The Charred Hill Across My Window
A meditation on hope.
On a particularly stifling summer day last August, I lay on my bed, propped up by pillows, staring out the window. I had just returned home from a wisdom tooth surgery and was still foggy from the anasthesia.
The first siren didn’t faze me, even though it sounded ominously close. But when, sirens shrieking and tires screeching, fire engines began whizzing past my front door after what seemed like every couple minutes, I couldn’t hold back my curiosity (or concern) any longer. I trudged over to the bedroom window and found thick clouds of smoke drifting up to a strikingly azure sky.
In a little over an hour, a fast-moving brush fire scorched almost 250 acres in a hilly area right behind my home as dozens of fire engines and planes fought to control it. As the flames spread, we prepared to evacuate if needed. By early evening, however, the fire was fully contained and the evacuation order was lifted.
It was a harsh reminder of how unpredictable life can be.
For months, every time I drove past that hill or watched it from my window, I would feel unsettled. It wasn’t just how starkly anomalous it looked — charred to blackness and topped with a lurid crimson streak from the fire retardant dropped by the planes and helicopters. It was what it represented — a moment when normalcy was suddenly suspended and the threat of imminent danger hung heavy in the air. The chill of gut-churning fear on an ordinary summer day with clear skies and chirping birds. It represented what could happen any day, to any of us — swiftly, without warning.
That charred hill looked a lot like the world is today. A gaping wound painful to see and a daily reminder of our own frailty.
Months passed by, seasons changed and the hill grew green again. Life continued as before but each time I looked at the hill, I couldn’t help but see through its lush facade to its charred past.
As time passed, I grew to think of the blackened hill as a symbol of resistance — a sign that something truly ugly happened but was made whole again. A sign that pain existed, but so did hope.
Yet, today, as the pandemic rages outside, I have immense trouble conjuring up hope.
Everyday I wake up, thinking, I must remain positive, I must think of all that could go right, all that has to go right. But my tired heart says, sure… tell that to those grieving their loved ones, to those fighting for their lives in isolation wards, not knowing if they’ll ever make it out. Tell that to those who have lost jobs and livelihoods. Tell that to those on the front-line, battling an invisible enemy day after day, an enemy that can knock them down any moment.
It seems impossible, doesn’t it? Summoning hope in this time of global heartbreak.
Hope, however, is that earnest, determined fighter that won’t take no for an answer. It’s that dogged friend who won’t leave your side even when you say you need to be alone because they know you’re not feeling your best. It’s that tenacious little weed growing in the middle of a parched concrete sidewalk.
Hope, today, is a high-schooler dropping groceries off for his older neighbors who are scared of going out. Hope, today, is a pizza restaurant delivering free meals for hospital employees. Hope, today, is a firefighter paying for a stranger’s groceries because they cannot afford to do so.
The thing is, hope exists whether we feel it or not.
And many around the world cannot feel a shred of it right now.
The rest of us need to carry on hoping on their behalf too.
We need to hope for a world that is humbler, kinder and aware of its own fragility. A world that recognizes the futility of hatred and strife. A world that understands the beauty of giving. A world that is mindful of its blessings and gentle in its doings. A world that knows the cruelty of pain but also the warmth of benevolence.
I am going to hope, and do what I can to sustain that hope.
Are you?
