Gates of Hope
The Gates of Hope
by Victoria Safford
Whatever our vocation, we stand, beckoning and calling, singing and
shouting, at the gates of Hope. This world and our people are beautiful, and
we are called to raise that up—to bear witness to the possibility of living with
the dignity, bravery, and gladness that befits a human being. This may be
what it is to “live our mission.”
Matthew Fox writes of “the small work in the Great Work,” the place in your
little life and love, daily days and earnest effort as a solitary person within the
larger Life and larger Love that some call Holy, some call God, some call
History, and others call simply larger than themselves. Like everybody else,
we are doing small work within the Great Work of creation, and thus do we
aid it and abet it in unfolding.
Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope—not the prudent gates
of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; not the stalwart, boring gates of
Common Sense; not the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on
shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass
through); not the cheerful, flimsy garden gates of “Everything is gonna be all
right.” But a different, sometimes lonely place, the place of truth-telling,
about our own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and
defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and
as it could be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only
struggle, but joy in the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling,
telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.
Source: http://desertrosepress.com/Detailed/53.html
Rev. Victoria Safford is currently (2014) the minister of White Bear Unitarian
Universalist Church in Mahtomedi, MN
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What is the truth about your own soul and its condition?
What has your heart “resisted and defied” to build a just and loving world?
How have you experienced the joy “in the struggle”?
What have you told people about what you see from the Gates of Hope?
When you asked, what have others told you what they see?
We give them our effort.
The Contract
A word from the led
And in the end we follow them not because we are paid,
not because we might see some advantage,
not because of the things they have accomplished,
not even because of the dreams they dream
but simply because of who they are:
the man, the woman, the leader, the boss,
standing up there when the wave hits the rock,
passing out faith and confidence like life jackets,
knowing the currents, holding the doubts,
imagining the delights and terrors of every landfall;
captain, pirate, and parent by turns,
the bearer of our countless hopes and expectations.
We give them our trust. We give them our effort.
What we ask in return is that they stay true.
William Ayot