Hope Is Now Here exists to start dialogue concerning real pain, but also of real healing, in an attempt to serve as a bridge between the two.

HINH is committed to storytelling and making these things known because we believe them:

We were made for beauty and wonder.

We are built for love, to love and be loved, and we understand that even the word love can conjure static and distorted perspectives based on past experiences. Suffering is real, and we have all experienced loss. We live in a sometimes fragile, damaged world, however, we were made to celebrate and sing and dance.

Hospitals are the most complex places because they’re a lot like life. In one room, a life is given, and joy overflows out from it into the halls. In another room, a life is taken, and sorrow seeps out from under the crack of the door. I once heard someone say we live in the hallways. We’ve gone from one room to the other because we’ve all endured that kind of affliction and have been moved by that kind of elation at one point or another. We have all been in the hallways.

We are named and we are known.

We need to know that we are not alone in whatever we are going through. Maybe this is why we push the air up from our lungs to sing songs that remind us of the pain, because the love and ache are universal. We need to feel alive. We need to trust something good, something true, something worth living for.

It’s as if we were made to give ourselves away, and so, we go to concerts and watch movies and attend sports games and throw parties because we are wired for community. My friend Octavio says we were made to be loved and to be known, and this is why the presence of others is extremely vital in the recovery of our worth and value. However, lots of parties are missing somebody when they shouldn’t be, aren’t they?

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”

Those eight words appear in one of my favorite books of all time called The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chboksy. And, though those eight words are a sentence in a conversation between fictional characters, I have never identified more with them than anything that’s real in my life. I meet people all the time who feel this way too. Some of us think we deserve more than we’ve been given, while some of us think we don’t deserve anything at all.

The truth is, we all have a story we are living out. No matter who we are or where we’ve come from, what we’ve been told or what we’ve believed about ourselves, we are parked in the tension of what kind of story we are going to tell with our lives: A story of fear and lies, or a better story; one of truth and beauty.

We were built for blessing.

And, so, this is our hope: That when all seems lost and distorted, when all seems dead and buried, by love and grace, things can be found and made new and alive again. It is our hope that you hold onto this hope, and hold it closely because tomorrow is coming after today, and we need you to be a part of it.

The hope is we can bring things to the table and talk about them without fear or shame, but in an unconditional embrace. All the things that shape us. The hope is to start dialogue, and then an active pursuit of the things that matter to us would ensue, because we take hope seriously. Hope is necessary. Hope is real, and it gets us through to the next chapter in our story. Hope is vital because…

Hope is greater than fear.
Hope is greater than hate.
Hope is greater than suffering.
Hope is greater than poverty.
Hope is greater than anxiety.
Hope is greater than manipulation.
Hope is greater than bitterness
Hope is greater than apathy.
Hope is greater than jealousy.
Hope is greater than isolation.
Hope is greater than addiction.
Hope is greater than despair.
Hope is greater than death.

And when all we see is
hope is nowhere…
hope is nowhere…
hope is nowhere…

…may we see
Hope Is Now Here.

love,
Albert Martinez