Hope is Spirit Work

From underground, hope springs eternal

During my conversation with poet Drew E. Jackson, who writes at the intersection of justice, peace, and contemplation, he told me about two realities.

There is a reality that we know, and live out. It is unjust and unfair. It favors the wealthy, powerful, and the entrenched racist system locked into place. But, in tension with that reality within a larger context is a reality that is even more real.

For now, in many ways, it lies under ground, writes Jackson in his new book of poetry called “Touch the Earth: Poems on the Way”. It is “the place that light has forsaken.” But there is coming a time, and in truth, it is being birth now, when the “world [will] be flipped on its head. Heaven [will] invade Hell”

Hope is Spirit work. We need the dreamers and the visionaries to gift us with sight for a new and sacred imagination. Without them, without us—the writers, artists, creators, seers—we stay stuck is the world we witness and cannot develop the eyesight to see what we can become through transformation.

Visionaries are a must, and so are people with the courage to walk forward with a trusting heart. Many of us do not have the insights to know what will unfold ahead, but we can allow our hearts to stay soft. A callous heart shuts the dreamers down. Then there is no one to live into the dream.

How do any new societal changes happen? Any new huge dreams? New realities happen when enough people are properly discontent with the status quo enough to move into unfamiliar territory and risk what is unknown to them. There is a cost to this. Deep down, we know it. Sometimes living out a new reality is the devil we do not know, and comprehending life in that situation, even for the better, seems too vague to risk the devil we already know.

Visionaries like Drew Jackson use their craft to help us imagine and also live the dreams of our ancestors and the dreams of anyone who isn’t truly free. We may not see the seeds springing to life underground in the womb of the humus, but “the humus of life is where we become fully human”.

Seek out the visionaries. Let us live into the new realities that are now being born.

By Lisa Colón DeLay