Dear New Year –

Thanks for showing up.

Thanks for being so matter-of-fact about it.  For doing nothing at all out of the ordinary, but still, being inspiring.  No matter how tired and pessimistic – no matter how overwhelmed we are by circumstances close in or strewn across this planet of ours, so out-of-control and horrific.  No matter any of that and because of all of it you give most of us at least a glimmer of hope.

Here’s what I’m hoping for.  I’m hoping for the courage to sustain hope.  And, I’m hoping for a hope that is way more than the passive kind (like “I sure hope the world gets more peaceful.”), but instead is hope that is active.  Seems to me that living hope has its source at the bubbling confluence of trust and personal responsibility.

It’s way too easy, at least for me, to focus on what’s wrong.  Of course, that kind of focus is necessary if I want to have any affect on solutions, but I’m starting to see that exclusive – even obsessive – focus on problems or lack is the exact antithesis of the hope I’m after.

Already, the time we know as 2015 is unfolding.  In its procession of present moments I’m likely to be most helpful if I hold on to a good measure of trust.  Even if my trust is, at times, only in the fact that time and the inescapable nature of the present simply and always are.

That can sound pretty esoteric, but I’m also starting to understand that actually and quite practically trusting time and presence is a necessary aspect of personal responsibility.  In fact, I can’t be responsible if I’m not present.  Then there’s the feature of personal responsibility that resides in the response part – that shows up as hope in action.

Here’s one expression of this hope I’m hoping for.  It’s an expression from January 2 – from today.  Today I’m continuing part of the I AM MORE THAN (IAMT) team to put together the powerful youth-driven commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery.  This event will be in the days around the 50th year since Bloody Sunday – March 6, 1965.

By the time we get to early March of 2015, the youth and adults of IAMT will be full-on into their Truth & Reconciliation Summit – their Converse-ation. They want everybody with interest, attention, energy and readiness to speak and listen in truth and friendship.  They even have a Kickstarter site and my friend Michelle Browder has designed truly dazzling Chuck Taylor for the event (thus the Converse – cool, huh?!).

THIS is hope in action!

And that’s one example of the hope I’m wanting to be part of in 2015.  I want to keep going.  I want to keep hoping here at the intersection of trust and responsibility.

Turns out, the hope I’m wanting for myself looks a lot like you, 2015.  It looks like the way you’ve showed up – trust and responsibility – and the way you can be counted on to keep going.

So, there you have it.  Thanks already, 2015 –

I’m betting there’s more to come ~

mmc