Julie Grabowski
Katherine Savage
Nancy E. Petty
September 10, 2006 – Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost/Sunday in the
Park
Texts: Jeremiah 29:11 and
Romans 15:13
HOPE
The hand that is writing this,
Is no longer controlled by the
wrist,
but by the mind,
where pictures used to form,
the beautiful kind.
But now all that is in the
mind,
are pictures,
the sad kind.
The mind’s days are sad and
blue,
but there is nothing it can do,
except remember,
though the mind’s world is no longer
tender,
there is still one beautiful thing in the mind,
hope,
the beautiful kind.
September 11, 2001
My ritual,
on the day that is theirs,
is to relive
the moment that was mine.
Sixteen years ago
I found at 11:27 AM,
that joy and pain
were not the enemies
I once knew them to be.
at 11:27 today,
I wrap the store-bought
expressions
of my absolute joy for her
and watch unfathomable pain on TV.
In the evening,
we gather.
I slice the cake
while we watch five different camera views
of a plane piercing a building.
We eat.
There is no sweetness on our
tongues.
We sing “Happy Birthday.”
There is no song in our
hearts.
I consider,
That the only real gift of
the day
could be this world of terror and horror
we have bequeathed to her.
She is
Sweet sixteen.
Never been
kissed.
Never been hijacked, blown to
pieces,
crushed by a 110 story building,
suffocated on smoke and dust,
or burned alive either.
I try to remember
that moment,
how I held my joy and my pain
and treasured them.
To know her,
is to understand that
she is
the gift of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Just to look at her
Is to see hope.
Katherine
9-15-01
Reflection on Hope
To learn about hope,
talk to the man
whose life partner
recently died of cancer.
He thought God
was evidenced
in their love for each other.
Now he is sick
of the non-answer
and yearns with every
particle of himself
to have her back. I want her
back.
To learn about hope,
stand on a small patch
of sidewalk outside
the prison walls and talk
to the kin of a man
soon to be executed inside.
He thought God
would be evidenced
in justice served and freedom delivered,
but at 1:59AM, he
is sick of the non-answer
and proclaims to anyone
who will listen that
he is innocent. He is
innocent, I tell you.
To learn about hope,
talk to the woman
about to lose her mind
for good.
She thought God
was evidenced in the numbers
of people whose lives she’d fingered
and shaped with her love.
Now she is sick
of forgetting the questions
and the answers.
Talk
to the people
whose knock on the door
has become the kicking of a maniac.
Forget cocoons and butterflies.
Don’t ask about the great
non-answer.
Say instead, tell me
about your love.
Measure its depth
by the grief you hear. Let this
inform your faith
in hope.
Katherine
September 6, 2006
Reflection on Hope
Sunday in the Park
September 10, 2006
Novelist, Barbara Kingsolver writes: “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
Writer, Rita Mae Brown adds, “Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” –Rita Mae Brown
I come this morning with a question and it is this: Are you a hopeful person or a person of hope? It may seem like an odd question – one that could be construed as simply a matter of semantics or definition – but it is the question that has been on my mind in recent weeks. I can’t tell you exactly why I have been pondering this question or even when and where it originated with me. Maybe, I’ve been thinking about it as I have anticipated the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001 – a day when hope was shattered as planes crashed into building and thousands died AND a day when hope came alive in countless heroic acts of compassion between strangers. Maybe, as war rages on in our world, my soul and spirit has been longing and looking for some glimpses of hope – hope that peace would come to our hurting world soon. Or maybe, my wonderings about hope are coming out of a desire to name the small signs of hope that I am seeing around me and in the world. Regardless of the origins of my thoughts on hope, I keep coming back to this question: Are you a hopeful person or a person of hope?
For most of my life, I have considered myself to be a hopeful person. It has been my way to look for the good, to find the positive, to wish for the best. That’s not to say that I don’t have my moments of looming gloom (the brain tumor I’m sure I have every time I get a headache; or the pain in my left arm that I am absolutely positive is a sign of the heart attack I’m destined to have) but for the most part, I keep a positive and hopeful attitude about life. I believe in the goodness of people; most days I am able to put my trust in a loving and caring God; and on an existential and philosophical level I believe that most things that happen to us in life teach us how to be better people and how to create a better world in which to live.
While there is nothing wrong with being a hopeful person – someone who looks for the good, finds the positive and wishes for the best – I have come to realize that what my soul longs for and what the world needs from me and from all of us is to be a person of hope and a people of hope. In these trying and difficult days of world conflict and fear and division and hate and violence and distrust, our nation and our faith needs for us to be people of hope not merely hopeful people – people who are willing to figure out what they hope for and then live inside that hope…not just admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. That is to say, our world needs more people who will never hope more than they work [for hope].
As people of faith, we are called to be more than hopeful people – we are called to be people of hope. So what does that look like? The glimpses I have seen in recent days look something like this…
It looks like a group of young adults traveling half way
across the world to build a water cistern in a dry and thirsty land. It looks
like a congregation of people who are willing to take a stand on their faith
and say that God welcomes all people into God’s church. It looks like an
interfaith group of clergy and laity working together tirelessly within their
state for marriage equality for gays and lesbians. It looks like people of
faith taking action on behalf of workers trapped in the injustices of unfair
working conditions in one of the world’s largest meat packing plants. It looks
like individuals who write and visit those in prison. It looks like the
accountant who leaves work two hours early one day a week to tutor a child who
is struggling in school or to mentor a recovering addict. It looks like those
who remind us that we share this earth with other living creatures and who work
endlessly to care for God’s creation. It looks like the reconciliation of two
people caught in a web of past wrongs. It looks like a Baptist bishop from the
Are you a hopeful person or a person of hope? Are we a hopeful church or a church of hope? For people of all faiths, this may be one of the most significant questions we ask ourselves.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace…and may you abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13
Benediction:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
-Kalidasa
Statement of Worship
Possibly the only statement worship needed this morning is to be silent
and take in the glory of God’s wonderful creation.
As we gathered for worship the prophet Jeremiah reminded us that
God offers to us a future with hope. While lectionary texts throughout
the year touch on the theme of hope, we usually reserve it for one of
our four Sunday’s in advent. And yet, as we face the world and the
fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, the longing for hope is deep
within us all.
So on this day, as we gather for worship in the openness of our world,
we speak of hope – where we see it, where we long for it and we
contemplate what it means to be a
people of hope.