When hope is gone, the hardest part isn’t sadness — it’s the pressure to pretend. In this reflection, I share what I do when I can’t feel hope, how I pray when I have no words, and why the poetry of the streets might be one of the mysteries of the public square.

At the last community dinner, I sat with a big-hearted man who has lost his wife and children twice — first through separation, and again through the long, heavy involvement of the criminal justice system. His grief isn’t simple. It comes in layers, folded over time. I didn’t come to fix his story. I came…

Hope doesn’t always arrive when we offer it.

I didn’t explain my life. I walked — and told the story as it unfolded.