Hope's Daughters

“Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.” St. Augustine

This is what happens when you have an unending cold that you can't seem to get rid of and yes, before you ask I have tried all kinds of things to get rid of it, sometimes you just have to settle in for the long haul, such it up, something. The worst part is that this is a whiny cold so there really is no sucking it up, all I do is whine, it's disgusting really, I can hear myself but I can't seem to stop, I probably sound something like my 2 year old, ok, so maybe not quite that bad but you get the idea.

 

I am sure that you are wondering what crying about my cold has to do with the awesome Augustine quote at the beginning of this blog. It has nothing to do with it honestly this is just a large open forum to whine to.

Hope. Anger. Courage. St. Augustine says it beautifully and with complete poetic power, I can almost see anger and courage, their hair a flaming mass, anger is dark as a storm and courage is bright as a flame, they are clothed in flowing clothing and their eyes see in to your soul. I'm weird like that, I always see pictures as I read words.

I am angry. You may have noticed. I mean, who names a blog "screed" something like a diatribe isn't really mellow, it is angry. My posts generally ring of something angry. It is not that I am an angry person per-se except that I am. Content and angry. Content with my life and how beautiful it is and angry at the way things are. 

Lately I have heard some things that have made me good and angry. People being degraded, that angers me. I listened to a story of a young girl stolen from her car and made to be a prostitute, held by shame and fear she will die a slave. I heard a story of someone who was abused by a social group, no one did anything about it, drowning in shame and fear it took her years before she told anyone. but she isn't the only one. I have heard stories of women who are afraid to have any more children, they think that their bodies have betrayed them and that they are weak they are afraid and ashamed. I have heard of women who quietly suffer as the struggle with feeling attached to their baby because of their rough start together, they are full of shame and afraid.  I am outraged. The list could go on. I am outraged because there are people holding other people down, destroying them, putting them under a cloak of fear and shame so thick that they can't even see the hem of light that Courage wears. 

And my courage? I am making things the way they ought to be. One day at a time. One person at a time. It doesn't matter that I am strange or that I feel lonely while I do it. This isn't just one cause or really a cause at all it is life. Courageous life.