Hope in the NOW

Life is beautiful. Not easy. Beautiful.

Why is it so easy to forget that? Why is it so easy to start to lost sight of all the amazing, moving and just downright beautiful things that life has to offer?

And really…what I am really wondering…when did I stop looking? Seeing? Searching? Discovering? Taking in the world with my whole body; my whole self?

How did I forget to look for the beauty all around? In burning bushes all around? In the faces and stories of human beings all around—big, small, tall, old, young?

Maybe instead of obsessing about the WHEN…or the HOW…(I am certain, just as all of the wonderers and dreamers have been in every new generation, that there are actually many, many HOW’S…)

I am finally coming to my senses that the only way I can really change this; really remedy this obsessive thought pattern that is keeping me stuck and frustrated in the unknown; the only way that I can really begin to heal from this amnesia that has poisoned my heart and my eyes and my habits and my relationships and my passions and my faith and my hunger for hope…

Is simply to take the risk, to take the chance, to dive into and live all life has to offer…right now.

Yes, instead of focusing on the how, it is time to remedy all of this by focusing on the NOW. Simple. So simple. And by the way, how’s that for a cheesy rhyme?!

But really.

The “how” doesn’t actually matter at the end of the day. It cannot feed my heart song and create the space for me to practice creating and to practice change. The how of the past cannot is no more. All that is, is now. The present moment. The moment when I get to make the choice to turn my eyes forward, get them up, and really look for and be attune to the beauty of life all around me. The life that I love so much. The life that I hunger for and thirst for so much. The important beautiful things of life that make it so worth it, so worth living, even in the horror and the hurts. You know, the thing that makes life full of possibility and beginnings. Or at least, the thing that makes life really truly worth one more breath, one more blink, one more bite, one more step, one more smile, one more story…

The NOW is when I have the choice to look for and be surprised by HOPE. And as it says, “Hope does not disappoint…” (Rom. 5:5). The now is when I have the choice to look for and be surprised by hope… not the mundane, same old same old, look under the same old rocks and in the same old stuffy buildings and places…

But in the NOW…surprised by hope unexpected. In new places, in new faces, in places forgotten and visited and discovered anew…with a fresh sense of things…with a heart to really see.

The best thing, I think, is that hope is probably really not a thing at all. It’s not a thing that can be captured, collected, plucked, picked and then jarred up and stored and spread on bread.

Hope is really a feeling. Or maybe…more like a holistic experiential truth.

It doesn’t deceive or elude…it never runs out…it doesn’t disappoint… you just know it when you feel it…you just feel it when you know it…you just see it when you least expect it… it just IS.

You can always be attune to it, even if it is not where you think it will sing. Even if it is not where you expect…or where you hope…to control where you may hear it or what it’s volume will be.

There is no controlling hope. Imagine that. Not having control of something…something that gives you life.

I think that’s the greatest surprise of all about this amazing holistic experiential truth called hope.

By not having control of it, we are actually always free to be moved by it. To be surprised by it. To receive it. To reflect it. To live it. To have it live in us.

But never, ever have it to keep it…to control it…pervert it, abuse it, and make it ours and ours alone.

Hope is communal property.

Free to be felt and experienced and heard and seen and taken in and shared by all. Everyone needs it. Everyone hungers for it. Hope is not only free and needed…but hope then, is a real, true…element…fundamental building block… of humanity and freedom.

I think about that bumper sticker…”Peace begins when the hungry are fed…”

How true .And I am thinking, like so many inevitably already have, that we should not simply limit the idea of being fed to bread.

Hope is peace. Hope is freedom. Hope is free. Having hope is peace and freedom. In the present moment; in the now. Catching glimmers of hope all around is tasting freedom.

Surely, freedom comes in many forms and morsels.

I wonder what it could taste like…to live in this state of freedom…this frame of reference…this perspective…

To live as a seeker of hope…to hunger and thirst to come to know and really be spurred on by the beauty of life in new, unexpected, and uncontrollable ways.

To dare to be surprised by hope. To be changed by it.

I wonder what it could taste like to be set free by the communal freedom of hope unseen and uncaptured, only experienced and witnessed together.

I wonder what it could look like to live naturally in this perspective.

I wonder what it could feel like to taste the surprising sprinkles of hope, and to give myself permission again and again, to choose to act and allow my seeking–not my nostalgia or fears or quest for black and white HOW’s— to become a new and natural pattern and way of being in the world?

Practiced and learned…and practiced and learned…and practiced and learned…and practiced and practiced and learned…and maybe…just maybe…made permanent.

I wonder what it could taste like and feel like to live as a seeker of hope in the NOW.

Words and deeds. Individually and communally. Church and world. Disordered and not. Human and hungry.

Well, I suppose there is one thing at least that’s for sure for me right NOW:

My thoughts, my fears, my obsessing, my searching for black and white, my obsessive need to discover the hows and whys and fix-it right away answers, my what if’s….

None of these things have anything to do with hope. None of these things have anything to do with living a free, real, abundant and hopeful life.

I am not made to live in the subjunctive case. None of us are.

I am made to live in the uncontrollable beauty of the present. I am made to be and to continue to practice…BEing and inter-BEing…a present momenteer…a PRESENT MOMENTEER who also happens to be a feeler, seeker, and experiencer of hope.

I am free to be moved by hope and to hope with others in the beauty of life. Right now.

Imagine that!

What a beautiful surprise.

What a work in progress to keep practicing!