A rainy day filled with Hope

Hope

I finally finished Hope early this morning, while listening to the rain fall, and I wondered if sometimes, the rain is God crying. After I took Hope's photos, I left to go work on photos of another kind. My friend's 16 year old daughter was murdered this week. I just got home from a very, very long day putting together photo boards for her funeral tomorrow morning.

So I got to thinking about "HOPE" and what that means. Hope for our country, our families, friends and the future. Hope for freedom from oppression from all sorts of evils. You just never think you will have to hope for your children's freedom from oppression from their own peers. My hope for Hannah is that she is in a better place free now from that kind of oppression, from CHILDREN who would shoot a girl in the stomach for the crime of trying to better her life and disassociate herself from those so impassive and desensitised to violence that taking another life is as simple as point and click. Just like a video game.

I made Hope in honor of Black History Month, and sort of an homage to our country in the hope of no longer seeing things solely in terms of black and white. Now I think she also represents hope for our little girls, to be able to grow up and become women, mothers, grandmothers, friends, confidants, companions. Little girls are necessary. The world would be lost without them. So I hope that gun laws are made stronger, that people raise their children to respect human life, and hope that the concept of judging someone for the way they dress, the language they speak and the color of their skin becomes extinct.