Today as I look out of my window and breathe in crisp spring air, there is a word that persistently flashes through my mind. That word is hope.

Hope
noun.  

1. A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.

2. Something that is hoped for or desired: Success is our hope.

3. One that is a source of or reason for hope: the team's only hope for victory.

A standard dictionary definition of any word only goes as far as telling us how that word has been used in language thus far. What’s missing or incomplete in defining words is the spirit of such a word as applied to specific circumstances. Our current national political circumstance at this point is best described as being one in which we’ve endured certain very real forms of oppression and tyranny. For close to a decade now we’ve been locked into the worst of a short- sighted, fearful, reactionary neo-conservative agenda that has caused too many of us to lose sight of this word, hope, and therefore the strength and ability and empowerment that this word and words like it give us.

Languages change, cultures change and societies change based on the words that they choose to remember or to forget. In declining societies the stronger words fall into disuse and are replaced with far less forceful language. When this happens, the people become more limited in their thought as the words that they may choose to use to express certain thoughts become less- widely understood. And it has been a part of the aforementioned agenda to encourage the masses to forget the words that grant true power to the people.

That’s why today, I’m reminding you of a word which carries the spirit of a powerful and beautiful concept. Hope.

In an election year, our nation tends to be a bit more forward- looking than at other times. But how many of us can look forward in confident expectation that the grander and brighter things that we see, the silver lining in so many gray clouds, can and will come to pass? For one I can and I encourage you to stand with me in hope and not only to stand, but to be filled with it. I’ll give you three short reasons why I’m so hopeful:

1. It occurred to me recently that if George W. Bush was a cheerleader( check up on it) in his younger days, and is now a world leader that maybe all presidents are really just cheerleaders. They have the responsibility to rally, motivate and encourage us to perform to the best of our collective abilities. So W’s a lousy cheerleader, maybe the worst cheerleader ever, but a cheerleader nonetheless. At the end of the year, we get a new cheerleader. One who’s guaranteed to at least be a better speechmaker if nothing else. We need to be rallied and inspired. We need leadership to give us hope.

2. I often ask people what is so fundamentally different about what they do in their day- to- day lives since W. took the office. What direct impact has it had on how you live your everyday life. Sure things are quite a bit more expensive, but aside from that what’s the difference? …….. I’m waiting ……. Exactly! Probably not much. Truth is you still go about life in the same way you did during the Clinton years and before then. You work, pay bills, celebrate with loved ones, take vacations and press on as life demands. What’s different now is how you feel about your self, your society and your nation. Mass- media manipulation has ushered in the age of fear and now we think twice about “security” before leaving the house. Fear and hope work at cross- purposes. As one increases, the other decreases. That’s just how it works. Oversimplified? Perhaps a bit, but you get my point. Hope allows us to continue and press forward in boldness and confidence.

3. America above all else is a spirit. She is a subtle ideal that gives her energy freely to all that live under her. She has given hope to men and women from every nation and state of earth and their children. That’s what she has done and that’s just what she will do. If it takes 9 months for a person to be born. How long then is the gestation for the greatest nation on earth? In my view, America is yet to be born. It has only been in the last half- decade or so that we have been challenged with guaranteeing the rights and freedoms that all of her people have been granted under law. And while this challenge has at times pushed us to our limits, we can not abort the work of building the types of cities and communities and families that this unique and still- shining American spirit enables us to build. I gre up with the feeling that in this country, anything was possible. Hope says that it still is.

The work that faces us all today is two- fold. It is first the work of healing. It is secondly the work of rebuilding. We have faced this same challenge at other parts of our collective history. The spirit of hope has always allowed us to respond appropriately and triumph. When I view American chattel- slavery, it obviates itself as the worst and most destructive experience in human history. But despite all the atrocities, degradation and oppression of that period, it’s survivors and there spirit of hope gave us the basis for a sound that was capable of transmuting and transcending all of that pain in a way that would eventually begin to build bridges between oppressed and oppressor. We call that sound The Blues. We call that sound Jazz. We call those people Americans. And I call that spirit HOPE.