20/04/2021

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev Canon Susanna Gunner.

Good morning.

I’ve recently co-led some Zoom sessions about Emily Dickinson, the reclusive 19th century poet from Massachusetts, famous for her startling first lines. One poem we looked at began “Grief is a mouse…” Who would ever have guessed that?

Our last poem began “Hope is….” You may well know how it goes on – it’s one of her most famous – but if not, you’re probably in for a surprise: “Hope is the thing with feathers” Emily tells us.

She continues by describing a plucky little bird perching in our souls, singing away even in turbulent times. In fact, she says, hope’s song is sweetest when life is harshest.

The wonderful thing about the poem is that it makes us ask what we think hope is. What metaphor for hope would you have supplied? One thing’s certain – hope is both a vulnerable and a valuable entity just now. And it’s much more than wistfully dreaming of better: the courageous bird in Emily’s poem makes that clear. When it’s so easy to be hopeless – in the face of climate change, for example, or pandemic - to live hopefully is an act of resistance. And it can change things. Daringly, defiantly, the hopeful person will simply not accept an unacceptable situation. Hope is an activist. The American theologian Walter Wink offered the uplifting assertion that, “Hope imagines the future and then acts as if that future is irresistible”.

God of hope,
make your home in us
that we too may dare to hope.

Amen