My Word for 2018

Dear Diary,

I began thinking of my word for 2018 around Thanksgiving, I do every year.  I considered several possibilities but I kept coming back to this simple word, HOPE.  It is not just the belief that everything will work out just fine, it is a much deeper and complex idea.  I follow a group called Sojourners and yesterday they did a great article on exactly what "hope" is and I couldn't say it better:

Hope is the thing that can motivate us to action — to remember we can harness our power and band together to protest, to canvas for local elections, to build interfaith and intercultural bridges, to interrupt hate as we see it, to affirm and reaffirm, day after day, that what we do matters, and that even during times that feel dark, we can band together to make light.  For, as writer, activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel noted, “Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.”

This image speaks of hope to me.  Those tiny trees' seeds landed on a most unlikely place but they grew nonetheless.  When the ice melts and the air warms they will sprout new leaves.  The rock is surrounded by ice but it collects warmth from the sun even on the coldest day and cracks in the frozen surface appear.

So, I wish everyone a very Hope-filled 2018; hope that will sustain us until the ice melts and the warm breezes of kindness and caring return to this torn and decimated land.  But hope without action is impudent.  As the Sojourner article, The Requirements of Hope, reminds us,  In other words: Get it together.  This country needs you right now.