...with the dawn

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness---
Being walkers with the sun and morning.
---Langston Hughes

The easiest person to be is yourself. The most comfortable skin to live in is your own. The easiest nature to seek out is your true nature. Being who we are should not be tough; it should be---well, second nature. 

In Langston Hughes' minimalist masterpiece Walkers with the Dawn, the American 20th-century poet emphasized the embrace of one's true nature. Because Hughes' people are dawn walkers, because they walk with the sun, they do not fear the night, nor dark days, nor clouded times. It is not because those times of darkness, or shadow, or unseeing, are not real---or really daunting.

But dawn walkers have it in their nature to know that light is there---behind the gloom, or after it. The nature of Hughes' people was to seek the sun. This was no extraordinary feat---it was in their nature.

As children of God, our nature is to be people of hope. By walking in hope we do not deny the tough times, or refuse to take a path that leads through them. But our nature is to abide in the hope, not the shadow. It is who we are.

Hold fast to dreams

Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
 life is a broken winged bird 
that cannot fly.
---Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes knew something that maybe the Apostle Paul did not. Forgive me if I overstate; maybe it was that Paul was off making a different point entirely. Paul ended his famous treatise on love with the bold statement "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love" (I Cor. 13:13). The Beatles were known to have crooned 'All you need is love (ba-ba-ba-da-da)'. Maybe they got the idea from Virgil, who said 'Omnia Vincit Amor (Love Conquers All)'.
But Langston Hughes, he was on to something. When your hope runs out, when your dreams die, nothing else seems to count for much. Without hope, love seems empty desire. Without hope, any endeavor seems controlled by some heartless fate.
But hope. Hope gives wing to what may lie in our futures.
Take heart. Hold fast to hope.


...so here we stand, whoever we are,
bathed in the light of a star...