This is our hope [draft]
(as CO2 ppm surges toward 400)
Bret Hesla 2017

This is our hope
To build new and old ways
That connect us with neighbors
in mutual sharing of food, shelter and time.

This is our hope
To practice the gift of kindness
By humbly reaching out in equality–
Not hierarchy–
to other living and nonliving things.

God does not prefer living over non living things.
Nor should we.
The rocks, the nitrogen, the bookshelf.
All precious creations.

This is our hope
To accept that God is
not all powerful, but all present
not all knowing but all kind,
not all controlling but all inviting
and all with us.
And to learn to be god-like, like that

This is our hope
To build more compost piles
returning carbon to the soil
And in that resurrection
where broken bodies sink into blackness
We fall to pieces with the help of living destroyers
And are then resurrected in the new lives of others

This is our hope
To make music instead of consuming tunes
To tell our stories at night around the table,
instead of guzzling fantasies poured out by insatiable sellers
Who stream discounts during calculated moments of anticipation.

This is our hope
To empower–and entrust the future to–
those younger than ourselves
Who, not knowing what’s been lost,
are not burdened by a longing that sets up like concrete
in a good two-thirds of your brain
and blocks a sizable amount of function
some of which might have been applied to constructing
a joyful and healthy future
from the funny-shaped pieces
Actually at hand.