Leaning Into Hope (Imbolc 5)

Several years ago, I saw a coffee mug imprinted with the words, What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? For months, I offered those words to people I knew who were frightened, unsettled, stressed, unhappy…but gradually, in the way of such things, they drifted out of my consciousness. Then, during a particularly difficult time of discernment, when I was thrashing emotionally, spiritually (and quite loudly), my daughter sent me that quotation on a magnet. Sometime later, my husband bought me the mug. (Guess everyone thought I needed to hear it!) The limitless possibility in that question eventually brought me to a place of courage and confidence. Eventually, I was able to make the inner leap to trust the immram on which I was being invited. I still didn’t know exactly where I was going – the majority of my journeys are like that. I didn’t really know what terrain I might encounter, or what weather, or how long I may be on the road. But I was able to commit to the first steps on the way.

Imbolc is a season of first steps. It is about preparing and planting, about giving birth and receiving new life within, about taking risks, about opening our hearts to new dreams (or opening them again to old dreams for which we still yearn). It is about the practice of hope. It is about leaning into the “what” of What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail. Or if you prefer to use a slightly different image, the great hockey player, Wayne Gretsky, famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

In the promise that your life (yes, yours) is a life of limitless possibility, I invite you to do some dreaming and imagining this week. You will need your journal or a large piece of paper and some colored pens or pencils if you like using many colors. You may want to do this whole meditation at once, or to break it into several different moments.

Close your eyes if you are comfortable doing that, or use the flame of the candle as a focal point to help your mind be still. Become aware of your breathing and allow it to be slow and deep, until you feel centered and calm.
Listen to these words from one of the great scriptures,“The promise depends on faith, so hoping against hope, they believed.” Be aware of your feelings as you hear those words. Does this sound impossible? Challenging? Exciting? Risky? Try to notice your emotions without any judgment, simply observing and naming them. When you are ready, open your eyes gently and note those feelings in your journal.
When you are done, close your eyes again or return your focus to the candle flame and become aware of your breathing.

Listen again, “The promise depends on faith, so hoping against hope, they believed.” Allow your mind and heart to drift back to a time when you “hoped against hope.” Let that occasion or experience take on rich detail. How old were you? How did your body feel at that age? Did the hope have a taste or a smell, a color or texture? Who knew about your hope? Did those people share the hope, try to talk you out of it, make light of it, encourage you? Consider your own courage in daring to hope. How does that feel?
When you are ready, open your eyes gently. Draw your hope from that time (as a symbol, a picture, a word) in the middle of the 2-page spread. Around the hope, write or draw the feelings or sensations that you recall. Use different colors if you want.
Include the people who were part of that hope – in supportive or non-supportive ways. Connect the people and the emotions with lines of various widths and designs as seems appropriate. (Maybe these are wavy, dotted, wide and straight, bright-colored, light.) As you work, you may remember other people involved, or other feelings and thoughts may come up. The page may get very messy and chaotic.
When you are done, close your eyes again or return your focus to the candle flame and become aware of your breathing.

Listen again, “The promise depends on faith, so hoping against hope, they believed.” What was the outcome of your hope? Think not only of what happened at the time, but what has happened since then? Did the experience of hoping against hope encourage you to hope again? Did that experience discourage you, perhaps create a habit of not hoping? What emotions and sensations do you associate with the time of outcome? with thinking back now? Are there blessings or gifts in the “now” that you hadn’t realized until this moment?
When you are ready, open your eyes gently. Add the outcomes to the drawing in your journal. If a particular outcome led on to a different hope, include that. Notice how a single hope can create other hopes, or influence other lives, other choices, your own direction or practices. Include repercussions that emerge as you recall the outcomes of that hope (both fruitful and apparent dead-ends). Pause and bless the wisdom or questions that are emerging for you.
When you are done, close your eyes again or return your focus to the candle flame and become aware of your breathing.

Listen one more time, “The promise depends on faith, so hoping against hope, they believed.” Allow your greatest hope right now to take shape in your heart and mind. Maybe you have learned not to share your hope with others. Maybe you think you are too old to hope. Maybe you are afraid to hope. Give yourself permission to notice your hope without judging it. Let it take symbolic form in your mind’s eye. Perhaps it appears like a seed waiting to be planted; or a small, fragile plant just beginning to grow. Maybe it is a beautiful stone waiting to be dropped in a still pond. Where is the hope in your body? Is it in your fingertips? Your heart? In the soles and arches of your feet? Deep in your belly?
Again, when you are ready, open your eyes gently. Turn to a new 2-page spread in your journal and draw or write this new hope in the middle of the two pages. When you are done, simply notice the potential around that hope. Notice the space waiting to be filled with feelings, dreams, influences, blessings, wisdom.
When you are ready close your eyes again or return your focus to the flame. Breathe deeply for a minute or two and then open your eyes gently and let yourself become centered in this time and place. Take some time to write or draw some reflections on the meditation, something that you can return to this week and consider again.

As you move onward into your week, your month, fully into Imbolc and beyond, take this prayer with you – or write your own words to be a mantra on your way.

Be in me the faith to let go of limits
(like possibility and probability).
Be in me the humor to live without caring
about being realistic, rational, reasonable.
Be in me a heart that welcomes
miracle and marvel and mystery.

–Andrea

NOTE: The third photo is a fiber art piece created in the depths of Samhain. It is called, Emerge. It is available in my Etsy Shop.