Patricia Smith Melton

WARNING: This blog may be offensive to entrenched curmudgeons, hidebound grinches, and people who believe reality is tangible and static.

- Commentary by Peace X Peace Founder Patricia Smith Melton

Emily Dickinson said:

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all, …”

I say:

Hope is the gritty thing with claws
That perches in the soul,
And rasps against all things
That hold us from the goal
Of love and life in gentler forms.

Guardian of the possible,
Its muddied wings unfurl,
And fly us into rarer worlds.

2009 was a year when many of us had personal conversations with our hope. We went inside, weighed the options, and recognized hope as a necessity, not an accessory. Personal hope changed from a light feathery thing to a gritty determined one—bedraggled perhaps but capable, an ally.

We lost things this year. Yet as nature abhors a vacuum, so hope enters empty spaces. It looks around, takes the measure of circumstances, adjusts itself, and re-emerges, as a tough old bird and a reclaimed lover.

And, like a lover, hope feeds off inspiration. It needs visions to invest in and make real. You are the creator of the vision. You are the visionary. You are the inspiration-maker. That’s your part of the hope-person bond.

Emily said:

Yet, never, in extremity,
[Hope] asked a crumb of me.

Well, I say we are too close to extremity to take a chance on not feeding hope. And feeding it more than crumbs!

As individuals and cultures, we need to see harmonies that arc over the shards and seemingly irreconcilable bits and pieces of our lives, histories, and conflicting narratives. As individuals and cultures, we must imagine new possibilities instead of sharpening the edges of our old wounds. We need visions of rarer worlds for ourselves and all to hope for, believe in, make real, and live in.

I have just returned from the West Bank and Israel working with an independent producer, filming women featured in the book Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women. I was the principal interviewer, photographer, and editor for this book launched a year ago. Printed in Arabic, English, and Hebrew, it carries the faces and voices of the women, their painful and triumphant experiences, and the wisdom, hope, and womanly grit that equip them to face each day.

Hope took a tumble in the year since I was last with the women. Some, especially Palestinians, feel prospects for peace between Palestine and Israel have been set back five to ten years. 2009 has included more than 1300 deaths in Gaza, an increasing divide between Hamas and Fatah, tension mounting between the Israeli government and settlers in the West Bank, suspicion growing on both sides of the wall, and a sense of trust betrayed.

It seemed to me that the learned knowledge of the people that all violence is, ultimately, violence against themselves is a primary force for moderation. But hope, scarred and determined and tenacious, is perhaps the primary force for moderation—hope in better futures, hope in healthy educated children, hope that there are people on the “other side” to talk to.

Hope is a necessity for cultures and nations, just as it is for each of us. It is also a gift that gives joy. It perches in our soul and sings when we feed it. And sometimes it unfurls its wings, flies, and leads us.

May your holidays be graced with hope!