Hope Springs Another Leak by Jocelyn Faire

What do you want your books/writings to make happen inside your readers?
I want my writing to bring a sense of hope to people.

Is Hope more than wishful thinking? ... more than the carrot dangled? ... Is it more than 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.

This past Tuesday the news on the TV screen at the Winnipeg airport, while I waited for my flight to Calgary, exploded 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 all those involved, victims and perpetrator.

Where are the spring flowers for this situation? Delayed, due to an extension of winter.

The heaviness of the loss of a child had been with me as I went to sleep, and 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 actually a tuning issue ... I was on the airwave border of two radio stations that were competing to outshout each other. What an image of what happens 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, remote mountain vistas at sunset, or time lapse photography of flowers unfolding.

Simone Weil has said that there are two things that pierce the heart, beauty and affliction.

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.

Meanwhile, I await the return of the crocuses as the reminder of spring and hope.

Here is the link to the Third Day song that played. I didn't recognize the rap song, so I cannot give you that link—you can play it over your own selection of disappointment.


Jocelyn blogs about hope in the hard places at Who Is Talking. She is the author of the book Who is Talking Out of My Head? Grief as an out of Body Experience, available online and through Amazon.