VIL nov 09 GRID3.indd - Tubac Villager

Celebrating the Art of Living in Southern Arizona
Hope
by Carol st. John
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So, what is hope Is it a little town in Arkansas
where Clinton was born I went there this summer
and saw the 42nd President’s birthplace. Any one
who needs to believe that America really is a land of
opportunity for all willing to work hard to make it,
should visit Hope. There are few silver spoons in that
town. Seeing the modest birthplace of the Clinton
boys tells you that it doesn’t take a dynasty like the
Bushes or the Rockefellers, the Kennedys or the
Roosevelts to make a President.
However, the only hope I recognized
in Hope was the little family
restaurant called The Melon Patch
where I ate Ann’s Buttermilk Pie.
The restaurant is under the umbrella
of a rainbow organization designed
to employ and reward those who are
challenged in one way or another.
I met Ann Woods after I raved
about her special dish. She came
out of the kitchen with her recipe in
her hands and beamed at our praise.
She was a big woman with her heart
on her sleeve. Our waitress was
also a radiant presence and made a
point of taking both our orders and
satisfaction very seriously. She called
my husband Miss and then giggled
as she corrected herself. I laughed
right along with her. She patted me
in friendship and gave me a wink as
I left. The little visit there turned out
to be as memorable as dinner in the
Lodge in Yosemite, only more so.
What is hope I see it resting on
my canvas every time I begin the
adventure of making art. It is the idea of something
better coming. Something beyond what I thought
possible.
What is hope
I see it resting
on my canvas
every time
I begin the
adventure of
making art.
It is the idea
of something
better coming.
something
beyond what I
thought possible.
way beyond the kind of hope we
have at the front of a marriage. It’s
testimony of a real relationship.
The Bible says, “Hope is the
anchor of the soul.” I once liked
that idea so much I named a book
after it. But, now, I am not sure
I want my soul or anyone else’s
tethered or anchored. I would
rather that hope stretched like a
rainbow over our lives, a nefarious
upside down smile, a light hard
to nail down, even with a camera
-- a spirit light that moves as
the clouds do, as we change our
perspectives, as the sun finds its
way before or after the rain.
Hope shines on the toes of new
school shoes. It rises with the first
shoots in a garden. It sparkles in
the face of first love. It rings in
church bells and resonates in the
voice of a mosque’s muezzin. It
is at the start of each race and it
is the impetus to try again. It is
evident in the activities of a village
readying for a new season. It is in
the hospitals that try to save us from the inevitable.
And, although it is hard to find in the dark, it
survives even the worst of life’s suffering.
It’s only reality rests in the abstract. It’s not tangible
and it is not to be nailed down or it loses its essence.
Hope is placed at altars all over the world. It prevails
in the sacraments of marriage and death. I met a
man in Van Horn, Texas, who stopped to chat as I
was drinking a cup of bad coffee. He told me that
his wife made him breakfast on the first day they
were married and when he responded by saying he
usually didn’t eat breakfast, she never made another.
We have been married 41 years and never once
has she made my breakfast again. And now I want
a good breakfast and I have to make it for myself.
But, he added, if you lined up a thousand women I
would chose her all over again. I thought, this goes
I see it in President Obama receiving the Nobel
Peace Award, in recognizing that attitudes change
the world; that a leader’s hope and intentions can
bring a new energy to those who are oppressed and
losing faith in the future. Peace, like a river, rarely, if
ever, flows, but we all want to believe that it can. We
hope it can.
Yes, hope propels us forward, gives us vision, and a
quest. It has a childlike quality that keeps us going.
Like Little Toot, the tiny train who made it up the
mountain saying, I think I can, I think I can, I think
I can, until he reached his destination and sang, I
thought I could, I thought I could, all the way down
the other side.