Reasons to Hope

• Many with mystic vision can see a distant, bright light, usually directly above. "Light above, darkness below."
• If selfless, caring, and truthful people exist, selfless, caring, and truthful spirits can likely exist, too.
• Those who have sought to speak to only those who are "kinder and wiser" keep hearing from those who seem "kinder and wiser" that a benevolent, caring, and active God exists.
• Those who do astral traveling (out of body) sometimes speak of how the astral realms cover a spectrum from nasty to more pleasant, from selfish areas to more selfless areas. Some say the Light is above all the astral realms.
• Various small tests of the laws of the universe imply that benevolence is the right way; everyone from Christians to modern Pagans testify that blessing others helps the blesser, and cursing others harms the curser.
• Various testimony in various religious and not-so-religious documents.
• Most of us have a basic, almost instinctive understanding of "good" that contains the idea of that which does to others as it would have done unto it, where the best effects are those that lead to joy and caring.
• The last chapter, "Heaven," in C. S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain. That indescribable flash of longing that is yours alone, and no one else's; so unique that to even speak of it is like picking up fragile crystal with slippery fingers; a secret that is lost when one tries to grasp it, which may possibly found only in a remote time when one comes home at last to a place more wonderful than words can convey.
• The glory of mathematics: from the elegance of number theory to the complexities of multi-dimensional calculations, the vastness of infinities, the minute beauty of infinitesimals, the strange combination of large and small in pi (which is still smaller than 3.15) .... Music: harmonies, melodies, tones, rhythms, the soaring sound of emotion expressed from a small wooden box, even the neat precision of musical notaion. Physics: energy-matter relations, special relativity, quantum probalities and wave packets, chemistry as an offshoot (the periodic table itself is amazingly cool). Every day world of light and color: the green-gold of tree leaves, glowing sunsets, skylines at night, stars shining through an inky sky.... Even writing, when done right, shows something deeper than just mere "words": rhythms and images, flowing syllables, ringing declarations, the softest of whispers, the loudest cries of despair or joy. Yes, and these may all be knitted together: math in physics, math and physics and emotions in music, music and emotions in words, images hidden in words, images wrought of physics and evoking emotion. Parts of a whole?

• And then, finally, the one beacon that shines in the darkness: the kindness of true friends, the rare ones, if you have been blessed enough to know such.