I know I’m not alone in feeling deeply upset this morning after last night’s election results. I feel a loss of a hope that I had been holding on to, perhaps more tightly than was wise.

I’ve been wondering this morning how to respond to a loss of hope.

Committing to hope means being willing to walk for a while without feeling it. It can’t be kept like a possession. So the first thing I want to do this morning is just let hope go.

It’s time to mourn what’s been lost: a future that’s been worth struggling for, but which has for now been closed off again. And it’s time to be mindful of people and planet who will suffer grievously from our collective failure to love as we should, and as we still can.

I’ll want to seek out the people and places that remind me of the promise of this world, because this is still what want my own life to be about, if I can make it so. That hasn’t changed. These are my family, my friends, wild places under the sky. I want to feel like we’re together in something that matters, and which makes us human.

And then I want to remember that hope is much bigger than one election in one country in one year in one age. The spirit is still rising, and tomorrow I’ll want to be rising with it again.