Good morning…
This challenging week, all of the waning light has drained out of the moon. With 0% illumination, the sky will experience a new moon tonight. Then the small sliver of a waxing crescent moon will slowly start to shed light again, like a sense of quiet hope rising from within.
My dear friend has had a difficult week. One mid-afternoon, I felt drawn to encourage her with a kinda quirky poem.
Like private pen pals, she emailed me back Richard Rohr’s post for October 13th. “I love today’s meditation,” she wrote. “It’s God’s surround sound after the poem you sent yesterday and all the hopeful prayers that have been flowing. Another tough and painful day, but I have HOPE it’s all worth it.”
“Hope’s home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things,” reflects guest writer Cynthia Bourgeault in Rohr’s blog. “It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth. When our innermost being is attuned to this pulse it will send us forth in hope, regardless of the physical circumstances of our lives. Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us. It is entered always and only through surrender; that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. And yet when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life—a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.”
“And since that strength is, in fact, a piece of God’s purposiveness coursing like sap through our own being, it will lead us in the right way,” encourages Cynthia. “It sweeps us along in the greater flow of divine life as God moves … toward the fulfillment of divine purpose which is the deeper, more intense, more subtle, more intimate revelation of the heart of God” (Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God, 86-87).
When our characters are refined, we learn what it means to hope and anticipate God’s goodness. And hope will never fail to satisfy our deepest need because the Holy Spirit that was given to us has flooded our hearts with God’s love (Romans 5:4-5, VOICE).
As so many across our globe face another tough and painful day, may we fully surrender into prayerful hope, filled with a quiet strength, a piece of God’s purposiveness coursing like sap through our innermost being. Sweeping us along in a greater flow of divine love, might hope lead us in the right way, beginning with one foot in front of the other?
…Sue…
