If asked to summarize my feelings about the year just ending, I would admit 2025 did not inspire confidence even as our personal lives were less chaotic and pessimistic than most.  However, just hours into this new year I am struck by the number of references I am finding on the theme of hope. Here are three –

This morning, I discovered an upbeat article in a most unusual source, The New York Times, where author Lauren Jackson urges the reader to move from cynicism to hope.  She cites research conducted by the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma which specifies that hope is “one of the strongest indicators of well-being.  It helps improve the immune system and aids in the recovery from illness.”  Chan Hellman, Director of the Center, goes on to say, “while optimism is the belief that the future will be better, hope is the belief that we have the power to make it so.”

Today’s musical earworm is a favorite winter hymn, Come Sing a Song with Me, included in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal with words and music by Carolyn McDade, ©1976.  And, when we join in song, the chorus predicts: 

And I’ll bring you hope when hope is hard to find, and I’ll bring a song of love and rose in the wintertime. 

And to conclude my triad on hope, I will give a nod to fellow bloggers, Bonny, Kat, and Kym who regularly offer poetic inspiration in A Gathering of Poetry every third Thursday of the month.  While I know it is only the first and not the third, it is a Thursday, so I am sharing an original composition by Jane N., age 9.  As we move into 2026, may we skeptical adults take inspiration from the children in our midst.

Hope

Hope winds its way
Through the branches of the bare trees 
Like silk ribbon.
 
It snakes through the villages
 And into the homes of the people. 
It settles into their hearts 
Lighting the way.
 
Hope.

I am enjoying my holiday and starting this new month with a cup of Chocolat Vitale made from Belgium and Swiss chocolate and curled up with my copy of Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver ©2017. 

Happy New Year and may your days be healthy and hopeful.