Taking Up the Torch
People of Light, by Helene McGlauflin
from Read to Me Some Poem: 20 Years of Longfellow Days Poems. Maryli Tiemann and Alice Persons, eds. (c) 2023 MoonPie Press
Now is the time to take up your torch,
walk boldly into the darkness.
You are in the company of stars
babies, skipping children, kind caregivers
old men and women who are still smiling.
Are you willing to join the search, look
for those whose flame, diminished, may need
just a breath to rekindle that stubborn something
clinging to a secret, inscrutable fuel? Hold on
even when your fingers are numb and the darkness
smirks maniacally at the people of light whose torches
cast loving circles all over the globe each and every night.
Bundle up when darkness directs his frosty breath your way
then laugh lightly as you cast aside his cloak of forgetfulness
Don't let him trick you, blind you, fool you, envelop you –
you know who you are
A few weeks ago, when I was feeling a profound sense of foreboding and despair about our polarized, fractious world, a friend sent me a poem – a different poem from the one above – that lightened my heart. I forwarded that poem to my family after a Zoom reunion where similar haunted feelings had permeated the group. Many told me how much the poem touched them. Thus an idea that had been germinating, but slow to take root, began to grow: How about a blog, I asked myself, that is devoted to hope? If nobody reads it but me, I still will benefit from writing the posts. Just the act of writing will help me to stay centered, and that itself can increase a sense of hope in our world.
I do not mean to suggest turning a blind eye to the serious, disturbing, and complicated problems of our world. Political upheaval, diminishing freedoms, increasing mass extinctions, poverty, hunger, climate change – all of those things merit our attention and the hard work necessary to address them. For me, to keep my focus on the necessary work and to keep my heart open to the pain around me, I need to drink from the wellspring of hope on a regular basis, lest my own hope run dry and I have nothing left to offer but an empty cup and begging eyes. That thirst, that basic need, for hope is what inspires me to write here. Perhaps you will occasionally find something here to fill your own cup and to quench your own understandable thirst.
Writing blog postings is a whole new adventure for me, and I harbor some uncertainty about it. Most of my uncertainty has to do with the technological end of things. In fact, I ended up with a Substack blog entirely by accident, such is my staggering, stumbling way of navigating the internet. Maybe five years ago or more, I wanted to subscribe to a particular Substack blog. Because I admired the blogger's work, I wanted to become a paid subscriber. Somehow, in the process of signing up for the blog and providing my credit card number, I unintentionally ended up creating a Substack blog of my own. So here I am. Actually, here I have been for several years, without ever posting anything. In the mysterious ways of the internet, my empty blog even acquired a handful of followers. If that emptiness is what they had longed to find, perhaps I am now gumming up the works for them with actual posts!
But I am not a natural to this way of communicating. Just finding my way through the morass of options to set this blog up (and, I confess I have not quite finished) was daunting. Creating the actual posts represents a challenge, of course, but one I can probably face. A retired pastor, I had to craft entire worship services on a regular basis. Of course, one thing that helped me was a regular weekly deadline, something I now lack and feel reluctant to impose on myself. As a pastor, I found inspiration from that famous E. B. White quotation: “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” Depending on what was happening in the world at large or in the congregation and local community in particular at any given time, I vacillated between those two poles, saving and savoring, in my preaching. That is the work of a preacher: challenge and comfort; comfort and challenge. But this blog is not a preacher's blog. Thus, it will lean heavily on savoring the world, because I experience myself as being too easily drawn into the turbulence of our times. I need rest sometimes. I need to find the positive messages sometimes. I need to nourish my own hurting heart so that I remain strong for the very real and important work that I hope to accomplish.
At some point, I will share the poem that ultimately propelled me down this path. For now, I want to draw your attention back to the beautiful poem that opens this blog. Written by my friend Helene McGlauflin, this poem speaks directly to my intentions for this blog. I am continually needing to find my torch or to breathe softly on its flickering flame. Finding messages of hope is how I do that. By keeping that flame burning, I long to be one of “the people of light whose torches cast loving circles all over the globe each and every night.” Perhaps you do, too.
So welcome. I hope you can find some moments of rest here, too. May you read and be nourished. May your light shine.
Love,
Sylvia