Resistance and Resilience: Hope

Hope, painting by George Frederik Watts, 1886

September 16, 2025

Thank you to all who have contributed and commented on my recent blog series’ ‘”Resistance and Resilience” which has focused on the ways that the creative arts can become instruments of both pushback/reminders as well as invitations to grounding and stillness. Contributions can be found here: https://spirit-reflections.org/blog/.

Today’s offering centers on the above painting by British artist George Frederik Watts in which he presents the image of “Hope” in a rather unhopeful manner. In a letter to a friend about this project, he wrote, Hope sitting on a globe, with bandaged eyes playing on a lyre which has all the strings broken but one out of which poor little tinkle she is trying to get all the music possible, listening with all her might to the little sound: do you like the idea?

While little about the painting suggests our conventional ideas of hope, sitting with this work and allowing it to talk to us, to open itself up to us, casts this image in a different light, like the light that shines on the subject’s face.

What images or feelings does “Hope” evoke in you in these current times? Where can you find hope in this work? How can you share hope in the world?

Hopefully yours,

Rosemary

Hope

I sing this song to you
eternally, universally
but especially now.
Like the waters swirling
around me
you too are caught
in whirling rapids
not knowing what is upstream
or down
swept away into lies anger threats
division
fears and the unknown.
I know.
I struggle against
the same
though I am bandaged
and beaten
and weary.
Yet I hold onto hope
onto this one instrument
that fills the grieving air
with purpose.
Even a single plucked string—
one true note—
breaks the silence
of despair
and so I send it
to you.
Hold on.
We are one.