Hope

This season of my life is quite different from the original purpose of this blog. I'm no longer the mom of pipsqueaks. They have either flown the coop or are on the brink of it. They've officially lost their pipsqueak status.

The things I think about are not so homeschoolcentric. But hope transcends time in a way that many things cannot.

I hoped my kids would build their lives on a solid foundation that would serve them well. I still hope for that. I hoped that they would become people capable of contributing meaningful things to the world around them. I still hope for that. I hoped that we would build relationships that would last and be full of love. I still hope for that.

I'm reading Biola University's Advent calendar again this year. It continues to be excellent in form and in content. I recommend it. This first week is about hope. Where does hope come from? Is it just a desire for better things, a longing for the world to be set right, or is it deeper and founded on something more substantial?

I'm not so sure that the answers to those questions can be found in anything we can conceive on our own, or even in the human capacity for goodness. Our own attempts to explain what we experience tend to be inadequate. At our best, we're all a little broken.

The Caged Skylark
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,
          Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells —
            That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage
            Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
            Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest —
Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest,
           But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed
            For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

In a nutshell, this. If we place our hope in ourselves, we're bound to be deeply disappointed. We need something that transcends time. Or someone. Thus the reason for this first week of Advent. Hope has a name: Jesus.