Week 1: Hope - Wednesday

 I sauntered into the kitchen this morning, cranky and reluctant to greet the day. My body protesting every movement. It seems my recovery from back surgery in September is a zig zag, not the straight line every day I'm getting better and better thing that I would prefer. Who knew? Well apparently such ups, downs and sideways are as normal as they are frustrating.

Hope is a bit of a long shot for me today, so I'll reprise an older post and let the words of others light the way today.

Take care of each other.

Lord save us all from…a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.  Mark Twain

Hope rises like a phoenix from the ashes of shattered dreams. S.A. Sachs

Hope is grief's best music.  Author Unknown

God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us - in the dreariest and most dreaded moments - can see a possibility of hope.  Maya Angelou

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.  Lin Yutang

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.  
Samuel Smiles

Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops…at all.  Emily Dickinson

©2025 April Hoeller

The First Sunday of Advent 2025 - November 30, 2025

 Greetings from my snowy homestead. (photo)

The great wheel of time, the one sure constant upheld by the cosmic wonders of the sun, the moon and tides has transported all of us, willing or not, knowing or not to this time and place once again.

It is Advent.

I strive to be an informed member of the world in which I live but have grown weary of the constant barrage of hate, intolerance, and ignorance. At best his barrage of words drives to distraction and at worst it fuels a useless unbridled rage that is not easily quelled. Hope, peace, joy, and love, the traditional themes of these four weeks before Christmas, feel like some wild fantasy not worth the effort to even think about.

Into this undulating despair, Advent comes softly beckoning me to step away from the noise and haste of the world to a place where a kinder gentler pace nourishes my mind and soothes my heart and soul.

Encouraged by the creativity and wonder of the little ones around me ...

...and consoled by the promise of light offered by a single candle on my Advent hearth this morning, I once again push out the Advent boat across this season of quiet expectation seeking out promises of hope, peace, joy, and love.

Come join me in the quiet places.

Let's light up the darkness one candle a time!

©2025 April Hoeller