The Present Rearranges The Past. We Never

When Someone Doesn't Show Up, The People Who Wait Sometimes Tell Stories About What Might Have Happened And Come To Half Believe The Desertion, The Abduction, The Accident. Worry Is A Way To Pretend That You Have Knowledge Or Control Over What You Don't--and It Surprises Me, Even In Myself, How Much We Prefer Ugly Scenarios To The Pure Unknown. Perhaps Fantasy Is What You Fill Up Maps With Rather Than Saying That They Too Contain The Unknown.

I'm Grateful That, After An Early Life Of Being Silenced, Sometimes Violently, I Grew Up To Have A Voice, Circumstances That Will Always Bind Me To The Rights Of The Voiceless.

Everywhere People Are At Work To Build A Better World In Which We - And Some Of The Beauty Of This World - Will Be Guaranteed To Survive. Everywhere They Are At War With The Forces Threatening Us And The Planet.

People Rescue Each Other. They Build Shelters And Community Kitchens And Ways To Deal With Lost Children And Eventually Rebuild One Way Or Another.

Hope Is Not A Lottery Ticket You Can Sit On The Sofa And Clutch, Feeling Lucky. It Is An Axe You Break Down Doors With In An Emergency. Hope Should Shove You Out The Door, Because It Will Take Everything You Have To Steer The Future Away From Endless War, From The Annihilation Of The Earth's Treasures And The Grinding Down Of The Poor And Marginal. To Hope Is To Give Yourself To The Future - And That Commitment To The Future Is What Makes The Present Inhabitable.