Is hope a bird or a rat?

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all.  ~ Emily Dickinson

Hope is not the thing with feathers
That comes home to roost
When you need it most.
Hope is an ugly thing
With teeth and claws and
Patchy fur that’s seen some shit. ~  Caitlin Seida

A recurring theme and wrestle in my life lately has been hope.  I submitted a book review (“Restorative Hope: Creating Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons”) for a theology journal. A poem by Caitlin Seida that describes hope as a sewer rat, instead of a bird like Emily Dickinson has come up multiple times in the last 2 weeks.  Meeting with a recently released from prison friend who talked about how scared she was to hope that she could repair broken relationships. A study on hope rooted in the story of Rahab. Each of these occurrences illuminated for me how difficult it is to hope. In what feels like an endless cycle of trying to find certainty, it seems like what I need to find is hope. 
 
How do you define hope?  What do you know about hope?
 
At the end of the study on hope a participant dropped this definition; “Hope is a communal, expansive, and inclusive action in light of unlikely data, scarcity, or fear.” 
 
I freaking love that definition. 
 
We often unknowingly confine hope, not giving it the room and space it needs. It can be a beautiful light, guiding our lives, but it can also be messy, a thing we pick up where someone else has dropped it, carrying it for them for a while. It can be a bird, as Dickinson suggests, but also the sewer rat, finding what it needs to survive. What if we let hope be a little ugly, a little messy, and one that requires the people who have gone before us, to walk next to us, and go on after us? The sewer rat and the bird. The bright light and the dim one. When we give hope space to be what it is, we give more people more opportunities to grab hold of it. 
 
If you could use a little hope in whatever life looks like for you now. If you would want to sit among people who will see you and help you celebrate the wins and carry the hard, we invite you to any and all of the events and circles 40 Orchards has coming up. Simply click on the register page above.

Maybe we can find hope, together.

Lisa