Nancy Quigley writes: I was talking to a friend last week about hope and the balance and necessity of maintaining a portion of hope in the midst of reality. Finding this balance in a way that is honest might be very difficult when helping a friend face a terminal illness. And it can be challenging in times such as these, when we have lost patience with facing yet another Covid surge and we are so discouraged with our present political divide and the deep division in our country about education and masks and voting rights. Is there still a place for hope? Someone sent this poem to me early in the new year. The author, Rubem Alves , was a Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, writer and psychoanalyst. He was also one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology  and also wrote poetry. This poem is called, "What is Hope?" Hope is the hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress us is not the last word. It is the suspicion that reality