What inspired it? A case of "blown psychic circuits" basically. I found myself rather "deaf" and was at a loss of what to do about it.

So this is a process poem.

I must train my ear for hope, the tender shoot pushing through the concrete. It is there, amid the despair, pushing through. A delicate voice, underneath the cacophony, the clashing notes, the anger, the hatred... It is there. At the head of the stairs, a Jackal appears. Wepwawet will lead me through the rubble. I am a small child once more, clambering the huge stairs, one step at a time, listening... By Joan Ann Lansberry March 1, 2019

I've been practicing freehand drawing, mostly as an observational process. It is more about my state of being when I am in this process, than the results themselves.

Is it simply a state of observing without judgment? In my fine tuning the psychic radio receiver, I can't avoid the loud voices. Usually, I can't do anything about what has the screamers so upset, except to "say" back, "I hear you." For instance, "Oh angry mother in the Middle East, with the sick child, who finds her local hospital has been blown to bits, (with a bomb 'made in the USA'), I hear you. I hear your sorrow." I could pray to my Gods about it, hope they get word to your God(s), and then word to the people in your area, and the people responsible for the bombing. That's all I can do.

Why are people bombing the hospitals? Ebola will run rampant in Africa, the "Doctors Without Borders" were forced to leave. What is the root of all this destructive anger?

Are things going to simply get a whole lot worse before they get better? How much of the turmoil is climate-change based, adding to it an element human beings have simply never had to deal with before?

And how do we not give up hope?

A couple of paragraphs from the Spring 2019 issue of U.U. World:

"Just because we are honest does not mean we cannot be hopeful Hope, after all, is not just another version of optimism. Optimism tells a preordained narrative. It is an assertion that the scales have already been tipped towards triumph. Optimism is always busy absolving somebody.

"Hope is different. Like faith, hope is the exact opposite of certainty. It does not presume an outcome for good or for ill. It lies in the waiting moment when the tug from both directions is not yet fully resolved and when a great many things are still possible. It moves in the humble spaces that open when we allow ourselves to be uncertain and thus not fully self-contained. It is the possibility, though not the inevitablity, of a better way." (Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, "Nothing We Do Will Be Perfect," UU World, Spring 2019, page 29)

The hope in possibility, that will have to sustain me. I will fine tune for the hopeful voices, not the "certain" voices. Perhaps "certainty" lends itself to volume.

I must be quiet to hear underneath the loud voices.

I am hopeful I can do this.