This morning I was sitting in church listening to Pastor Debbie’s sermon and thinking how bright it was inside the sanctuary. Hope is blessed with floor to ceiling windows on two sides of the church and between those windows and the overhead lights, it was almost too bright.
In either the second or third Kid’s Talk I gave I told the kids how I was afraid of the dark, how I keep an abundance of flashlights nearby just in case the power goes out. Light is so important to me, especially natural light. I almost didn’t buy the condo I’m currently living in because it faced north and didn’t give me the lighting that I needed.
When I think of all the reasons I stayed at Hope, I sometimes wonder if subconsciously I stayed because of the light. Every other Episcopal church I’ve been to has been dark and cave-like. At those churches I tend to feel hemmed in and sad. But at Hope, the light was a beacon calling me home.
In a little over two months, I will be celebrating my second anniversary at Hope. I can’t believe it’s been two years. I can’t believe how long and short that seems. My life has changed in so many wonderful ways, ways I began cataloguing in this blog in May, 2010.
I called my blog New to Hope, meaning that both in a literal and figurative way.
Two weeks ago, I sat in the Diocesan Convention and heard Bishop-Elect Greg Brewer give his first address. He quoted Vaclav Havel in regards to hope and much like Pastor Debbie, whenever I hear that word these days, I immediately perk up.
I like just about everything Havel says about hope, but this particular line sticks with me. Havel says: “[Hope] is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
That is the hope I have been given, the certainty that everything in life has meaning, has purpose, and that God will use everything great or small, good or bad, in furtherance of His will and His will is always glorious and wonderful and beautiful.
Hope, Havel says, “is an orientation of the spirit.” Hope does not reside within us. Instead, we live inside hope.
This blog has chronicled my journey to hope. And I am both pleased and saddened to say this part of the journey is over. I am no longer new to hope. I’ve been living it. And so, after much prayer, I’ve decided it’s time to end this blog.
When I was in fourth grade, I wrote my first poem and all through fifth and sixth grade, I wrote poems like a mad woman. Ironically, poetry kept me sane when the world around me began to crumble, when the death of a friend and the illness of a parent threatened to pull me far, far away from hope.
Eventually, I healed and the flow of poetry slowed. But I never stopped writing. I turned to playwriting next and then more poetry in college and then novel writing as a young adult and blogging most recently. Whenever I stopped writing one thing, something else was waiting to take its place. Interestingly enough, I think my photography has taken the place of my poetry. Whatever I felt writing poetry, I feel now when I snap a good picture.
Regardless, what I’m trying to say is that even as I bring this blog to a close, I will not stop writing. I may even start another blog. And if and when I do, you’ll be the first one to know. In the meantime, God has called me to write other things. And as I’ve discovered with my call to the priesthood, when God calls us to do something, we can only ignore Him for so long.
I thank each and every one of you who has read this blog. As a character in the movie Shadowlands said, “We read to know we’re not alone.”
You are not alone.
And thanks to you, neither am I.
God Bless.
See you soon.
