With my camera, I am exploring the spirituality of fish, and their experience with reflections.

This morning, I sat alone for a bit in the dark with the fish.

I was thinking about something Henri J. M. Nouwen wrote in his meditation, “Out Of Solitude,” a book I return to often.

“Whereas patience is the mother of expectation,” he wrote, “it is expectation that brings new joy to our lives.”

St. Francis told one of his friars, “you are sad now, but I shall see you again, and your heart will be full of joy.”

A person without hope in the future cannot live creatively in the present, I think. Hopeless is not a feeling that opens up the soul. I think the irony, perhaps the paradox, is that those who believe in tomorrow can live better today, in the present.

That is what I am learning about myself. The news does not offer us hope, there is no money in presenting it, according to the marketers. Tragedy and violence and conflict sell, something in the human psyche seems to want fear more than hope.

I am sad sometimes, but expectation brings joy to the sadness and love and hope to my heart.

I think a life lived in  expectation is a life filled with hope, and a life filled with hope is a life that knows joy.

The people I know  without hope are empty and angry and filled with hurt and bitterness.  I can tell them right away, in my life, on the screen. They have nothing to look ahead to.

I embrace expectation, it has always brought joy to my life.