I have been thinking a lot about hope lately, for many different reasons. Hope is a faith for me, it is also a discipline. When I was wheeled into the operating room for my heart surgery,  I felt nothing but hope – it would go well, I would be well, I would focus on healing, not suffering.

I believe my work is to offer hope, just as Mary Oliver’s poems offer hope, and as the great men and women of the world have always offered hope. It is not a pose or a reflex, I am filled with hope. I had hope every day of my life that I would fine love, that I would find light and color, that I would write things that touched people, take photos that offered hope. I have hope that we will one day love peace as much as war, and value it as much. I have hope that we will awaken to the bleeding of Mother Earth and help her heal.

I don’t know where I found hope, it is not in my genes, I think, it was not in my family growing up, it was not in my life until I left my life behind and came upstate on the hero journey to find myself. I found it there, on the dark paths, with my magical helpers, in my once suffocating spirit, suddenly free to be me, to be who I was meant to be. We cannot control the sorrow and suffering in the world, but we can make a joyful and hopeful noise unto the world.

That is what I got up before dawn this morning to feed the animals for the first time in weeks, make breakfast for Maria for the first time in weeks, do the dishes for the first time in weeks, resume work on my next book for the first time in weeks. I had hopes for all of these things, I never doubted that I would do them, it is just the beginning.  Hope is a faith, a discipline. Without it, life is barren and angry and cold. When I went outside, the light was waiting for me, the sheep, Red at the gate.

There was hope all around me. Hope, always hope.