Hope Sleeps in Our Bones

Marge Piercy once wrote, "Hope sleeps in our bones like a bear waiting for spring to rise and walk."* I am struck by how pervasive and persistent hope can be, like the sun refusing not to shine no matter how black the clouds. The messages of hope from the biblical prophets, Jesus, and the early Christians come streaking across our darkened personal sky like shooting stars in a meteor shower.

The words of the poet Emily Dickinson come to mind:

Hope is that thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

Sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all

And sweetest in the gale is heard.*

Hope does sleep in our bones. We cannot change our past. We can celebrate its victories. We can seek forgiveness for its failures and healing for its wounds. We can reflect on it and seek to gain wisdom by that reflection. Yet, we can hope to move forward into a more promising future, one that may feel threatening and risky, with our hearts rooted in the deep soil of God's loving presence.

We may find ourselves at a watershed moment at any time. Some events forever alter our journey, forcing us across one-way thresholds--a death, a divorce, the departure of a child into adulthood, high school graduation, marriage, the birth of our first child, retirement. COVID is such a moment. Our church seeking a rector is just such a watershed moment.

We cannot expect to return to life as it was any more than we can restore the sweet aroma to that rose petal once it's moisture has vanished. But, we can look deep within, where God's Spirit lurks, and live with the hope that no new reality will be beyond us, that no future can stretch our roots out of that nurturing love, that our best days lie before us, not behind us.

"Hope sleeps in our bones like a bear waiting for spring to rise and walk."*

*Marge Piercy, Stone, Paper, Knife (New York: Knopf, 1983), p. 144.

*Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), p. 116