It's spring and in episodes 117-120 we are talking about hope. What is it? How do we talk about this intangible thing? Can it be toxic? We don't have the answers, but we lean into the conversation.

Gathering Word:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me.

It's spring and in episodes 117-120 we are talking about hope. What is it? How do we talk about this intangible thing? Can it be toxic? We don't have the answers, but we lean into the conversation.

Gathering Word:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me.

Episodes 113-116 move us from fall to winter at winter solstice. How do we hold onto hope in a dark season? How do we actively wait in the long dark night?

Gathering Word

Excerpt from It Will be Okay by Lysa TerKeurst

One morning, the Farmer came into the shed, as He had on many days.

“Little Seed,” He said as He placed him in His hand, “I have a wonderful plan for you. I have waited for just the right time, and today is the day!”

Oh no, please no! I don’t want to go!thought Little Seed.

The Farmer went outside and knelt down. He pushed Little Seed under the ground, into the dirt, and down to a deep, dark, messy place.

“Now, Little Seed, this is going to be different and it might seem scary, but it will be okay. You can trust Me,” said the Farmer.

Little Seed wished he were inside the cozy packet on the rickety shelf in the Farmer’s dusty shed.

“I want to trust, even when I can’t see. But how in the world is this good for me?”

“Little Seed, come back!” cried Little Fox when he saw the Farmer take his friend away. “Where are you, Little Seed?”

He looked in the front of the shed and behind the shed, but . . .Little Seed was not there.

He looked on top of the tractor and under the tractor, but . . .Little Seed was not there either.

He looked in the horse’s stall, the pig’s pen, and even in the Farmer’s boot, but . . .Little Seed was not there either.

Now Little Fox was really worried. “Little Seed?”he shouted

“I’m here, I’m here,way down in the dirt.

I’m scared and I’m lonely, but I’m not hurt,”

came Little Seed’s muffled voice right below him.

Now Little Fox was really worried. “Little Seed?”he shouted.”

Little Fox thought hard for something to say or something to do that would help his friend not be scared. But he was afraid too.

“It’s different and scary to be someplace new . . . but it will be okay, Little Seed.”

Little Seed was not so sure. And neither was Little Fox.

But the Farmer was good, and the Farmer was kind, and the Farmer was always watching over them.Even when they didn’t know it.”

Episodes 113-116 move us from fall to winter at winter solstice. How do we hold onto hope in a dark season? How do we actively wait in the long dark night?

Gathering Word by Alexander John Shaia

Christmas falls at the darkest moment of the year. It is also the very moment when the light is once again made visible to the naked eye.

The deepest dark is not the place where grace goes to die. The deepest dark is where grace goes to be reborn.

Episodes 113-116 move us from fall to winter at winter solstice. What happens when the winds shift and the days darken?

Gathering Word:

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home tonight.

The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn

anything or anyone that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

Episodes 113-116 move us from fall to winter at winter solstice. What happens when the winds shift and the days darken?

Gathering Word:

A Liturgy for those who feel distant from God by Heidi Johnston Every Moment Holy Volume III

I recall with longing days when the waters parted at your command and you carried me, featherlike, into your presence; when your lovingkindness was the whisper that revived my weary soul; when your presence was the pillar that marked my path by day, and your voice the flame that banished darkness and kindled my song in the night.

Oh God, my God, Where is your comfort now?

If in this season of loneliness your silence simply offers me a chance to do what will never be asked of me again in all of eternity to come;

to trust without sight, believing that time will vindicate my hope and prove you ever constant,

then give me the courage to stand, trusting that these lines I throw out are not cast into emptiness but, passing through the veil, have taken hold of Things eternal.

Give me boldness now, even as doubt crouches at my door, that I may choose to anchor my heart not in the ebb and flow of feelings But in what I know to be true.

Episodes 109-112 move us from summer to fall. In this episode we discuss the letting go and a grandmother's kazoo band.

Gathering word: The Consequences of Death by Pattiann Rodgers from Firekeeper: Selected Poems (2005) Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis.

You might previously have thought

Each death just a single loss.

But when a plain gray titmouse dies,

What plunges simultaneously and disappears too

Are all the oak-juniper woodlands,

The streamside cottonwoods, every elderberry

Bush and high spring growth of sprouted

Oak once held inside its eye.

And when a sugar pine splits, breaks

to the ground, falling with its fiestas

and commemorations of blue-green needles,

long-winged seeds, the sweet resin

of its heartwood, there’s another

collapse coincident - a fast inward

sinking and sucking back to nothing

of all those stars once kept in its core,

those clusters of suns and shining

dusts once resident in the sky of its rigid

bark and cone-scales. We could hear

the sound of the galactic collapse as well,

if we had the proper ears for it.

And when a mountain sheep stumbles,

plummets, catapulting skull, spine,

from cliffside to crumbling rock below,

a like shape of flame and intensidy

on a similar sharp ledge on the other side

of the same moment, out of our sense,

loses balance, goes blind.

Because of these torn paper-shreds

of gold-lashed wings, this spangled

fritillary’s death, somewhere behind the night

a convinced declaration of air and matter a

and intention, silenced, speaks no longer

of the god of its structure.

Episodes 109-112 move us from summer to fall. In this episode, we contemplate what it means to store up glimmers as sustenance for our future selves.

Gathering word a poem by Heather Fingar

What if we celebrated the smaller?

The way we hoot and holler

When tinies learn to high five

Blow kisses, carry their dishes

A blue hydrangea flower boon

Under the dying blooms unpruned

Avocados perfectly ripe

August rain, a lessening of pain

Yesterday me who thought ahead

Making today me easily fed

Hatch chiles stuffed and grilled

Spicy goodness, small gifts fill us.

Chimes below ring with the breeze

and I feel myself sink into ease

How would the practice change us to

celebrate the smaller, hoot and holler?

-copyright 2023. Heather Fignar