Hello, again, dear readers and writers.
If you’ve been following The Writing Catalyst for a while (and thank you, BTW), you know that I often focus on inspiration. I want to inspire you to write, yes, and I also want to help you look toward the light, especially in times when it feels very dark. So this week we’re focusing on inspiration’s cousin: hope.
I’ve written about hope before, inspired by author Rebecca Solnit’s essay collection, Hope in the Dark. I’m always reminding everyone (myself included) that hope is an action, and a decision. It’s not passive in the way blind optimism can be. You can read more about Solnit’s ideas, and also enjoy Lisa Mueller’s poem, “Hope” in this previous post. But for today’s post, we begin with a quote by Jane Goodall:
I do have reasons for hope: our clever brains, the resilience of nature, the indomitable human spirit, and above all, the commitment of young people when they’re empowered to take action.
Goodall’s wise, generous words are always salve for the soul; I would add here that it’s not only young people who can be empowered to create change: we all can. Still, it’s easy to feel hopeless as we grapple with these times we are living in. So this week’s prompt addresses hopelessness as well as hope. Here’s how it works:
We begin with two lists.
The list exercise helps us see the relationship (and the tension) between two seemingly opposing concepts. It helps us to question assumptions, and see where opposites intertwine. I always begin with two headings. This time they are, "When I feel hopeful," and "When I feel hopeless."
Take ten minutes to generate as many phrases, words, or sentences under each heading, writing whatever comes to mind. After you've generated the two lists, choose one from each list and write those at the top of a blank page; then write for 20 minutes, anything that comes to mind.
What you write might surprise you; it might read more like a stream of consciousness piece, or it could come out as a poem. But looking at the relationship with these two opposites might also help illuminate something you hadn't seen before.
What I wrote in response is below, preceded by my phrase from each list. The poem that follows my piece is, "Blessed Are You Who Bear The Light," by Jan Richardson.
When I feel hopeful/When I feel hopeless
Thinking of flower seedlings pushing up through the soil
Seeing litter along the side of the freeway
Under the litter along the edge of the freeway, tiny green shoots appear. It always amazes me how after just a few weeks of rain, everything starts to grow again. I'm stuck in traffic, seven lanes are merging into four, and though I know this is only temporary, it still gets to me every time. I'm still attached to the days and times when I flew over the bay. Now, the gleaming white suspension bridge, an engineering marvel that may or may not be rusting underneath all these cars, no longer impresses me. At least not when I'm crawling across it. There are nights though, I have to admit, when approaching this bridge from the Eastbay reignites the original awe. But it's fleeting.
There’s so much to be scared of, so much to worry about. School shootings, war, anti-vaxxers, forest fires, the corruption, the petty and the powerful, that fucking electoral college. Racism and homophobia are back in fashion it seems, and transphobia is giving young cis girls the impression that the orange menace is protecting them; they look over his shoulder with well-scrubbed faces while he slashes paper after paper with a sharpie.
But then I think of Jasmine Crockett and David Hogg, a survivor of a school shooting now the vice chair of the DNC. I hear Pete Buttigieg speak calmly and clearly. I watch Trevor Noah interview someone he disagrees with and yet, he is somehow still able to humanize them, and it puts us all more at ease. There are four legged heroes too: therapy dogs and nursing home cats, even beavers are finally getting their due respect for the way they might teach us about creating natural fire breaks, or dams that don't flood entire valleys.
I'm learning now that human livers can regenerate tissue, that stimulating the vagus nerve can stop seizures (and may be the key to ending auto-immune diseases). There are resilient corals rebuilding reefs systems with the help of humans, and nurseries, the rerouting of ships, and some good old fashioned glue. Birds of prey are thriving, people are protecting wolves and coyotes and wild rabbits, and feeding songbirds.
You can tell me that there's plastic in my bloodstream, but the world is still filled with colorful vegetables. And maybe it's just my algorithm, but there seem to be a lot of vegan cooks out there, and librarians who are fighting book bans.
I will not silver-line the decimation, the rapid decrease, the insect apocalypse, but I am not going to allow you to implode everything, either. Because somewhere, a curious octopus is making a human friend, a whale is thanking a group of amateur divers for setting him free from a tangled fishing line, and even though we may see orange skies again someday, the seed you recently planted is working its way up through the soil. The Michelia trees are blooming in the dead of winter. The rain is still falling against the morning sky.
Blessed Are You Who Bear The Light
by Jan Richardson
Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.
Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes—
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in stubborn hope,
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds. 
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