My Letter of Hope

Hope is a fleeting butterfly that brings a smile to your lips at its sight,

but it is hard…. because we know that it flies.

We know that it leaves.

The difference between children, and those that are tired in this world,

Is that the children chase all things that come like a Beautiful Butterfly.

My life has been things flying away from me, and sometimes not even pretty as my fateful and whimsical butterfly. Things have just left. Like family. Or loves. Or homes. Or friends. It isn’t the fault of them though. This is a lonely world when you get to it as it is.

By the grace of my God I have been raised – finally – into a life of youth.

My legs pump and my heart races as I foolishly and bravely and joyfully

Chase that Beautiful Butterfly of Hope.

I hope to God for a better world.

One that does not call money its master.

A place as the meadow, run by none but enjoyed by all.

A room finally to lodge in where my dreams aren’t paid for by sweat and blood.

An art exhibit where my body is marveled at not because of its utility or its ability to generate, but for its soft and gentle curves.

Money, I promise you, has done deals with racism, and oppression, and sexism, and unfairness.

Money is and never will be fair.

My better world – which is painted on my Beautiful Butterfly’s wings - twinkles

not like gold,

but like the sun. Or the glint of a beautiful eye taking in the wave of humanity and….

and it. The world.

Don’t ask me to put into words the world. Have you ever felt in awe?

It is the only thing that comes close to describe the wave of the world that twinkles.

Let my Butterfly twinkle, and shine, and blind with the glint of a full world.

Created as it is for us.

This world could never be laid between the heels of a dollar.

My Beautiful Butterfly wasn’t caught with a bought net.

Or maybe it was bought, but the currency was love.

I hope for a better world.

One where a net of many beautiful and colorful fingers are grasped

and hold me safe.

Community. The natural dance of humans is with others.

Souls step out and turn in the streets. Down the narrow and wide roads

till the whole world,

painted on the back of the Beautiful Butterfly,

is finally together again.

The world we live in today took my heart from others a long time ago.

It told me that “I” could pull the sun down.

But the promise has been empty for some time now.

I have only ever seen such brightness in the

net of fingers grasped that hold me safe.

Such rays of light reside not in one being,

but radiate out of the smiles of children and families and people,

all walking side by side.

Like a forest.

One leaf can shake with a small , important yes, but small rattle.

However, what a small rattle it is compared to when the winds call out the choir of the forest.

Those leaves sing with the infinite power of together.

Maybe not even the bell of Dr. King can sound so sweet. And, after all, that bell of freedom rings only with the pull of many.

Have you heard the collective song of a forest,

shaking and breathing with the wind and the life,

belting out its joyous song

in the form of a whisper in your ear?

Then you know but a small fraction of the glory

That is the world united, not under money or hate or “I”, but love of another.

I hope for many things, but most of all I hope for a better world.

One where courage isn’t lost or thrown out with our fickle fun technology… or our meaningful yet somehow disposable relationships… or our smiles at nothing in particular.

To chase a butterfly,

to wonderfully abandoned the begging of your body and life to save its energy for “a later fight”,

takes courage.

The force that drives one single and powerful drop of rain to spring from the clouds to the hard world far below

- nestled home in a net of rain, fingers grasped to keep it safe, paid always in nothing but love and the glory of the amazing world-

is courage.

The rain drop lands hard.

On our roofs. On our food. Into the still sleeping rivers--

and changes absolutely everything.

The spectacle of the crazy and oh so powerful rain drop brings a smile to all the other rain lips at its sight, and they gleefully rain down.

The rain drops as a community fall into our world, and land hard.

This rain grows our food. This rain builds the driving rivers that cannot be stopped.

This rain sprints into the ocean to create that which we all look to for vastness.

All of this,

because of the courage of that first drop.

When she sprung from her home, they said “she won’t change a thing. Why doesn’t she worry about herself? It isn’t safe out there. It’s far too far down.”

Yet she, that seemingly oh so little rain drop, did fall.

Did she fall knowing that they would follow?

Did she fall thinking thoughts like the vain and small amount of water contained within herself would water the big plant?

Did she really believe that her life mattered enough to change the world so far below?

I don’t know, it isn’t for me to say.

But I do know that she gave her absolute everything-

because she died, in some way, though not in others, when she met the grasp of the parched world below-

to give.

Grant me that courage God. World.

Grant me the courage to finally race with my legs -

pounding and pumping full of blood and life, cycling through streets and dead woods and sleeping rivers and seeds of plants and quiet bells and oh so much more-

after that Beautiful Butterfly of Hope.

Give me that courage, and I promise I'll run after it until I catch that butterfly in a net of love,

standing firmly in a street full of Souls that stepped out to turn around and around with each other. I'll stand exhausted in that road - with winds through a forest roaring in its combined song - drenched in the falling rain, happy.

Happy that I finally had the courage to chase hope.

I'll sit down, a child again, in front of food grown by the courage of the one rain drop, joined by many others, paid for with nothing but the brightness of people and the inexpressible fullness of the world.

And eat and regain all that energy that I spent. I will eat in the kingdom of God, where I will be so full.

It won’t be in vain to chase the Beautiful Butterfly of Hope that has my better world painted on its back. I know it. I can build a world that is better for the sick. And the suffering. And the lonely. If I have courage and and love and walk with God and others.

In order for any march to start, there must be those few who start to walk first. There must be those that choose to stand and move before the crowds have formed, or the walk is easy by way of multitudes or the "it isn't possible" is converted into "we are marching to victory". The only way toward a revolutionized world, a new and peaceful and just and creative world, is through the barrier hesitation and into the courage of newness.