.  The young person who bought a copy of Montaigne’s essays at the bookstore and, slightly embarrassed but totally in love, said that they were giving it to their girlfriend and did I have a suggestion as to which page at the beginning they should use to write a letter inside. (I absolutely did, with reasons). The Christmas card that finally arrived yesterday having been mailed December 22nd. The tender strength of a friend’s hug; another saying Hey, want to come over, let’s cook together; the daily check-in text or delightful voice memo ramble; a kid who held the door for her parent; the cooperation between two vendors who helped each other set up at the farmer’s market; the note left by a Centre guest about the respite and renewal she found there; The quiet of twelve people meditating. 

None of these things will change the tide of the world…and, good news,I don’t need them to.  The thought that they might is not why I turn to them when I find myself teetering toward cynicism or feeling the fog of despondency begin to roil at my ankles.  I turn to these examples because they are immediate.  They are close and simple, honest and good.  Straight up, no diluting.  They are about the sustaining, the inspiring, the possible; the nourishing.  Relationship; love; grace; invitation; welcome; acceptance, inclusion… 

These?  These building blocks, beautiful crumbs, ions, atoms?  They are the amazing organic elements of hope…a different sort of periodic table…waiting to be taken in, alone or sometimes combined, into restored creation that I can then offer…but not me alone, never alone…

The sustaining, the inspiring, the possible; the nourishing.  Relationship; love; grace; invitation; welcome; acceptance, inclusion… The very nearness of God…in each, in all.