Today’s reflection is from the New Room team, reflecting on the theme of the Emerging Hope Project. The project has been asking children and adults to download and decorate a butterfly to be displayed in the courtyard when we open. This reflection shares a poem, thoughts on hope and a prayer.  

EMERGING HOPE

Unstrung by chemotherapy, for weeks
I’ve lain
disassembled on the settee,

see a caterpillar through
the window,
green loops surging along a leaf,
a creature that can re-make
its own biology,
become another shape,
yet still retain the same substance,

essence of self.

Surely, I can become a new
life-form,
take to the blue abyss of sky,
reassembled
from words living within my own skin.

– Isobel Thrilling

The image of the butterfly represents new life and hope. In the life cycle of a butterfly, a caterpillar has to hide away in a chrysalis until it re-emerges in its new and beautiful form. The poem reflects on having to isolate during chemotherapy but all of us have had to shut ourselves away in some form over the last year. It has been challenging and our lives and perhaps the deeper parts of ourselves have changed. What hopes do we have as we plan to emerge? What changes do we anticipate, some we may fear and others we may relish?

In the Christian calendar, it is still the Easter period which is also about new life and new hope. It is an appropriate time to emerge from a dark place to newness. Here at the New Room we are hoping to reopen on 17th May. Please do support us – you can do so by coming to the newly opened site if you live nearby, becoming a friend, or donating to help our work. After a difficult financial year which has given so few opportunities to bring in income to support our work, we are incredibly grateful to those who choose to give. We hope you have been enjoying our online offerings but it will be so good to be able to see so many of you in person again.

Prayer

Risen Jesus we pray for all those who have been undergoing treatment for cancer and life-threatening illnesses. We continue to pray for patients suffering from the Covid virus. We also pray for people waiting for operations, those who are living with pain, any who are afraid for their health. May they be able to hope in the possibility of transformation and recovery.

We pray for all who need the transforming power of your resurrection Jesus. Please help those in most need to believe in the new life, that you showed us is possible. For those who feel that their wheel of fortune has sunk to a low, whether in terms of finance, or health, or relationships, may they look to you Jesus in your resurrection for inspiration and emerging hope. Help each of us to have faith in you risen Jesus as a source of power and hope of new life. Amen.