Hope

From the poet, Wendell Berry

“I am one who is knocking

at the door.  I am one whose foot

is on the bottom rung.

But I know that Heaven’s

bottom rung is Heaven

though the ladder is standing

on the earth where I work

by day and at night sleep

with my head upon a stone.”

This from the same Wendell Berry who wrote: “Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.”  I like Berry’s attitude, and his mental image of the ladder, which may reach into the heavens, but which, to be of any practical use to us, has to have its bottom rung ”standing on the earth where I work by day and at night sleep with my head upon a stone.”

Though no Pollyanna, Berry exudes hope, even if hope, at times, seems to feel like Jim Carrey’s line in Dumb and Dumber: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.  Yeah!”