Hope, wrote Emily Dickinson, is the thing with feathers. Which feels a bit like something you might cup in your hands, careful not to ruffle it or outright squash it. Or perhaps not. I saw this description on social media (but haven't been able to track down the source - so if you know, please share!): “People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s [sic] webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.”
Should hope have feathers, I imagine it as a hummingbird dancing just out of reach, heart beating ferociously. Or maybe she is a red-tailed hawk come screaming out of the sky, her talons out and ready to defend her young.
I have been thinking a lot about hope lately. The presidential campaign has something to do with that, certainly, but also my kids are at what mathematically I would call critical points -- big changes in direction are coming. Crash Kid is shopping for a house -- on the other side of the Atlantic. Math Guy (formerly known as The Egg) is defending his doctoral dissertation this semester. But mostly I have been thinking about hope because a few weeks ago I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I know, I buried the lede. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I have not gotten any better at telling people other than to simply say it.
It’s a challenging diagnosis, and a disease with an unpredictable course. I am doing well at the moment, and am mostly hopeful and grateful. Grateful for good medical care, and a treatment plan that has helped my day to day functioning in a way I can only describe as a miracle. Grateful for a physical therapist who suggested a weighted pen that let me write out a grocery list again and scrawl an outline for an essay on a yellow pad of paper. (Bonus, my handwriting is no longer microscopic, which drove my teachers batty back in the day. Which I now totally understand as my eyes have aged.) I am utterly grateful for each day.
And however illogical it might be, I am hopeful. I contemplate Alfred Delp SJ’s question as he awaited his execution, “So is it madness to hope — or conceit, or cowardice, or grace?” It seemed illogical to entertain hope, he wrote, yet he could not stop returning to the question. Nor can I. It gives me and God something to talk about.
Hope is not fragile, nor is it always gentle. Sometimes it is a bit gritty. But it is always a grace.
Read a tangentially related reflection on the Holy Spirit and feral pigeons here.
