The River of Hope

I used to think we couldn’t hope things into being, but I was wrong.

There is a river of hope that runs through us all.

Hope is an ancient thing, a real thing, something made of the Heart of

love as old as the Universe is old, or older.

Emily Dickenson gave us a bird because she knew we needed to see

hope, feel its beating heart, watch it fly.

But we don’t have to stop there. Hope is what you dip into when life

has worn you down to the bottom rung and you touch that place in you

that makes you start up the ladder again.

Older than time, it washes your bones with strength you don’t know

you have, with a love you don’t fathom.

Hope gifts us when we are hollow, empty as dead trees.

This river of hope quenches the thirst of prophets. Because it takes

love to hope.

Older than time, Harriet Tubman drank it like a soup made out of stars. It kept my ancestors following the North star.

It made Ghandi keep weaving freedom at his loom.

Older than time it kept Dietrich Bonhoeffer saying yes to life within

death as he resisted the Nazis.

And it kept Martin King dreaming.

Older than time, it keeps the elephants marching forward as they

search for the waters of life.

And when we lose our way it tells us we can find these waters as we

cross any wasteland confronted by dust and dry bones.

We are the children of hope, the children of that Word that made us,

the children of the river that has no beginning and no end.

We are the children of the river of hope, and it will take us home.

Linda Beatrice Brown

Jan 5, 2025