Tiny Pots of Hope

This time of year is always exciting for me. Winter has lost its hold on the world; spring is more than a distant dream. Except for those years I lived in an apartment, this is the time you'd find my south windowsills adorned with small pots full of seedling plants if you visited. I’m not prejudiced; I make room for tomatoes as well as marigolds, zinnias and sweet peas (new, this year) as well as kale and collards.

For me, this is living in hope. I trust that with warmer weather, I'll find moments to place my young charges into the warming earth where most of them – the ones not eaten by rabbits or pulled up by squirrels or chipmunks – will grow and even thrive as plants have been doing since that first spring ever so long ago.

Hope is how I live. It's what got me through my youth when I knew I was different but didn’t know how to articulate it or what to do about it. It led me to Navajoland (Dinétah) when, fresh out of college, I wanted to explore the world and touch people’s lives. It sustained me through my marriage. And it led me to strike out on my own again, to leave the toxicity of those 25 years behind, and get growing into who God knew me to be. Hope led me, a year ago, to face the Board of Ordained Ministry again to see if they could affirm that I was “ready” to be ordained.

Hope sends me to go to bed at night and gets me up each morning, trusting to possibilities. It leads me to plant seeds – in pots, in conversations, and here – and trees, trusting that though I may never see the fruit of my efforts, they will come… in God’s own time.

Sometimes people see me as naïve because of my hope. And, yes, I am a dreamer, but of the kind of dreams Martin Luther King spoke about. Like him, I realize such dreams take a whole lot of work to realize. That’s probably why I’m so pushy about justice and compassion, and about all of us needing to lead lives that bring those dreams closer to fruition.

Now I know that some people are feeling hopeful and others hopeless. This is ever the case; still, there may be more angst these days. Some are full of hope for what might finally be done. Others despair for what may be destroyed. I get that. Probably both are correct. Things will change, good and bad. Change is prerequisite to better things happening. The death of the once-was is necessary for the what-may-be to erupt.

No matter where you are politically or theologically, no matter what’s happening in your life (and I get it, illness, death, and loss are real) make it a point to find, or create new, hope – in your day, in your week, in this season of your life.

  Look among the nations and watch!
        Be astonished and stare
            because something is happening in your days
                that you wouldn’t believe even if told. Habakkuk 1:5