If You Must Have A Thing Called Hope

a free oracle card download is included

This is a part of an ongoing series on hope. You can find part one here and part two here.

This is a game you may continue to play:

I will plant for you a tree called hope, but only because you have named it, I know this tree by many other names. It is hardy, ancient, it will weather most things, and it will make the sweetest fruit if you can treat it as a friend.

I need it to remind you that if you only water things because you want them to grow, you make yourself undeserving of that life that is in your care. You water the plants because they live with you and are deserving of water and not able to fetch it themselves—because the plants you have gathered depend on you. Whether they grow or die may induce feelings of loss or joy, but you cannot control the plant or these feelings. See that you adjust your patronage accordingly.

If you must have this thing you call hope and feel it is vital to your experience, I have an inventory of what I think you should take along with you to nurture the tree that will nourish you. You may find many more along the way, but here are the ten I have found so far as anchors.

Download Cards of Hope

Download the cards to print at home and make for your own practice. Here below you’ll also find some extra links to poems, articles, or other media to explore for inspiration and deeper inquiry.

1. Lucid, like a still pool of water

"Let there be a serene pool of water in your midst 

  that may grant you the clarity to see the world as it is,

  to wait without hope when you are waiting, 

  and refreshment to swim in the direction of your desire."

2. Passage, like the breath of wind

"Let there be a breath of wind surrounding you 

  that brings you into the poetry of living. 

  With gusts of intensity or gentle breezes of memory, 

  may you feel how everything in the earth turns 

  and so do you."

3. Ephemeral, like the songbird

"Let there be lightness, ephemerality, and pleasure

  as an end in itself, like a call unto its longing. 

  This is a song your heart may sing 

  even into the dark of the night."

4. Restless, like the small shoot in the shadow of a big tree

"Let there be restlessness and tension that 

  twists and grows, thick and slow, 

  towards hints of the light. 

  In your practice of waiting, 

  may you be nourished by tall trees for a long steady life."

5. Collective, like the pebble

"Let there be a public utility to your longing, 

  let what is revealed to you in secret become worthy and 

  filled with meaning through the ways it is worked 

  within the context of your communities."

6. Sacred, like the cheetah

"Let there be fervour in pursuit of your longings, 

  intentional direction and swift movements 

  that comes with practicing your focus. 

  Let this be something sacred, a sacrament."

7. Praxis, like the spider's web

"Let there be craft and discipline in how you 

  weave your dreams into the material plane. 

  Even though you cannot control what lands 

  within this web, let this be a practice that lives in your hands 

  and not just in your mind."

8. Fluidity, like the sand dune

"Let there be constant shift and motion, 

  like the sand dunes in the desert, 

  with requisite fluidity to move with the change, 

  to notice it, to be moved by it, and 

  freedom to change your mind"

9. Nurture, like the moss

"Let there be a tenderness in your heart that you retain 

  for the people of the future like the moss retains water. 

  Let it be soft, habitat forming, and insulating 

  that counts even yourself as an inhabitant."

10. Solitude, like the glacier

"Let there be a solitude that sustains you, 

  steadfast and perennial, to which you may return. 

  May the water you hold contain worlds 

  and stories you can preserve in the

  deep, quiet places."