What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?
I think it is the hope of loving,
or being loved.
– Meister Eckhart.
hope
Hope ~ 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.
– Emily Dickinson
Today’s Reflection ~ Hope
Hope is an adventure, a going forward, a confident search for a rewarding life. Karl A. Menninger
Today’s Reflection ~ Achieving the Impossible
Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible. ~ Helen Keller
Today’s Reflection ~ Hope
Learn From Yesterday, Live for Today, hope for tomorrow. ~ Orison Swett Marden
Thick is the Darkness – Henley
Thick is the darkness—
Sunward, O, sunward!
Rough is the highway—
Onward, still onward!
Dawn harbors surely
East of the shadows.
Facing us somewhere
Spread the sweet meadows.
Upward and forward!
Time will restore us:
Light is above us,
Rest is before us.
William Ernest Henley
Psalm of Life ~ Longfellow
Psalm of Life
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”
The Arrow and the Song ~ by Longfellow
The Arrow and the Song
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I shot an arrow into the air.
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air.
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song.
Long, long afterward, in an oak,
I found the arrow still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Today’s Reflection ~ Hope
“I close my eyes to old ends. And open my heart to new beginnings.” Nick Frederickson
Today’s Reflection ~ Hope
Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.
Victor Hugo
