HOPE by @AwakeningTrue

Tags

choices, hope, love, virtues

HOPE by Sharon Kathryn D’Agostino

In many conversations over the past three weeks, I have felt the need and the responsibility to be hopeful, and to share messages of hope with others. This caused me to spend a considerable amount of time thinking about hope and exploring its power relative to one of my favorite topics – love. At the beginning of this exploration, hope seemed more ephemeral than love, more like a flickering flame that, when the wind blew, persisted only if it was protected by sheer will and determination.

Why, I wondered, did I see love as more steadfast, more permanent than hope? Why did I view love as the strongest sibling in the family of these virtues, along with other virtues, that so many of us are committed to demonstrating in our thoughts, our words, and our actions?

We speak about unconditional love – love without conditions, without expectations or requirements. When we choose to love someone unconditionally, when we commit to loving unconditionally, our love is unwavering. Why, then, does hope feel more conditional? What is unconditional hope?

I know how to remain loving when someone says or does something hurtful. I know how to remain compassionate when tempted to judge rather than forgive. But I must admit that during these past three weeks, there have been days when I did not know HOW to remain hopeful. Meditation and journaling helped me understand that hope, like love, is a choice. This obvious conclusion had not been obvious to me on those days when hope seemed so elusive. Today, though, I better understand that conclusion and I choose hope. I choose to be hopeful and hope-filled, reminded that this is how we are able to move through the most challenging hours or days or weeks of our lives.  

Some of us live in places where Spring is now arriving. The crocuses and daffodils that survived the snowstorm and icy weather near my home last weekend are symbols of hope for me as I commit to choosing unconditional HOPE, unwavering hope, from this moment on.

I very much look forward to discussing hope in this Sunday’s #SpiritChat, and to learning from this hopeful and hope-filled community.   

Thank you all very much, and many thanks to Kumud for the opportunity!!  

Sharon Kathryn D’Agostino — @SharonDAgostino, @AwakeningTrue and @SayItForwardNow

Author’s bio: I believe in the power of love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, gratitude, and…hope! And I believe that each of us has an important role in shaping a kinder, gentler, more compassionate world for all.

Kumud’s note: I am delighted that Sharon @AwakeningTrue will be hosting #SpiritChat on Sunday, March 20 at 9amEDT / 1pmUTC / 630pm India on twitter. I am so looking forward to all the hope and love that emerges from her leading the conversation on this topic. Thank you, Sharon!

 

 

Photo: Daffodils by Sharon Kathryn D’Agostino

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life’s Silver Linings

Tags

focus, holidays, hope, new year, perspective

As early as last week, I started hearing and reading references to how much 2020 “sucked”, and that folks couldn’t wait for the year to be over — so that we could all march into 2021 and forget about this year. It made me ask two questions —

• was there anything good that we could take from 2020 as we welcome 2021?
• how was 2021 going to become ‘magically’ different for us at the stroke of midnight on December 31?

I guess I wasn’t alone in noticing the emerging negative tone towards 2020. On Monday, my long-time twitter friend, @VegyPower messaged me to say that she had an “idea for the #SpiritChat conversation on Dec 27”. We talked over the phone, and sure enough, she was thinking about the “silver linings” amid all the storms that we experienced in 2020. Hence, this week’s topic was seeded. 

After my phone conversation with her, and as the week progressed, I did not have to think too much or too deeply about my own silver linings from 2020. For that matter, perhaps you won’t have to look too far to find them either. To begin, it may be helpful to ask some questions that invite us to reframe, refocus and revisit our perspective of 2020. For example, if you could take three positive ‘things’ forward from this year, what would they be? My suggestion would be to pick one ‘thing’ or ‘set of things’ each — for mind, body and spirit. Write the ‘things’ down on three sheets of paper. Add some bits of poetry, some doodles, or some photos, and maybe even create a “2020 Silver Linings” board. If you feel like it, now share your board with friends and family — who knows, it may inspire them to do the same. 

It is easy for the human mind to forget, to want to forget pain, and painful times. I often hear and read that most of us are attracted much more to pleasure than to pain. Hence, we tend to want to fill our lives with experiences that bring smiles, laughter and Joy. And yet, it is pain, suffering and death on an unprecedented scale that brought the best minds of Science together in 2020 to design, test, manufacture and distribute, not just one, but multiple vaccines, in record time, to fight the pandemic. In my mind, this  ‘coming together for a common goal’ is surely one silver lining from 2020. I am sure you can think of many more. 

Now, about the second question —  how will we use the silver linings, and even the dark clouds that we experienced in 2020 to continue to create better versions of ourselves in 2021? I haven’t seen my Aunt, with whom I have spent many a Diwali, Thanksgiving and Christmas in the past, at all this year. I picked up the phone and called her in the evening on Christmas Day. The phone rang a few times, and I was composing my voice mail in my head, when she answered. She had just returned from Christmas dinner from her son’s home and some wonderful family time with her three grand-daughters. We talked about the year, and about the year to come, and she was all excited about the second vaccine dose that is she is to receive in mid-January. But that wasn’t all. 

As we talked about 2020 and 2021, she said that she had spent a lot of time doing ‘spring cleaning’ in November and December. She had found a “folder” full of something, which had items that went back to 1967 – fifty three years ago. She asked me to guess what may have been in that folder? The best I could come up with was — “maybe they’re some kind of letters.” Close enough, she said. For the next hour or so, she then proceeded to tell me the story of the ‘long-distance romance through letters’ that happened  between her husband-to-be and her while she was in India and he was in Canada. It was quite a story, which I had heard for the first time — and I’ve known her for 34 years. 

Why do I tell you the story of this conversation? After I hung up the phone with her, it made me think of silver linings and the remarkable story that I had just heard. It also made me ask – what are the stories that 2020 has uncovered for us, from which we can learn and remember, so that 2021 can benefit from them. Will we remember stories of pain, of love, of joy, of suffering, of hope, of giving, of receiving, of tears, of laughter, and treat them all alike? Or will we choose to forget them, only to re-discover them in our heart’s folder many years, if not decades hence? 

The lesson of 2020, for me to remember, is that every moment of a fully lived life is a silver lining unto itself. What will you remember?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for a special conversation with the #SpiritChat community on 9amET / 730pm India, Sunday, Dec 27 2020 on twitter. My gratitude to @VegyPower for the inspiration for the topic (and some questions!). If you cannot join us in the hour, I wish you the best for the New Year. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

 

If we look closely enough, there are silver linings everywhere…

Harbingers of Hope

Tags

faith, giving, holidays, hope

It was one of my Grandmother’s favorite quotes. When I would ask her about the minuscule impact that her giving of yesterday’s flatbread to the the sadhu (monk) who would come and clang the wrought iron gate every morning to announce his presence, she would say — “doobte ko tinke ka saharaa’ — “to the one who is drowning (in a whirlpool) in the middle of the river, even a blade of grass floating by seems like a lifeline”.

As you can tell, I never forgot her interpretation of giving. She wasn’t merely giving yesterday’s flatbread – she was giving Hope. She was giving light for another day, or maybe even for a few hours, to a single human being, who would arrive daily in the hope that his hunger would find some relief. She was helping to sustain someone who had chosen the life of detachment — not beggary, mind you —  but a conscious, aware choice of total, unconditional surrender to divine sustenance. 

There are very few among us who can practice that  level of complete faith. Our faith is often an incomplete one, where we think of our spiritual practices as tools in our tool belt. Today, I feel emotionally down, so let me meditate a bit more. Today, I feel really good, so maybe I’ll give my meditation tool a rest in my too-belt. One of my Vedanta teachers describes it as a “faith of convenience”. We employ faith as a tool of bartering with the divine and the universe. 

And then we are left wondering why our faith does not work as and when, and in the way, we expect it to. Imagine that we were to only breathe when we found it to be convenient for us to breathe. We wouldn’t last very long, would we? Then why do we expect our intermittent faith to sustain us? I posit that this is where Hope enters our practice. Hope fills the voids and cracks that our incomplete and intermittent faith and half-hearted actions create. 

This is not to say that Hope isn’t necessary for the world at large. It is. In Rabindranath Tagore’s famous verse, he says — oh, wait. As I google the quote, I see that many have used ‘hope’ and ‘faith’ interchangeably… “Faith (Hope) is the bird who feels the light and sings while the dawn is still dark”. And then there is Emily Dickinson’s poem which begins with… 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

The practicality of life necessitates that we may need both, faith and hope. When one flounders, the other shores us up. When we lose faith and start drowning in life’s storms, hope steps in and becomes the blade of grass that keeps us afloat. We can then find strength to sing our song while the dawn is still dark. With both hope and faith, we can discover Joy in the gaps between the breaths of our life, and make every season a season of giving.

In the pure spirit of Joy that emerges from a complete faith, we can choose to become harbingers of Hope. Our giving is then complete. That’s a season worth celebrating. What say you?

Kumud

 

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering of a community of faith, hope, joy and giving in #SpiritChat – Sunday, Dec 13 at 9amET / 730pm India. I will bring some tea and fresh flatbread (with a drizzle of caramelized brown sugar) to share. Namaste – @AjmaniK