Archive for November, 2011

hope in hard times

Still Life, Lizard, Saudi Arabia © Jim Korpi

“Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher death, and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

-Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

Hope lately feels like a weighted mist surrounding me. A breeze of reality blows through and hope recedes.”Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” or “Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper.”
Are hope and faith the same?
The past year of my life has been consumed by this word HOPE. Instead of looking at the troubles of the world I have been instead looking for hope.
Does this mean I have faith? Is hope a non-believer’s version of faith? Is hope also a recognition of having little influence or control over an outcome? Is being hopeful the same as being faithful?
Hope is a trusting in an expectation. Faith is also a trust in someone of something, but leans in the direction of spirituality, something affecting the spirit or soul. Hope up against faith seems watered down.
To say I am hopeful is to expect something to turn out the way I want it to as in “I hope you are well” or “I hope to see you again.”
To have faith is to let go of the expectation but to be convinced by a building of trust in the outcome that is best.

See More Still Lives HERE

starve the beast

Machine Breaks, Work Stops, New Hampshire © Jim Korpi

“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” -Grover Norquist

A friend teaches 600 children art. One teacher, 600 children. Art. Her job will be cut at the end of the school year.
The November elections brought forward a tax levy to continue funding music, art and physical education classes in a well-to-do area outside of Columbus, Ohio. The levy was denied by voters.

“Here’s how the argument runs: to starve the beast, you must not only deny funds to the government; you must make voters hate the government. There’s a danger that working-class families might see government as their friend: because their incomes are low, they don’t pay much in taxes, while they benefit from public spending. So in starving the beast, you must take care not to cut taxes on these ‘lucky duckies.’ (Yes, that’s what The Wall Street Journal called them in a famous editorial.) In fact, if possible, you must raise taxes on working-class Americans in order, as The Journal said, to get their ‘blood boiling with tax rage.'”
—Paul Krugman, “The Tax-Cut Con,” The New York Times, September 14, 2003

dependable

Darius’ Bike, Athens, Ohio © Jim Korpi

“What would your life be like if you had a new car?” Annah asks me after a cold morning thickens the diesel fuel in our vehicle and raises doubts of us moving from where we sit. The car starts hesitantly like an old goat refusing to pasture in a field it’s already been. “You wouldn’t have to worry all the time.”