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Hope Is
- The sound of a robin singing.
- That tomorrow is another day.
- Whatever helps you get off the bed sheets in the morning.
These the wisdoms and perspectives shared with me since last month’s communication when I shared about the established post office box address.
P.O. Box 327
Gobles, MI 49055
ATTN: Hope Is
42.38337° N, -85.95741° E
Last month I shared the message that I had been hearing. Go back to the beginning.
This month I keep hearing What is the need?
Each of you have an abundance of information available to you. That information holds an abundance of perspectives. I anticipate what you do not have, though, is an abundance of spare time. So, I ponder, what would be most helpful to you, the readers?
Do you read these monthly communications for inspiration?
To learn more about the healing power of cold noses?
To learn another perspective about how someone views the ebbs and flows of life?
Are these monthly communications providing a win-win? I know the passion I put into them. (smile) Do you benefit from what you receive?
So, dear readers, I am going to continue my quest that I started at the beginning of this year, but I am going to walk us on a new path. Together we can decide if this is the direction we wish to travel. And if not, well, then together we will change it. (smile)
This month you will find five sections:
- Hope Is based on your input sent via traditional mail or email
- Reframed, which will provide an inspirational, hopeful perspective
- A Cold Nose, which will provide a message related to dogs’ healing power and an inspirational message about unconditional listening / unconditional acceptance.
- Hope’s Spiral Staircase, which will be in video format with an inspiring message, often connected to Nature
- Hope Whispers, Nature Speaks, which will provide you with an action step or reflective assignment
I am excited for our new path. I look forward to traveling it with you!
34.05349° N, -118.24532° E
Reframed
When I am not viewing life as a river, I think of life as a spiral staircase.
We stand on a step. We begin taking steps forward. Upward.
Or downward if that is our choice.
And as we come back around the circle, we are where we started. Except for.
We do not stand in the same place.
We can either find ourselves standing higher up the staircase from our first step. Or lower.
But in any given moment after a previous moment. Or a previous week, month, year. Or after many years.
We are not at the same place where we began.
No matter how much we might think things are the same or have not changed, unless time was frozen still, change has been continual. Unless time had completely stopped for a second, a minute, or a half century, we are not in the same place. Or at least we have opportunity to choose not to be in how we perceive, hear, and see. In how I believe, if things appear to be the same, it is because of the lens in which we are choosing to see. We always have a starting point in how we hear and see, influenced by our personal experiences both those that are positive and those that hold pain, trauma, or grief.
Recently I saw a message Maria Shriver had shared through her social media platform. Recently as of June 5th to be exact. It was a picture of her uncle, Bobby Kennedy. He was quoted as saying this. What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country.
He was speaking these words as a statement in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Just one month and one day after MLK’s death, Bobby Kennedy was also assassinated. As Maria wrote: On this day in 1968, before many of you might even have been born, my uncle, Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down while running for president. Gunned down on his victory night. He left a devastated pregnant wife and ten children and a shattered extended family.
As I read her words my thoughts were even then, there was significant brokenness. Fifty-four years later the cries for love, wisdom, and compassion toward one another are still happening.
Time has not stood still. There have been births. And deaths. There has been much joy. And there has been great suffering.
And we are no longer in the same place as we were June 5, 1968, shortly after midnight.
Yet, life continues to bring significant, devastating, and sudden loss.
And outrage and shocking disbelief. As I read comments to Maria’s sharing, the crushing grief-filled feelings were as significant for those who remembered hearing the news of Bobby Kennedy and MLK Jr. as the devastating feelings I read and hear citizen comments expressed when a school shooting takes place fifty-four years later.
And choice. In how we decide to respond to the profound suffering that is part of what life brings.
For me, I keep choosing to step up the staircase with the following deeply held belief. Like a baby bird hatching out of an egg or the butterfly pushing out of a cocoon, I believe that our world is cracking open. Others might choose to see it as cracking apart. For me, it is a cracking open to allow new beginnings.
For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction. – Cynthia Occelli
45.51179° N, -122.67563° E
A Cold Nose
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a fundraising event hosted by Northwest Battle Buddies. An annual gala long anticipated and even longer needed could take place after having been on hold for the past couple of years.
I will not begin to do justice to all that this evening offered in inspiring stories shared and in moving testimonials including the image of the service dog in the moments he was literally saving his team member’s life. His team member had reached the very end of barely surviving. His service dog sensed it was time to intervene. The veteran took a picture of his service dog reaching out and pulling him back from the edge. This veteran graciously gave permission for the CEO of NWBB to share his testimony.
I won’t begin to do justice to describing the significant amount of compassion and support that sat in that audience that night, financially supporting a mission that attendees believed in with their whole hearts. I also will not be able to give adequate justice to how a room full of humanity came together and offered hope to twenty-six more veteran-service dog teams because they desire to reduce the number to zero of those who reach that edge of barely surviving. And who then stop living because they do not have a team member who not only senses there is a deep struggle taking place.
A team member also reaches out its paw and in that touch whispers heart to heart I need you. I love you. Together we can make it through. You have a reason for living in the form of fur and pawed feet. Please don’t leave. I love you unconditionally and, in my eyes, you are one thing. You are the most perfect teammate for me. I have got your back and I know you have mine, too. Together, you and me, together we will make it through.
42.38337° N, -85.95741° E
Hope’s Spiral Staircase
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Hope Whispers, Nature Speaks
I share with you a poem that was recently shared with me in an email sent from Nick Polizzi, Founder of Sacred Science. It is a Sanskrit poem by Kalidasa, an Indian playwright and poet from the 4th and 5th Century AD.
May this poem bring you peace on the spiral staircase of life. May this poem inspire you to experience each day fully present in the now. Now is the only reality. All else is either memory or imagination. -Osho
Look to this day,
for it is life, the very breath of life.
In its brief course lie
all the realities of your existence;
the bliss of growth,
the glory of action,
the splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is only a dream,
and tomorrow is but a vision.
But today, well lived,
makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
and every tomorrow
a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Sincerely,
-Christine
P.S.
If you have enjoyed this month’s message, please pay it forward to others. They can also subscribe to future emails by visiting www.christinehassing.com. If you know of someone who has a Hope Is message to share, please encourage them to share via the post office address (or via email). I welcome sharing their input on the Hope Is website or in future blog messages!
Namaste.’