Hope

Seeing, reading and thinking about signs of hope are on my mind. Hope is the focus during the first week of Advent in the Christian calendar. Theologian and church historian Diana Butler Bass published a new book about the Christian calendar entitled, A Beautiful Year.

Sarah Josepha Hale hoped for national unity when she wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to advocate for a National Day of Thanksgiving. In response, President Lincoln instituted the holiday as documented in the Throughline podcast about the history of our Thanksgiving celebration. My parents had high hopes for their future when they married on Thanksgiving Day in 1950.

Rosa Parks must have had hope for a better future when she stood up for her rights by sitting down in 1955. This evening at 6:06 pm, bells will ring in Montgomery, Alabama, to commemorate the time of her arrest 70 years ago today.

President Lyndon Johnson hoped for a better life for real people when in 1964, he requested multiple task forces to focus on how to improve education, housing, healthcare, city life, and cultural organizations if he won re-election so that his administration would have plans ready to implement. Doris Kearns Goodwin shares the contributions of her husband, Richard Goodwin, in this effort in her book, An Unfinished Love Story. Goodwin’s hopes for the future fueled his work for our country.

Robert Reich’s letter in Substack today shares glimmers of hope in the words of Judge Mark L Wolf who resigned in protest of the current Department of Justice actions, defying the rule of law. Wolf shared the words of Senator Robert F. Kennedy who spoke in 1966 about ending apartheid in South Africa: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”

This week especially, I am hopeful that people will heed the call to love one another.

I’m going out on my porch this evening and play my steel tongue drum at the same time the bells in Montgomery, Alabama will be ringing, sending out my own tiny ripple of hope.