“Hope is the thing with feathers — that perches in the soul” Emily Dickinson, who penned this sweet line, knew a thing or three about meaningful hope. Hers was a buoyant expression, all the more poignant because she was equally aware of the hardness of her time/place and of her own internal struggle. Her poetry is rich for this reason: real, but outward even as she felt the confines of her tiny upper room.

Any glib optimism about our current cultural future is berated and mocked by reports we hear, and evidence we see daily, hourly. One could go numb, choosing to be unfeeling. One could get frantic with fear (outrage is already exhausted). Or, one could get busy/stay alert doing what speaks to the bigger issues as Emily, and Flannery O’Connor, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, Georges Rouault, and any number of others did in their own disintegrating times. Real honest, counter-cultural artistry comes out of hard ground. Each of theirs was hard, and their work still speaks now.

Real artistry takes the stuff available, even broken stuff, and does something whole with it because there is such a thing as creation and cultivation and hope. We were made for this — under the watch-care of the One who started all this creativity and then got into the dirt with us. (that’s key: He got into the dirt with us). There is real, counter-cultural, reason for hope then.

Taylor Worley, a prof of faith and culture at Trinity Intl. Univ. says “hope does not operate in the abstract. It must reckon with the real material of the disaster. It must start somewhere.” And adds this “We’re reminded once again that hope is dangerous, and yet for that reason immensely prophetic.” The art critic James Romaine remarks “I see art as very similar to prayer. It’s as futile or as powerful as prayer. It all depends on your faith.”

If my faith is in men, or in some idea of political progress or in what I can do with my own hands, I am honestly sunk. But if my faith is cast instead to the One who forms, gives breath, renews real hope and is still at work in this time, in this culture, then I get really energized in spite of what is all around me. What energizes you?

This little 8×10 oil piece is named Tanager, for the flush of color moving from a scavenging but still beautiful bird. It will be for sale at a Holiday event in my town next week.