Rev. Lori on Choosing Hope
This reflection was originally published in the previous week’s Friday Flyer.
Hello Good People!
Sending you warm and cozy vibes today as we put on our long johns and wool socks! This week we light the candle of HOPE. Normally the HOPE candle is the first one that is lit during advent. We are UUs and we do it our way I am told. And it fits as the theme of the month is hope so it feels right to light this candle to begin our Sunday’s together in December.
This is surely the month to hope for many things. Food and shelter for our friends who are struggling, peace and comfort for those who have experienced loss recently, peace and comfort for those who struggle during the holiday season, peace and comfort for those living under the many threats of the day. Those are the tough areas that benefit from hope. Of course there is hope for the many transformations that we know are possible. Stronger communities that will rise to the occasion of caring for people and being safe harbors. We see this happening right here in our church and in our community.
Hope connects us to one another. It reminds us that we do not walk alone, and that shared burdens become lighter when held in community. Choosing hope is choosing relationship—trusting that others will show up, that love will meet us again, and that the future is shaped not only by outcomes but by the spirit with which we meet the journey. In choosing hope, we commit ourselves to tending sparks of possibility wherever they appear, and in doing so, we become part of the light we long to see.
Let’s choose hope today and all days. Let’s bring hope into the weekend through Sunday. And let’s seek hope with our friends and family and community. I am never one to gloss over pain and loss and hard times. But I am one who KNOWs that there is always a path through and a road on the other side. Choose hope now especially if it feels remote. I heard it said by a women from Bratislava in the former Soviet Union that the only thing that kept people going through some excruciating years was hope. And in her thick, deep voiced accent she said, “Hope is the last thing to die.”
We are reminded this week that we are the ones who spark new hope, who keep the hope, who nurture the hope.
Lets do so together!
Peace and Blessings
Rev Lori Whittemore
(she, her, hers)
Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco Biddeford