Is Hope more than wishful thinking? … more than the carrot dangled? … waiting for spring to arrive after the long winter?
The dictionary defines hope as: the state which promotes the desire of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one’s life or in the world at large.
The news on the TV screen at the Winnipeg airport, while waiting for my flight to Calgary explodes with the story of five young people stabbed to death at an end of term university party. Shock, disbelief!
The city of Calgary’s worst mass murder ever.
The grey clouds of mourning have hung over the news, the city and the skies. One more tragic read for the masses, but a lifetime of dashed hopes for the families and close friends of the five.
Where are the spring flowers for this situation? Delayed, due to an extension of winter.
Feeling along with the heaviness of the loss of a child, the clock radio woke me to a strange mixture of music. In the one ear I could hear the Third Day song Nothing Compares, and just below that a rap artist was going on about the strife, misery and hate that seems a frequent topic of rap. The mixture confused me, momentarily as I had not knowingly set my alarm. Then as I recognized the first song, I thought it was brilliant—the words of hope, of the greater good written/sung over top the disappointment in life. And then I realized it was a tuning problem … I was on the airwave border of two radio stations that were competing to outshout each other. What an image of what is happening every day. Listen to the news at night and we can get the overwhelming sense of despair … watch the National Geographic or Discovery channel and I sense awe as I view the incredible beauty and strength of whales breaching in the ocean, or time lapse photography of flowers unfolding.
Simone Weil has said that there are two things that pierce the heart, beauty and affliction(sorrow). Restated as moments we wish would last forever, and those we wish had never begun.

This is the Easter weekend, and this is the ultimate story of the resurrection of hope over the sorrow of death.
The promise of new life erupting after the long winter.
May it be so for the families in sorrow.
I am waiting for these crocuses to return.

Link to the Third Day song that played … I didn’t recognize the rap song, so cannot give you that link—you get to play it over your own selection of disappointment.