Hope

These past five years have altered my understanding of hope. Living under the most corrupt regime in Philippine history, one can get inured to the seemingly endless stream of abuses and scandals that flow across the  newspaper pages like so much sewage from a broken cistern. Just when you think the Arroyo regime has set a standard in brazenness that can't be breached, there they go and reset the bar higher. How to keep resisting when every legal option for demanding truth, justice and accountability  is blocked?  How do you sustain hope in hopeless times? That's been my struggle. One of the most valuable lessons I've learned these past five years however is that a hope tied to desired outcomes will surely falter. It's too fragile. One needs the kind of hope that persists through the inevitable failures and disappointments because it is grounded in one's trust in a power that does not fail. Here's a poem that just poured out of me the other day as I contemplated my new experience of hope.

Hope

Don't believe what they tell you.

They never enter into it

who seek their own way.

The journey to that sacred ground

takes you past cliff and precipice

and you can't reach it without falling some

not just once but again and again.

There is no mountain to climb

no ladder to ascend

no angel to lift you high

only the drop which none

ever choose willingly.

Why should they

when to them 

everything hangs

on the toss of a coin

the throw of a dice

--mere blades of grass we cling to

on the long way down?

But only let go

and miraculously you find

there is something deeper

on which you can stand

that does not give way

under the weight of disappointment.

You can't see it

for the darkness around you

but you know it's there

deeper still than death

and stronger

that space

a reassuring nearness

a webbed hand 

beyond which

nothing falls

that Tender Mercy

the hidden ground

of hope.