December 2006 - A Season of Hope

A Season of Hope

From the Executive Director Anne Howard

It's December, a month for making lists. So I am making a list and checking it...No, No, No! Not that kind of list. Not a list of things to do, things to give, or things to get. My list this month is a list made in the spirit of the season, this season of Advent. My list is a list of hope, things that fill me with hope.

Let me share just a part of my list with you.

I am hopeful because:

I've just seen a Catholic Pope praying in the Blue Mosque, facing East, shoulder-to-shoulder in respectful allegiance with his Muslim partner in faith. And I've just seen Barack Obama and Rick Warren sharing a very public, very Christian commitment to combating AIDS, despite the condemnation of the far right and the cynicism of the left. These are images of reconciliation. These are images of a beatitudes world.

I am hopeful because:

I’ve seen passionate, committed students at chapters of The Beatitudes Society take precious time from their studies to:

- organize for fair wages for hotel workers (Fuller Seminary, Pasadena, CA)

- prepare a Student Voter Guide (GTU, Berkeley, CA)

- stage their second U2charist and raise more money for Bread for the World (EDS, Cambridge, MA)

- plan a campus campaign against human trafficking (Westmont, Santa Barbara, CA)

- share perceptive views on Beatitudes Blog

- start new chapters (Yale Divinity, Howard Divinity, and Union Seminary)

I am hopeful because:

On a rainy night in San Francisco, 100 supporters crowded in the Delancey Street Foundation for our first-ever fundraiser. They gathered to meet The Beatitudes Society for the first time, and to hear from our students.

They heard from Alexander Carpenter, convener of our GTU chapter who served as a Beatitudes Society Fellow last summer at Faith in Public Life in Washington, D.C. Alexander spoke about something he had read a few weeks earlier in the New Yorker. It was the story of Tom Paine, the great pamphleteer of the American Revolution, who’d arrived as a young man in America quite destitute, ill, emaciated. Paine carried in his pocket a letter of introduction from an influential gentleman that he’d met on the street in London: Benjamin Franklin. With that letter in his pocket, Tom Paine was no stranger. Doors opened, people cared for him, and his future held promise. Alexander told the crowd: “Thank you for supporting The Beatitudes Society. You have put letters in our pockets.”

I am hopeful because:

You, with your time and attention, put letters in the pockets of these remarkable emerging leaders. You hold the promise of tomorrow for all of us, and it's beginning today. When you click that Donate button, when you Tell Your Friends about The Beatitudes Society, you put a letter in the pocket of one of these students and you sound a note of hope. Please share this good news. Please spread some hope this season.

Thank you.

I wish you an Advent filled with hope and a Christmastide of joy.

The Rev. Anne Howard

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