His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: Hope
The first time I heard the word “hope,” it was on my grandmother’s tongue. Held in her lips like a promise, a name. Actually it was not like a name, it was a name. Hope is the given name of a dear friend of my Nana and many Jamaican women born between World Wars. My Nana and Hope, always on the phone. And so when I hear the word hope, my first image is not an abstract better future. My first association is not the pervasive campaign material of Barack Obama. I see a small brown elder woman, soft in the face, a friend. And my Nana, the casual priestess, she for whom Hope is beloved, familiar, available to call on, anytime.