Preparing the ground of hope

I’ve spent much of the day musing on hope, and on perseverance — what it means to continue on in the face of adversity, in the face of hurt and pain. As so often happens for me, multiple seemingly-disconnected items came in over the transom throughout the day, each piquing a different part of my brain, each cross-pollinating to make me consider the question from a new angle, or with a new exigency.

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A month of prayers: week 2

Week 2, only 2 weeks late! This has been sitting in my drafts for a while now, waiting for me to add headnotes to a few of the prayers. Oops?

Keeping up hope in humanity

I hadn’t intended to write about the recent terror attacks in Beirut and in Paris, nor about the way we in the West have reacted to the Paris attacks above and beyond those in Beirut and beyond. I hadn’t intended to write about the burning of mosques by people who don’t distinguish between the beauty of Islam and the horror of Daesh. Nor had I intended to write about the anti-racist student protests at the University of Missouri, which successfully demanded the ouster of Mizzou president Tim Wolfe — but only after the football team joined in, threatening the lucrative athletic program. Nor about the protests at Ohio State, where I work, which had a much better outcome, but also provoked a disgusting barrage of anonymous, racist hate speech on social media.