What Is Hope?

Like nearly all Americans today, I watched and listened and hardly dared to breathe, least I miss a moment or a word. But I started realizing that it wasn't about the man. I started hearing people of reason acknowledging how much work we all had to do. I heard a leader talk in realities. No flowery platitudes, no campaign promises. Just realism and challenges and hard work ahead. So why is it that I feel so hopeful?

I have grown tired of empty suits and political rhetoric. I am wearied from chest-thumping machismo and might-makes-right mentality. I have been worn down by far too many agendas. I need to have my feet planted flatly on the floor.


I don't need to hope for things to come. I don't live my today in the promise of a hereafter. I need to be present - here - right now, and nowhere else. and when I see another who looks like that is what is up for him, I am heartened and lifted up.

I don't know if he can live up to the expectations but I know that those whose expectations are unrealistic will certainly be dashed. I do not know if he will win over his opponents, but I am certain that those who think less of him will find all the evidence they will need in future days. But I am filled with hope today, because one man told his truth. I am encouraged today because the cameras saw all the colors of the faces. I am uplifted because I saw strangers smiling at each other and embracing in the cold air. And I really really want to believe that we can be more together than we are separately, and that something started today that is unique and different in the world. It started today - and I felt it and saw it. And that is what hope is all about.

The Well of Grief

In honor of the surviving family and lovers of Jon Choate and Rebecca Raboin, I submit this brief poem by David Whyte:

The Well of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface of the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown away by those who wished for something else.

By David Whyte from Close to Home

Words Fail Emotions

There is a fundamental problem we have as humans and that is that we invented words and then made the mistake of letting them become the feeble container of what we really meant. Though poets can write volumes in just a few short lines of well-chosen words, somewhere around the space of emotions, words just fail.

I am certain that if you look up the word "love" in a dictionary it would say something like "a warm fuzzy feeling about some person or thing." And I am equally certain that such a definition doesn't enter the neighborhood of the length and depth and breadth of the actual feeling I have for my wife or my children. That definition (or any definition) doesn't have the color, depth, vibrancy, history, pain, joy, pleasure, and myriad other dimensions that my love has at any nanosecond.

And grief, I believe, is more complex.

I was reading my daughter's blog as she prepared to eulogize her step-dad Jon Choate, and let the half dozen other responses from friends and family sink in, really touch my inner being, as I read through them. And I am in awe at the texture and dimensions of grief/love that abound in and through all of that discussion. That we humans are capable of such love and only then open to such pain and loss is beyond miraculous. It is stunningly beautiful. There are no words when smiles and tears and love and pain all embrace each other simultaneously. There is only being.

My friend Bill had a daughter born 18 years ago so severely handicapped that she never walked, talked or even fed herself. Faced with the option of institutionalizing her, Bill and his wife decided to love her for as long as she lived. That commitment ended last weekend as Rebecca finally slipped into death. Though there were so many times it felt like a burden, Bill never stopped loving and caring. And now he still cannot stop. He doesn't know how or where or what it looks like. Grief has that depth of love in it that only lovers and parents and real risk-takers know.

I am proud and honored to be part of a family that so easily and openly expresses emotion, and who so fully risk loving. And with all of our words, we don't even come close to what we know each other to be feeling. I love you guys!