In our despair that justice is slow
we sit with heads bowed
wondering
how
even whether
we will ever be healed…
But hope is on the way.
–a portion of Alice Walker’s poem “Hope Is a Woman Who Has Lost Her Fear” (2013)
I started choosing a Word of the Year after the 2016 election when I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into despair and disappointment. I knew that I would need a disciplined practice to help me focus on joy and beauty, on all that is good in the world, so I wouldn’t be dragged into despondency by the distress I was already feeling.
Choosing a Word of the Year is a way to guide your actions and unify your goals more completely than setting New Year’s resolutions. Let’s be honest–I wasn’t really going to give up sugar that winter. But, having a guiding word or idea helped redirect my attention and gave me a concrete way to look for God working in me and around me. And I didn’t have to feel guilty about not going to the gym.
The practice of choosing a Word of the Year to guide my actions was something I randomly started in 2016, but is a practice that stuck. It is, for me at least, a way to set a realistic challenge and goal that reminds me to reset, refocus, and take baby steps toward renewal throughout the year.
Given that it’s only the end of November, some of you may think I’m a bit premature in thinking about, let alone choosing, my Word of the Year. However, a particular word kept popping up in the various things I have been reading since the beginning of November, from news articles to social media memes and quotes to fiction to the Bible. Yes, it even was a word that kept popping up in the midst of my doom-scrolling.
Here is the statement that finally made me commit to my Word of the Year for 2025:
“People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spiders’ webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go” (Instagram, Matthew @Crows Fault).
Hope.
That’s my Word for 2025.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines hope as “to cherish a desire with anticipation; to want something to happen or be true.” I always approached the idea of hope as a “delicate, ephemeral thing” as something “to cherish”. Cherishing, at least for me, feels like something gentle and kind, like a mother cherishing a child. This idea of hope was abstract. It was a vague idea more along the lines of, “Gee, I wish this is what could or would happen.”
Hope, though, is more cognitive than emotional. It’s to “desire with anticipation”. Hope “is the belief that your future will be better than the present and that you have the ability to make it happen” (added emphasis). This idea of hope goes beyond “thoughts and prayers” to action–the ability to make it happen. This, along with desire and anticipation, suggests some dirt and grit, don’t you think?
Alice Walker, in her poem “Hope Is a Woman Who Has Lost Her Fear” writes:
Hope is a woman who has lost her fear…
Hope rises,
and she puts on her same
unfashionable threadbare cloak
and, penniless, she flings herself
against the cold, polished, protective chainmail
of the very powerful
the very rich – chainmail that mimics
suspiciously silver coins
and lizard scales –
and all she has to fight with is the reality of what was done to her;
to her country; her people; her children;
Her home.
I didn’t get what I wanted this election cycle. Dare I say that I didn’t get what I hoped for. And I admit that I felt some deep despair this week. I was truly overwhelmed by the chaos that the president-elect ignited as he continued to announce his cabinet nominations. It isn’t just that he is nominating people who are grossly unqualified for the positions; it’s that so many of them have had their morals and ethics called into question. Additionally, Palestinians are being killed, the war in Ukraine continues, and I’m supposed to be getting ready for Christmas when I just don’t feel it. My despair was turning toward despondency.
And then I remembered that “Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.” This is how I want to enter 2025.
I want to remember that I have the ability to make change happen. I want to remember that I can (and will) take action. I want to rise for another go and make the future better than it is today. I want to watch out for and fight for those I love who are afraid.
Hope rises.
Hope is not afraid.
