Growing up in Middle Tennessee, I remember huddling under the covers of my bed when one of those powerful summer thunderstorms rolled through the area at night, loud flashes and crackling booms waking me from sleep.

My parents, in their bedroom down the hall, seemingly never stirred, but I was terrified of those storms, sure lightening was going to strike the house, immolating us in our beds.
None ever did, but I breathed a sigh of relief when high summer was replaced by a cooler, drier late summer, followed by the welcome colors of autumn.

For a period during that time, stories terrified me of other horrors: nuclear warfare and the possibility that whole continents would be devastated. I remember the silence of the audience as we left “On the Beach,” a movie about the world as a fictional nuclear war destroyed all life except in the far south, Australia and New Zealand, even as radiation slowly made its way there.
Then the Soviet Union vanished. Some nuclear warheads were dismantled. Was it possible that we had dodged the bullet of nuclear annihilation?

But now I again feel at the mercy of forces I have no control over: forces that kill little children in their beds in the Middle East, exploding drones and bombs, shifting safe places that disappear. Alliances and the possibility of peace talks change from day to day. Those in high government offices attend meetings, but fighting goes on.

The South African leader against apartheid, Desmond Tutu, was quoted as saying he was a prisoner of hope. Well to remember, even as white South Africans today are welcomed as immigrants to this country, and darker skinned intending immigrants are turned away.
What gives us hope in this mixed up fun house we now inhabit?

We always have a choice to hope and continue to work, even if we may not see the end of things in our lifetime. We make choices according to our principles. Things have changed and can change again.