news&views Autumn 2018 | Page 14

Spirituality and Wellness Peggy McDonagh Reflections on Hope I have been in ministry for over twenty-five years, and I feel honoured and privileged that I am invited into the lives of others as they face both celebrations and challenges. I also have the opportunity to offer sermons to a congregation that enable us as a faith community and as individuals to feel a sense of hope as we address many perplexing and complicated issues that we face in our daily lives and as a global community. These confusing and troublesome issues and problems seem much more complicated and disturbing with each passing year. Pablo Picasso wrote, “Everything you can imagine is real.” His words ring true because everything we can imagine about evil, pain, hatred, destruction, and a blatant disregard for our shared humanity exists and is all too real. We live in a broken world, and it seems as if it is becoming a more terrifying and miserable place; and living in it seems increasingly more challenging. A torn and fragmented world makes for torn and broken people. How damaging and painful to our hearts to watch the news or read in the papers the atrocity of wars, of bombing, and of shootings in schools and places of worship and recreation. People are being battered and bruised by prejudice, bullying, violence, and 14 | arta.net unrest. We cannot help but feel anxious and overwhelmed by the wreckage of all the ugly outcomes that arise from growing hostility and lack of respect and compassion amongst this world’s people, cultures, and faiths. Our young people feel increasingly strained, worried, suicidal, and mentally unwell. Higher numbers of seniors are falling victim to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Cancer and mysterious viruses continue to plague and aff ect people of all ages. Escalating environmental problems damage our natural world, and the new normal is to accept that the earth and its people will continue to experience — more often and with more intensity — the harsh forces of nature. In the face of all this, many people feel bewildered, fearful, helpless, mystifi ed, and despondent, wondering if humanity is going to survive. How then do we nurture hope in these uncertain and disturbing times? Poet and spiritual teacher Mark Nepo recalls how he was running as a boy in the playground one warm summer day. He ran so fast and free that he fell and scraped his knee. As young Mark lay on the ground noticing his blood in the sand,