Winter is slowly morphing into spring and it isn’t coming soon enough. I am a person that in the depth of winter forgets I ever lived through a spring before. It feels like the cold, frozen tundra will never ever yield again to plant life and I will never see another warm summer to plant and grow.

This past winter has been more difficult than most in Indiana. In addition to record breaking cold and snow and ice, I’ve been weighed under with difficult situations: food pantry struggles, family struggles, Yearly Meeting controversies, and friends I’m trying to support through difficult days. It has been one very long winter and I want to give up, give in, and wallow in hopelessness and despair. It seems easier than digging into my soul to nurture hope and life.

The tragedy in Japan captures so much of my attention these days as disaster after disaster happens to husbands and wives, children, mothers and fathers, and aunts and uncles, and I am overwhelmed with a humanity I am not able to touch and help. I watch the videos of the tsunami as it powered its way across farmland and through hospitals and homes and I struggle to comprehend the incredible power and destruction of something so simple and so life-giving as water.

As I teeter on the brink of despair and hopelessness these days, I was reminded (by God’s spirit) of something I heard from Joe Volk, former Executive Secretary of Friends Committee on National Legislation. He reminded me that “hope” is not something I can hold in my hand or something I can purchase or own. “Hope” is a verb, it is something I practice, and it is something I do. This lesson became visible to me a few days ago when I ended up with an extra hour and the sun was shining and I decided it was time to begin some seeds in pots…..just in case spring really did arrive in Indiana. The physical act of doing something for a spring I doubt will ever arrive changed my heart and my mind in a way I didn’t anticipate. Digging in the dirt reconnected me with the earth and previous springs, the physical act of practicing hope for another season gave me hope. Today I actually saw seedlings from what I planted a few days ago, and my faith in another spring is born again.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about lately is one of the more well known star clusters on the sky, the Pleiades. The Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. It is also known as the Seven Sisters, one of the brightest and closest open clusters of stars. The first time I actually identified the Pleiades was in a field trip for a college science class. It appeared as a bright cloud of light in the night sky and it was difficult to make out the 7 brightest individual stars of the cluster. My professor taught me to shift my gaze from the cluster to a brighter star close to the Pleiades. Refocusing in a different place caused my eyes to see the Pleiades at a different angle and the individual stars became clearer and easier to identify.

I’ve been thinking I’ve needed to shift my gaze from the difficult problems I encounter every waking moment of each day and each night. I spend too much time trying to think my way through the myriad of problems confronting my life. I believe clarity will come to my mind and my heart, to my faith community, and to my friends and family when my gaze is refocused on a brighter light: the presence and spirit of Christ, my present teacher.

Shifting my gaze to Christ won’t change my problems, won’t change the divisions and controversies overwhelming my Yearly Meeting, won’t take away my step-father’s Alzheimer’s, won’t warm the soil I walk each day, won’t stop the radiation from the nuclear power stations in Japan, nor will it bring back the thousands of lives lost in the tsunami or undo the incredible damage that nation faces in the weeks, and months and years to come. Shifting my gaze brings clarity, purpose, and a sense of hope to my life. Shifting my gaze helps me focus on Isaiah’s vision of a new heaven and new earth. Shifting my vision does help me practice hope. And shifting my vision does help me envision and work for the healing of the lives I care about, the faith community I care about, the earth I walk each day and the nation torn asunder by such unbelievable devastation.

New Heavens and a New Earth Isaiah 65:17-25

“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed. They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.”