Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 12

Being aware of all good future possibilities is impossible, as impossible as looking at a single apple seed and divining how many apples will come from it. A first grader can count the seeds in an apple, but no genius can count the apples in a seed.

On Saturday, December 18, Louisville meteorologists predicted a heavy snow on the following Wednesday. They described how the storm would begin forming in Texas on Sunday and reach Louisville three days later—on Wednesday morning, at rush hour to be precise.

I saw the satellite view of Texas that Saturday. It showed not one cloud. I laughed and said to my wife: “Give me a break! Forecasting snow even one day in advance in the Ohio valley is tricky. Do they really expect us to believe they can predict a giant snow five days off, before one cloud has formed?”

On Wednesday morning we had a record nine-inch snow. This layman, looking at charts and satellite and radar images with his untrained eye, was unable to see a single sign that a big snow was coming.

We are all a little like that. We have a giant blind spot when it comes to future possibilities, just as my untrained eye was unable to read the meteorological evidence for a giant snow.

What is hope? Hope is the mental and spiritual decision always to keep the door cracked a little, to stay at least a little open to a good possibility even though at the time we may not be able to see it.

Victorian poet Christina Rossetti’s prayer says it well: “Lord, grant me eyes to see within the seed a tree, within the glowing egg a bird, within the shroud a butterfly.”