It was my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Haley, who first introduced me to Emily Dickinson. At the time, I thought Emily Dickinson was the saddest, most depressed person in history, someone whose suffering rivaled Job’s.
Now, more than twenty years later, I read Dickinson with a different eye and am learning to appreciate her humor, but also, surprisingly, her hopefulness.
Dickinson wrote the following lines on hope:
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.”
The line here that stands out the most to me is “and never stops at all.” Hope never stops, it never fails. It sits in your soul and sings and no matter how bad things get, it will never stop singing. I guess the only question is: are you still listening or have you shut hope out?
One place where hope seems to sing the loudest is at the cathedral, St. Anne de Beaupré, located just outside Quebec City.
When I was thirteen, we took a field trip to Quebec City, a long distance field trip. It was more than ten hours on an old, rickety school bus. We stayed over Memorial Day weekend and out of all the sites I remember, it is St. Anne de Beaupré that still moves me to this day.
St. Anne de Beaupré is known for its healing miracles. People come to the Basilica to pray and are cured of cancer, of paralysis. People enter the Basilica in wheelchairs and leave St. Anne walking.
The first thing I remember seeing in St. Anne were two enormous columns that stretched to the ceiling and were covered—every square inch covered—in the canes and crutches of those who had been healed, of those who came to St. Anne de Beaupré hurting and left whole and new.
Even for a cynical thirteen-year-old, it was a powerful image. People came to St. Anne de Beaupré humming along with that tiny little song of hope and became a part of a whole choir of hope. And even though I was not in need of any physical healing at that point in my life, I was not immune to the song of hope. It washed over me and as I crossed the street to visit the life-sized Stations of the Cross that sit on the hill opposite St. Anne de Beaupré, I was almost overcome.
Years pass and sometimes the song of hope seems faint, almost a memory. When I walked into Hope Episcopal Church for the first time this past Easter morning, the song of hope grew louder. It had been a tough year for me. I had been disappointed by so many things.
And here was this church reminding me that God is good always … always.
And that the song of hope is never silent.
