The Present-Tense Experience Of Hope

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Happiness often causes us to grip, to hold tightly an experience of pleasure that we do not wish to end.

Joy, on the other hand, opens us. Perhaps that is why so few people report regularly experiencing joy.

Opening ourselves feels vulnerable, even fearful, but if we are to experience joy, it will require we throw our arms wide open to the world.

And it seems to me that that opening is the present-tense experience of Hope.

In modern English, hope speaks to a kind of wishful thinking for something that may or may not happen. But in ancient languages, hope speaks to a kind of patient expectation, and a shelter that holds us as we wait for something that is to come.

And that, it seems to me, is joyful - to be sheltered in the patient expectation of Good that is to come.

The umbrella that I throw open in the rain storm is not a once-for-all, it-will-always-be-this-way act. The umbrella shelters me. It is my patient expectation of the sun to come.

We can stand in the rain, soaked through to the bone, shivering and cursing the storm, or we can throw open an umbrella that shelters us so that when the sun shines again we are well and whole and ready to step into the Light.

Hope is our shelter, our present-tense experience of hope that keeps us well and whole and able to enter into a brighter, more full, more vibrant future as it arrives.

I wish for you all the blessings and goodness of this day.

Kate