Hope

1. Prayer

Lord, grant me the patience and trust to wait upon Your perfect timing. I may not understand Your plan, but I know it is filled with hope and a future. Help me to rest in the assurance that Your ways are higher than my ways. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen." Lord, you are the Healer.

2.  Meditation 

https://youtu.be/cyMxWXlX9sU?si=-fMoBQAXZI9F5KoD

3. Song

https://youtu.be/AjmMiQCS_W8?si=AKo_PN0NLududLJG

4. Narrative

The Theological Virtue of Hope

Sunday, December 5, 2021

The Theological Virtue of Hope
Sunday, December 5, 2021
Second Sunday of Advent

Mystical hope offers us an experience of trust that God’s presence, love, and mercy is in and all around us, regardless of circumstances or future outcome. Father Richard Rohr writes of such hope through our anticipation of Jesus’ coming during Advent:

“Come, Lord Jesus,” the Advent mantra, means that all of Christian history has to live out of a kind of deliberate emptiness, a kind of chosen non-fulfillment. Perfect fullness is always to come, and we do not need to demand it now. The theological virtue of hope keeps the field of life wide open and especially open to grace and to a future created by God rather than ourselves. This is exactly what it means to be “awake,” as the Gospel urges us! We can also use other a words for Advent: aware, alive, attentive, alert are all appropriate. Advent is, above all else, a call to full consciousness and also a forewarning about the high price of consciousness.

When we demand—or “hope for”—satisfaction from one another, when we demand any completion to history on our terms, when we demand that our anxiety or dissatisfaction be taken away, saying as it were, “Why weren’t you this for me? Why didn’t life do that for me?” we are refusing to say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” We are refusing to hold out for the full picture that is always still being given by God.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann views hope as trust in what God has done and will do, in spite of evidence to the contrary: 

Hope in gospel faith is not just a vague feeling that things will work out, for it is evident that things will not just work out. Rather, hope is the conviction, against a great deal of data, that God is tenacious and persistent in overcoming the deathliness of the world, that God intends joy and peace. Christians find compelling evidence, in the story of Jesus, that Jesus, with great persistence and great vulnerability, everywhere he went, turned the enmity of society toward a new possibility, turned the sadness of the world toward joy, introduced a new regime where the dead are raised, the lost are found, and the displaced are brought home again. [1]

Richard continues: 

“Come, Lord Jesus” is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope. Hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without full closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves. We are able to trust that Christ will come again, just as Christ has come into our past, into our private dilemmas, and into our suffering world. Our Christian past then becomes our Christian prologue, and “Come, Lord Jesus” is not a cry of desperation but an assured shout of cosmic hope.

References:
[1] Walter Brueggemann, A Gospel of Hope, compiled by Richard Floyd (Westminster John Knox Press: 2018), 104–105.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent (Franciscan Media: 2008), 1–3. Photo

Questions to ponder

What is a "hope-robber" in your life?

What is one area of your life where you need to invite more hope right now?

Who in your life needs to feel your hope, and how can you share it? [1, 2]

5. Meditation 

https://youtube.com/shorts/mU8a061GYV8?si=8ZTHL1A-aHQSBQNa

6. Sharing

Questions to ponder

What is a "hope-robber" in your life?

What is one area of your life where you need to invite more hope right now?

Who in your life needs to feel your hope, and how can you share it? [1, 2]

7. Prayer and intentions 

A General Prayer for Hope
"Father, nothing in this life compares to the hope that only you can give, the hope found in Jesus, and for that I am so grateful! Today, I pray for the peace that passes all understanding to surround my heart and my home. Help me make the most of every moment of every day and know that this day is a gift from you". [1]

8.  Song 

https://youtu.be/q-dWxto9-XQ?si=Qn8ETE5VJLicPtjz

Nora ephron memories into fiction

1.  Nora Ephron story fb link

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/

  2. AI on turning memories to fiction

Turning memories into fiction—often termed autofiction or autobiographical fiction—involves using real-life experiences, people, and emotions as raw material to create a narrative that is not strictly bound by factual truth. This approach allows for greater creative freedom, structural improvements, and personal protection, transforming personal history into a compelling story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Here is a guide to writing memories into fiction based on expert advice:

1. Strategies for Shaping Memories

• Start in the Middle of Action: Begin scenes in the middle of an action, reaction, or dialogue to immediately engage the reader and avoid excessive exposition.
• Utilize Sensory Details: Tap into memories by focusing on all five senses—what something smelled, felt, or sounded like—to bring scenes to life.
• Write the Scene "As It Happened" First: Initially write the memory accurately to capture the emotional truth, then go back and "fictionalize" it.
• Change Key Details: To create necessary distance, rename people, change their physical descriptions, adjust locations, or alter the time period.
• Use Visual Prompts: Look through old photographs, heirlooms, or yearbooks to spark memories and uncover small details that can be spun into a larger narrative.

2. Techniques for Fictionalization

• Combine Characters and Events: Combine multiple real-life people into one character to streamline the narrative, or merge several events into a single scene.
• Create a Story Arc: Unlike real life, which can be chaotic, fiction requires a clear narrative arc with conflict, tension, and resolution.
• Embellish the Plot: Use artistic license to change the ending, add dramatic moments, or alter the setting to better serve the story.
• Use Third-Person Perspective: Writing in the third person can provide the emotional distance needed to treat your own life experiences as fictional material.

3. Fictionalizing vs. Memoir

• Privacy and Protection: Fictionalizing allows you to change identifying details about people and places, protecting your privacy and that of others, while avoiding legal issues like defamation.
• Focus on Story Over Truth: While memoirists are obligated to the truth, fiction writers are not. If a real-life detail doesn't work for the story's flow, it can be removed.
• Autofiction: This genre often leaves the lines between reality and fabrication intentionally blurred, focusing on emotional truth rather than factual accuracy.

4. Overcoming Creative Roadblocks

• Write Freely: In early drafts, ignore the need for perfect grammar or structure. Simply get the memories on the page to cut through the "censor".
• "What If?" Scenarios: Ask "what if?" to turn a memory into a new narrative (e.g., "What if this conversation happened at a different location?" or "What if I had said something else?").
• Focus on Emotional Truth: Even if events are changed, the emotional core of the story should feel real to the reader.

By treating life as a source of inspiration rather than a strict blueprint, you can create a work that feels authentic to your experiences while operating as a compelling piece of literature.

3.  Memories into fiction

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7581132437080818940/1008744146129281069 memories into fiction