How are you doing? That question seems to carry a lot more weight than it used to, no?

Well, honestly, not great. I have to say I’m not feeling very optimistic about our future at this moment in time. I haven’t written anything in a while as I haven’t known what to say. I know I don’t have anything useful to say about current politics or any kind of election postmortem, so, this will not be that. I’ve got no insight here.

I’ve been thinking about our long-term future, family, and friends of late. What is the Venn diagram that connects these three?

Many of us will be gathering in the next week with family and maybe found family. For some that brings joy and comfort, hope and relaxation and relief. For others, not so much. Do you talk about difficult things, or do you stick to trivial? I say, stay awake to the world and try and find space to first listen, then share perspective, feelings, and emotions—hopes and fears. Don’t try and debate, argue, or change a person’s mind. Just share your honest self and let your story do the work. There can be hope in that.

The saying is you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. Maybe, but I’m not so sure we choose our friends as much as we like to think we do. It seems the universe might do this for us. We develop a love and kinship with found family, and maybe are more forgiving of their faults and love them anyway despite that. Found family, it seems can be the place for support and conversation partners for figuring out possibilities for the future.

For Thanksgiving I’ll be gathering with my family, plus this year some of my daughter’s found family. I’m looking forward to seeing my family of course but also the opportunity to experience my daughter’s found family with her.

Found family may weave in and out of your life, but hopefully there’s consistency there and you can provide a foundation of support and accepting of your story to one another. There can be hope in that.

Brian McLaren writes in Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, “We feel this doom because we are awake, at least partially away. The more we wake up, the worse we feel. It’s so tempting to fall back asleep.” I’m sure you’re thinking, “Tim, wtf? Why read this right now? Are you trying to depress yourself?”

It’s about finding hope through wisdom and courage to acknowledge where we are ecologically and how to move forward in the uncertainty of what our world will look like in the coming generations.

Charlene Spretnak writes in her book States of Grace: Recovering Meaning in a Post Modern Age, “Knowing the ecology of where we live and paying ‘attention’ to the bioregion’s way of being, the stronger that grounding becomes in us. From familiarity grows relationship, from which spring creative possibilities for our approach to education, religion, economics, politics, and social structures in communion with the bioregion presences. If we are sufficiently attentive, we arrive ‘home’ with the primal sense of awe and thanksgiving.”

I choose to stay awake. I choose to continue to look for beauty in the world. There can be hope in that. I won’t always succeed but I’m trying.

I wrote this song about a month ago – first I’d written in a while attending the Casa de Musica songwriting workshop conducted by Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka, and Don Richmond. Through this regular workshop I’ve developed an extended found family.

Beauty abounds in the world. Maybe that’s a more hopeful foundation for building a future than a foundation of grievance.

Anyway, here’s the lyrics to that song which will be released on all the streaming services December 1 as part of an EP with the same title. It’s five cover songs (two written by good friends), two that feature Linnea and are songs we recorded a few years ago when we were locked down together in the pandemic, and this new one, which for me, is the center of that Venn diagram.

A Little Hope In Time
© 2024 Tim Goodwin Music

I like the sound of falling leaves
Even when I don’t like what they tell me
The Milky Way across the sky
And how it won’t let me believe my eyes

I like the sound of falling leaves
Even when I don’t like what they tell me
The Milky Way across the sky
And how it won’t let me believe my eyes

I like the fall sky when it clears
And the cool air that dries old tears
The feel of the soft north breeze
And how it lets me feel free

And I find
A little hope in time

I like the daily sounds of us
And what they tell me about love
All those things we do
And how they say I love you

And I find
A little hope in time

I like the sound of sad love songs
Telling us what we knew all along
A laugh a smile and a kiss
And how maybe that’s all there is

And I find
A little hope in time

Here’s a link to the EP release coming December 1: https://too.fm/q1jdm2m