Charlotte loves Wilbur tremendously, but she can't stand it when he turns into a blubbering mess. Charlotte never doubts that she will eventually save her friend from the smokehouse. Wilbur, on the other hand, has several crises of faith. He believes in Charlotte, but he sometimes descends into bouts of hopelessness and despair, punctuated with sobbing and wallowing in manure.
Hope is a great motivator, but, like a pumpkin sprout, it takes a lot of work to keep it alive. Water. Fertilizer. Sun. More water. The one summer I tried to grow pumpkins, I ended up spending $50 on dirt and probably four times that on irrigation. The results of my efforts: two pumpkins the size of large blueberries. Hope is even harder than a pumpkin to nurture.
Like Wilbur, I tend to wallow in manure quite a bit. I have hope. I know I do. I can feel its seed deep inside me. However, I have a hard time keeping it alive. As I just said, I'm a wallower. I have never had a green thumb. My tendency is toward darkness. I'm a mushroom, not a pumpkin.
Tonight, I find myself a little down. Nothing has really happened to cause me to feel this way. My new job is going well. I have Intro to Film to teach at the university for the fall semester. I'm the new Poetry Editor of the university's literary magazine. I should feel pretty good about my life. But I don't. Not tonight, anyway. I feel stuck. I'm tired of struggling. Money. Work. Teaching. Everything.
Hope. That's what I need. That's what the world needs. A vision or chance of something better. World peace. A pay raise. An end to global warming. A full-time job at the university. Universal healthcare in the United States. A publisher for my newest poetry collection. An end to world hunger. Something better.
That's my prayer intention for this week. I'm going to pray for hope, for myself, for you, for this entire messed-up world.
Saint Marty wants to be a pumpkin, not a pile of manure.
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| Sometimes, out of manure, comes something beautiful |
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