March of Hope

Start in strength, peace, and promise and imagine

Hope II by Gustav Klimt, between 1907 and 1908. Oil. gold and platinum on canvas. (43.5 × 43.5 in) Wikimedia Commons from the Museum of Modern Art.

For many years, I did not understand hope. Faith and charity worked but not hope. I thought it was a fantasy about something better, in the midst of suffering, without action to make the better option real.

What if hope is imagination plus my ability and action to make the dream come true? That meaning makes hope a powerful catalyst for needed change.

In his article in aeon magazine, “Hope is Not Optimism,” David B. Feldman and Benjamin W. Conis say

…hope is a special kind of perception: it’s a perception of something that doesn’t yet exist. It’s a perception of what is possible….when people believe a goal they care about is possible to achieve, they’re more likely to take steps to make it happen.

The most widely researched model of hope in the psychological literature is called Hope Theory. first proposed by psychologist C. R. Snyder in 1989. The three conditions for hope to thrive discovered by Snyder are goals. pathways, and agency.

Pathways are the same as plans. Successful people can have several plans so that, if one is unsuccessful, they can try another.

Agency is the confidence that you can do something to reach the goal if you keep trying.

People can hope for a particular change and still recognize the tremendous barriers to its achievement, but work toward it anyway. The Civil Rights and Peace activists known to us fit that description.

---

Photo by Max Pixel in his Natural Landscape category

Creating something new

Every month, Rev. Suellen Miller from Oklahoma City shares her newsletter with other ministers. It opens with a full page of quotations. These words by Carl Jung, that she quoted this month, resonate.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect
but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative
mind plays with the objects it loves.

The ingredients are an inner necessity, the play instinct, and what we love.

Inner necessity

Within ourselves today, what do we need? Russia invades Ukraine, and our nation sends weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, and the Covid pandemic rages on. What do we need?

We need to know who we are beyond nationality, political party, gender, religion, or other labels that can divide us. We are not an object we know, not a coffee cup, nor our body, our mind, our subconscious dreaming. Beyond all that, I am. Each of us can say “I am.” Behind the objective and subjective objects we know is existence. To acknowledge that, we use awareness or consciousness. That existent awareness has no form so it need never begin (be born) or end (die). Only things with form can be counted, so there is only One.

We see the appearances of difference. We remember that there is only One here despite those. As we see personal and world conflict, we remember there is One.

We root ourselves in unchanging Eternal Truth as we watch current changes. In the words and actions of Ukrainian leaders, their courage reflects the Oneness.

What we love

When asked what was the Greatest Commandment, beloved teacher Jesus said,

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Matthew 22:37-39

Understanding the second hinges on how you love yourself. You love others the way