Hope: day 30

I feel like I've already had my final say on this topic. I guess the update for the end of the Hope month is that I'm still confident in my conclusion. We got a thing in the mail about donating to Operation Smile this week. Rather than feel guilty for not giving, or irritated that they were bugging us, I actually felt thankful for the Hope that this organization is putting into the world.

On Sunday morning, as we were channel surfing, a show about Third World hunger came on. My husband groaned and changed the channel. While I didn't really feel like watching the show either, I wasn't exasperated by the fact that a charity organization was taking over the airwaves for an hour, trying to make people feel guilty in their beautiful American homes with full refrigerators. I don't like the tactics some charities use to get money, but that doesn't change the Hope they use that money for.


I've been knitting for about five years. My aunt taught me how. She passed away over two years ago. She fought with breast cancer for several years, and when cancer returned the third time, it was in her liver and there was very little to be done. She was a beautiful human being, and so many people knew it that there were 500 at her funeral. Although I didn't have a lot of contact with her beyond the yearly family gatherings, I miss her pretty often.

I had a crazy idea this weekend. I've made 2 felted purses, several scarves, 1 successful baby sweater, and some other random stuff. I love it. I think it would be fun to sell it. We went to two art fairs this summer, and I didn't see any booths with knits. Maybe that means there's no market for them; or maybe it means that whomever fills that spot would sell tons of stuff. Who knows? But this weekend, I started looking stuff up online about selling at art fairs. Obviously, this would be a lot of work, and I'd have to make a ton of stuff to start with. It may be years before I have the inventory to actually do this. But I was just letting my imagination go, and thinking up logos and business names. I would like my aunt's name involved. Also, since I would be doing this more for fun than for major huge prophets, I think it would be very cool to start with the plan of giving a percentage of the prophet to cancer research.

This is years away, if it's going to happen at all. But, surprisingly, it fulfills both of my original definitions of Hope: Hope for the future -- having a plan and following through to make it happen, or just letting the imagination go with brilliant (though sometimes totally unrealistic) plans; and doing something that puts Hope into the world. So, although I haven't actually done anything over the last month, I feel like I've learned a lot and have changed my thinking on one pretty big topic. So, I think the Hope month has been very successful!