A NEED FOR HOPE...

In the chaos of this few months, from the high of being She-Hulk at DragonCon to the sudden shifts in the cross stitch industry and feeling like I had nothing positive to say, I did enough soul-searching to understand that hope is really all about finding candles in the darkness rather than sunbeams on a brilliant day. It is very easy to be filled with hope and wonder when everything is going right. When times are difficult or shadowed, we huddle around any source of light to keep the monsters under our beds at bay.

This blog is going to be all about quotes, thoughts, images and other things that create candles for me in the darkness. My favourite author, Madeleine L'Engle, referred to the Earth as a shadowed planet in her book A Wrinkle In Time. She also pointed out, however, that there were places where points of light had been able to pierce the darkness wherever people had done great things to help better humanity.

We need more candles in our darkness... every time we watch or listen to the news, it seems as if the world is falling to pieces all around us. I blame part of this on Media, who has learned all to well that tragedies keep us riveted and thankful that it happened to someone else, but I also blame ourselves as a society. Why don’t we demand more stories about everyday heroes? Why do we let ourselves become numb to the horrors of the world as long as they don’t affect us directly instead of crying out at injustice with a loud voice?

We need to listen to more words of hope. We need to go on despite terrible odds. We need to keep reaching for the stars, dreaming huge dreams and examining every blade of grass in wonder.

It is fitting to open this blog with a quote from Madeleine L’Engle’s book Walking on Water which also appears on my website biography.

'The artist, if he is not to forget how to listen, must retain the vision which includes angels and dragons and unicorns, and all the lovely creatures which our world would put in a box marked Children Only.'