Tea & Crumpets #1 — On Despair, Hope, and Hiraeth
This week I was listening to Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast and she offered up two questions that stopped me in my tracks.
Here’s the first:
“Right now, today, what is filling you with despair? And what is giving you hope?”
I love these types of questions. The ones that hold both.
Despair’s not hard to find right now:
Gaza. And the continued genocide.
Racist pricks painting flags on mini roundabouts.
People posting about Dubai penthouses on LinkedIn
Ai and the chat about Ai. I couldn’t be any less interested.
But there’s hope too:
My boys. Everyday. The little patter of their feet into out bedroom on a morning.
Running retreats in the Welsh mountains with my best friend.
When a lil elderly woman laughs and grips your forearm tightly.
Words. Words make worlds. And I feel hopeful about putting stuff like this out there, not for any other reason but to make connections with peoples. Know warra mean like?
Then Krista shared another one, a question from a group of Benedictine monks.
They’d pose a big, beautiful prompt and say:
“Answer this question through the story of your life.”
And the prompt was this:
“What is hope? … answer this question through the story of your life.”
Fuuuuuck. Beaut that isn’t it?
