HARBORS OF HOPE

No one has to report we're living in a stormy world. Failing jobs and flailing politicians everywhere. But some of us would like to report there actually are some moorings to hang on to. This is not about the big ones -- like our faith or our family -- more about the little ones that may get overlooked.

Say the same dependable aroma of fresh-brewed coffee every morning...the taffeta kitty who reliably nuzzles your slippered feet...that Golden Retriever who travels down the street in precisely the same route while I'm picking up the morning editions...the lanky young moms who steadfastly stroll their kids to the waiting school bus...later, the same dogged mail carrier who hands me the day's nastiest bills with the world's biggest smiles...the reliable distant drone of jets readying for their flight patterns from nearby O'Hare Field....even that tattered old phone book on the kitchen counter with names who've helped make my life. There's something unfailing here!

This is the point. While we tend to look for big organized answers, perhaps we forget that even without them, there's an almost invisible webbing of small comforts. It wraps itself around our daily life virtually unnoticed. And yet, were it not there to hold the rhythms of our day in place, we'd suddenly know it. It's so damn human to never notice what we have until we don't!

So, yes, I read the papers, write my Congress members, and pray my prayers. But I try also to remember those invisible moorings that never seem let the storm drown them. Those small reliables that usually slip past our radar like smoke, but which afford our little boat snug harbors of hope. Hope that so long as they're are still here, just maybe so will I. And so will my world. In these times, such hope is no small comfort.

Someone once told me, hope is the last mooring you can afford to lose. I'll bet someone very special in your youth told you the same thing...