Hope is "in" ...

The flowers on the Christmas cacti and violets are budding and blooming. I can't believe it! Even the Orchid is budding on the plant stand by the wide window staring out into the woods. All are gently announcing that spring is sneaking in slowly but surely. Women's History month and "Yes We Can!" time. Drive the cynics out and pull the hope back in. I, for one, am full-to-the-brim with hope. The kind that urges me to become mind and heart involved. I haven't felt like this for such a long time.

I am hosting a party this evening and am all a-whirl! Time to make those phone calls. Sunday is water-the-plants day and as I carry out my weekly ritual, lighting a candle and burning the Nag Champa there is an excited, tickling feeling in my tummy. "Let's make it happen," I think silently to myself.

Anything can happen if we apply ourselves. When Obama says that he wouldn't be where he is today if he did not have hope, his story excites me to my own core. Who would have thought twenty years ago that I could have completed three degrees and written two books? I mean, back in those days I believed a story told to me that a "black star" hovered over my head, promoting a self-fulfilling prophesy as I drove myself down a self-destructive path. Hope is crucial for systemic change. I know that. Hope is deep. Hope is accompanied by great courage. Cynics prefer to feel afraid. I'm all agog - ready to jump on that hope bandwagon. Am sick and tired of being afraid and when Barack Obama speaks, I feel safe. I'm read to change the paradigm. After all, I did it in my personal life - cast out those old, cynical, heavy, sad, stale, mythical family stories that kept me locked away in fear, repeating the same old, same old mistakes over and over again.

As a nation, we can do it too!

My excitement is palpable this morning. Spraying water from the little plastic bottle misting the budding, flowering plants on the wooden stands by the window, and breathing in the Nag Champa I have burned during my same weekly watering-the-plants ritual for over thirty years, I sense spring, movement in the air ... yes indeed ... hang in there, people ... for ... change is a-coming ...

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Out of the dawn

Comments

[tamarika]

H.A. Page,
Am trying to remain hopeful but I fear that Clinton is going to bring Obama down into her style of dirty politics. Am saddened. Was I too much of an idealist? But lately, when Clinton says that all Obama has is a speech - it is so offensive that I feel as if she is saying it to me personally. It insults my intelligence. I am appalled by her tactics. Am trying not to "hate" her as so many do ... but I surely understand why so many people do ... I will not be able to vote in the general election if she is the nominee. In the end, I have integrity. How sad, how sad.

[H.A. Page]

Did you catch the new phrase from the opposition: Yes, She Can!

It was the crowd chant after the Tues. primaries. The thing is this, though: Obama's phrase uses we and with Hillary, it is all about I, I, I.

[tamarika]

Hi Brenda!
Thanks so much for stopping by my blog. Much appreciated. Yes, spring *is* coming, and even if Obama does not become the nominee, hope has been awakened and the national conversation has started to change.

[Brenda Friedrich]

I just discovered your blog and wanted to say how I like the introspective posts I've read so far. Out on a birthday weekend, I've been trying to uncover those signs of spring that typically bring me hope. They are a little slow in coming this year, so maybe I'll have to look more at the polictal climate!