My thought for this day,
although still early,
is respect for hope.

Respect for our interdependence
and respect for our challenging differences,
important, yet hopefully not as powerful
as our interdependent love for healthy life.

Yesterday
I noticed a brown cardboard box
in the corner of a reception area
for our Infectious Disease Clinic
with a black marker sign above
“Books–Free to Give and Take”

There were only two books to take,
hard to estimate how many might be given.
Both of these current residents of the box,
waiting for their next conversational partners,
were written by a Senator Barack Obama.

One,
a biographical heritage journey
about living between society’s generous giving
and sometimes breathtaking taking
and stomping on differences
within primarily interdependent identities.

The title of the Senator’s other book,
“The Audacity of Hope” grabbed me
in part because,
by the time it was published,
the author was also a candidate
for the US Presidency,
and in part because of the way we are now living
in response to an AntiAudacious Hope Administration
reading from a script
to incarnate the reverse side,
“The Mendacity of Hopelessness”
of despair,
of nihilism,
of fake-piety,
of false nationalistic AntiEarth hubris

Marketed in red, white, and blue gift wrap
as [AntiMatriotic] Patriotism,
with sales remaining somewhat more pathological in Red States
than Blue and Green, maybe Turquoise,
or AquaMarine,
but defined as not-Red
as Red is confined to not
“The Global Audacity of CreativeHope.”

Susan Belden
lyrically asks
How do you love those who hate you?

We see some response in teachings of Jesus;
to turn the other cheek,
to walk a second enslaved by force mile,
to turn rifle associations into farming and gardening tools for good,
although this last one was a remix from Old Testament Prophets.
Tools for respecting interdependence
but also multicultural differences
still in creolizing process.

It is easy to hate Donald Trump,
or to see him as the Emperor without AudaciousClothes
of Grace
for Healthy Faith
as his unfortunate choice and lot in life.
Even easier
to go back and forth between these two,
blaming and shaming.

It is harder to hate those who voted for him.
Although I have an obsessively troubling place in my dissonant heart
and mind
for those who profess to be evangelists for a God of Love and Peace
but also profess their eager willingness to vote yet again
for The Nakedly Sexist and Supremacist Apprentice again.

Like the Body of Christ
continuing to empower the Head Pharisee.

How do you respect those
who build their futures
on disrespecting you
and yours
and your healthy futures?

How do you play Win-Win
with those who persist in the delusion
our only RealTime life option
is Win-Lose or Lose-Lose?

I suspect it is this Lose-Lose non-option
that disrespects our mutual economic
and political
and personal
and vulnerable fears,
our lie-group
proving what Win-Win would invite toward respect.

It is in witnessing what happens
when we take this risk of turning
our appositional faces
that we can invite
mutual respect
for the audacity of Win-Win non-violent healing.

It is when we walk this double-binding extra walk
with those who disrespect integrity and hope
and faith
and multiculturing love,
that we are more likely to discover
our own lack of strength
to remain vulnerable to shared evils
of ego-centrism
and anthro-centrism
lurking within our own hearts and minds

And bad faith harboring mendacity
and apathy about past violent colonization,
where empathy
and creolizing curiosity
and respect
could invite interdependent hope.

My audacity of hope
lies in faith
we always have a political and personal option
that is a Win both for our ego’s economic future
and for our Earth’s ecological future.
That this is true for healthcare giving
and receiving accessible to all Earth’s residents
and constituents,
whether voters or not even enfranchised,
whether we could even bear to hear their votes for respect
and not for disrespect,
or not.

Restoring Win-Win life options always optimizes peace outcomes,
audacious hope outcomes,
mutual respect for our inductive interdependence first,
and our deductive differences secondarily,
and contingently
compromising suboptimal democratic intent
settling for short-term Win-Lose outcomes,
leaving less room for love of complex internal multicultural rights
than hate for external monoculturing chaotic wrongs.

Infectious Disease Clinics
are good places for more Audacious Hope
and democratic multiculturing Love.
But so would any classroom,
so would the Parent rack
of any bookstore–
required reading for any healthcare legislator,
any ecopolitical policy maker,
any person wanting to grow hope
as respect first for our living interdependence,
second for loyal and gratefully shared differences
feeding further curiosity
and deeper empathy
and stretching faith in respect
across extending nature-spirit families
sharing this one global sacred Habitat

Concelebrating many liturgically evolving flags
all blowing in our shared
audacious winds of hope.