Christmas is a “hope-filled” season.  It reminds me that, just as there is much to lose, there is always much more to gain. One thing we must never lose, however, is hope. I incorporated into some prose a few voices from the past that remind us of this essential truth:

“We are tired of waiting.”

The prayers from death camps

leapt to heaven

as if pulled upon by strings.

But words spoken from

a later vantage point

reversed the pull to push:

“Hope is like peace.

It is not a gift from God.

It is a gift that only we

can give to one and then the other.”  (Elie Wiesel)

 

“We are tired of waiting.”

Amidst hangings and hosings,

beatings and jailings,

was hope a dying delusion?

But encouraging words 

moved them forward

down the road to freedom:

“We must accept

a finite disappointment,

but never lose

an infinite hope.” (Martin Luther King)

 

“We are tired of waiting.”

Pleadings that crawled

through cracks in the wall,

shut behind a gate

closed tight and firmly latched.

 But then, commanding words breached despair:

“Tear down this wall!’

A gate pushed open from the inside out.

“A message of hope,

even in the shadow of the wall.

A message of triumph”. (Ronald Reagan)                  

 

“We are tired of waiting.”

From Soweto’s ghettos,

from prison and street,

to black versus white,

and white versus black,

A silenced voice

could not be quieted:

“Human compassion

binds us one to another.

A common suffering turns

into hope for the future.” (Nelson Mandela)

 

“We are tired of waiting.”

A repeated refrain cried

by those oppressed and lost,

and to us sadly whispered

from the foot of a wooden cross.

To the sinking despair of mind and soul.

a sweet but simple new song is sung:

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all.”  (Emily Dickinson)   

 

In this beautiful season of the year, may your lives be filled with a hope that “never stops at all.”

John E. Holt, Cotuit, Massachusetts