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- Written by: Kamran Mofid
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The world needs hope; every person, everywhere, needs hope. HOPE gives us life. HOPE connects us. HOPE fuels us. HOPE moves us. HOPE keeps us. HOPE grounds us. HOPE protects us. HOPE anchors us.
…hope gives us the impetus to seek the betterment of our lives and others
Our Path of Hope is about many things. It is about challenging the norm. It is about volunteerism and service. It is about serving our communities, our world, and caring for our planet, our home. It is about finding out more about ourselves than we ever imagined possible. It is about having a dream. It is about a mission and our vocation in life. It is about believing in our journey and stories. It is all about hope.
The Path of Hope by Cicakkia
Hope is Light and the Poets’ Words Turn that Light into a Hopeful Life which Engages the World of Imagination and Healing
From darkness to light, from pain to healing: The transformative power of hope
Many philosophers of love, the sages of wisdom and light have reminded us of one thing, and that is the Power of HOPE, without which there will be no tomorrow and no meaningful and rewarding life.
Photo By khlongwangchao via Adobe Stock
These days, hope very much resonates with me. It has a more profound meaning and relevance. I am hoping for many positive outcomes in my own struggles and daily challenges. Above all, I am hoping for better things for my wife trying so hard to cope with the debilitating consequences of her stroke in August 2023.
I am hoping that, once again, she will be able to do things we used to take for granted. Hope nourishes my soul, warms up my heart, raises my spirit and encourages me to be resilient and indeed, believing that, life is great, every breath we take is priceless and precious.
Photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash
As far back as the 6th century BC, the Greek poet Theognis of Megara said: “Hope is the one good god remaining.” The poet Theo Dorgan reminds us that hope is a profound act of imagination, the most important and the most neglected of the civic virtues. In the face of the present societal and global crises we can lie down in despair, or we can choose hope — which means placing all our faith in each other and in the boundless capacity of the imagination to reinvent circumstance, to establish new truths.
All said and done we must remain hopeful: Spring will come, and flowers will bloom!
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Photo via FLYING FLOWERS
Yearning in Hope
Hope is the torch that shines light on the plague of darkness
‘It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for hope must not depend on feeling good
and there’s the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
of the future, which surely will surprise us,
and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
anymore than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.
Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields, eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it, as you care for no other place, this
knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth.
It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask
for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land
and your work. Be still and listen to the voices that belong
to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields.
Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.
The world is no better than its places. Its places at last
are no better than their people while their people
continue in them. When the people make
dark the light within them, the world darkens.’
Listen to Wendell Berry reading his poem on hope HERE
Our Path of Hope is about many things. It is about challenging the norm. It is about volunteerism and service. It is about serving our communities, our world, and caring for our planet, our home. It is about finding out more about ourselves than we ever imagined possible. It is about having a dream. It is about a mission and our vocation in life. It is about believing in our journey and stories. It is all about hope.
Journey to Healing: Let Me Know What is Essential
GCGI is our journey of hope and the sweet fruit of a labour of love. It is free to access, and it is ad-free too. We spend hundreds of hours, volunteering our labour and time, spreading the word about what is good and what matters most. If you think that's a worthy mission, as we do—one with powerful leverage to make the world a better place—then, please consider offering your moral and spiritual support by joining our circle of friends, spreading the word about the GCGI and forwarding the website to all those who may be interested.
The Joy and the Healing Power of Light
Tree of Light by Kole Trent- Trent Art Gallery
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Poetry is the key which unlocks the gates of hope, healing and wisdom
Writing and Reciting by Heart:
Iranian American Poet, novelist, and editor Kaveh Akbar, now in his mid- 30s, delivers the 2025 Blaney Lecture on 'poetry and spirituality'
Kaveh Akbar, Illustration by Adham Shahin/via In These Times
‘This is how I felt, when I watched the video of Kaveh’s lecture: To my mind, Kaveh walks the path (ancient and current) at crossroads of faiths, cultures, civilisations, and spiritual traditions. His poems, his sensitivity to words and the manner in which he expresses himself comes from heart and lands into your heart. He takes you to a journey of self-discovery, soothing and healing. He brings the best of Persia, the US and other cultures and civilisations, languages, as well as spiritual traditions together, guiding us to a better understanding and appreciation of who we are and what is our purpose in this journey we call life.’- Kamran Mofid
Photo: YouTube
On May 29, 2025, acclaimed Iranian American poet Kaveh Akbar delivered the 2025 Blaney Lecture on ‘Poetry and Spirituality’: "Interesting poetry awakens us, asks us to slow down our metabolization of language, to become aware of its materiality, how it enters into us. Sacred poetry, from antiquity to the present, teaches us to be comfortable sitting in mystery without trying to resolve it, to be skeptical of unqualified certitudes. In discussing poems across the centuries—from “Hymn to Inanna” to Szymborska—Akbar reminds us that language has history, density, complexity. Such poetry, Akbar says, becomes a potent antidote against an empire that would use “the raw overwhelm of meaningless language” to cudgel us into inaction."- More on the lecture and Kaveh Akbar later.
First, I wish to briefly explain how I got to know about this lecture and Kaveh, neither of which I knew anything about before.
Angels in our life...Our Friends
“Friendship dances around the world announcing to all of us that we must wake up to blessedness.”
For the photo credit and much more see: World in Chaos and Despair: The Healing Power of Friendship
For me, one of the main paths to true happiness and joy is to have great friends, to be able to mentor them, to observe them and learn from them, to share stories with them, to be stretched and challenged by them, and above all, through them to reach out towards the ultimate friend, the unconditional one, when and where, healing and the truest life begins.
The world of mystical awareness is awesome indeed, when a human being can become a field of love, compassion, generosity, playfulness and hope. A true friend and a great friendship is the path to this mystical awareness, discovery and journey.
In this journey we call life, I, like any other traveller, have had my share of ups and downs. On the upside, one of my blessed gifts has been to get to know some wonderful friends across the world, all my sources of inspiration and guidance.
One of those wonderful friends is Dr. Michael Britton, a wonderful man, kind and caring, a wise and inspirational teacher. A couple of years ago I forwarded a Blog that I had recently posted on the GCGI website. The Blog was about a book that I had found to be very interesting and timely: One who dreams is called a prophet by Sultan Somjee. I clicked the send button and off it went to Michael.
Not long after Michael wrote back telling me how much he had enjoyed the piece, and indeed, he had already read the book, and that he knows Somjee well. He then initiated an introduction and put me and Somjee in touch.
Somjee and I started to communicate, getting to know each other better. We discovered that we both love poetry. I shared a couple of related Blogs with him, blogs such as:
Reflecting on Life: My Childhood in Iran where the love of poetry was instilled in me
World in Chaos and Despair: The Healing Power of Poetry
We have carried on our conversation and dialogue. We have become good friends, and the other day Somjee drew my attention to Kaveh Akbar and his Blaney Lecture on ‘Poetry and Spirituality’, hence this Blog today.
This is why I want to invite you to watch the video of the lecture and get to know Kaveh. You will not be disappointed. You will be energised, soothed, nurtured and feel comforted, in what I call a beautiful healing journey.
Now let us see and hear Kaveh:
I began to watch it. I could not stop. Then, after a short break, thinking and reflecting on what I had just watched and heard, I went back and turned the video on again. I watched it and it touched my heart. Like Kaveh, I, too, had goosebumps listening to him.
It nourished my soul. It was full of deep wisdom and insight. I very much enjoyed the way Kaveh related these poems to the current global conditions, our lives and our journeys, struggles, ups and downs, pains, and healing. It was simply a pleasure and delight to watch and hear Kaveh: Watch the Video of Kaveh Akbar delivering his lecture on Poetry and Spirituality HERE
What Can Ancient Spiritual Poetry Teach Us about Living? By Kaveh Akbar
Photo credit: Harvard Divinity Bulletin
‘In 1989 I was born in the middle of a snowstorm in Tehran; my first two languages were Farsi and English, in that order. My first full sentence was “Gimmee ob,” ob being the Farsi word for water. I have always been a bit thirsty. I have always been a bit enamored of the materiality of language, trying to snap together parts that don’t exactly click but might, if coaxed just right, like sticking a Mega Blok onto a Lego…’- Continue to read
A Must-read book by Kaveh Akbar to further our understanding of ‘What Can Ancient Spiritual Poetry Teach Us about Living?’
‘Poets have always looked to the skies for inspiration and have written as a way of getting closer to the power and beauty they sense in nature, in each other and in the cosmos. This anthology is a holistic and global survey to a lyric conversation orbiting the divine that has been ongoing for millennia.
Beginning with the earliest attributable author in all of human literature, the twenty-third century BC Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, and taking in a constellation of voices - from King David to Lao Tzu, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Malian Epic of Sundiata - this anthology presents a number of canonical voices like Blake, Dickinson and Tagore, alongside lesser-anthologized diverse voices going up to the present day, that showcase the breathtaking multiplicity of ways humanity has responded to the divine across place and time.
These poets' voices commune between millenia, offering readers a chance to experience for themselves the vast and powerful interconnectedness of these incantations orbiting the most elemental of all subjects - our spirit.’
Buy the book HERE
In conclusion, thank you Michael for putting me in touch with Somjee.
Thank you Somjee for introducing Akbar to me.
Thank you Akbar for your heart touching words and poems.
And thank you, you the readers of my Blogs. I Love you all.
Illustration by Adham Shahin/via In These Times
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- Written by: Kamran Mofid
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Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern
Former Prime Minister, New Zealand
A Timeless Story of a Timeless Message
'In 2017, she became the world’s youngest female leader. Ardern’s inspiring story makes us yearn for an era of courage and hope.'
‘The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern was elected the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand at the age of thirty-seven, becoming the country’s youngest Prime Minister in more than 150 years. Since leaving office, Ardern has established the Field Fellowship on empathetic leadership. She is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University, continues to work on climate action, and is the Patron of the Christchurch Call to Action to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. Ardern also works on a number of projects that support women and girls, but considers her greatest roles to be those she will hold for life, including that of mum and proud New Zealander.’
Empathy is a kind of strength’: Jacinda Ardern on kind leadership, public rage and life in Trump’s America
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