The passage shared at the 08/07 meeting for worship is from Jim Corbett, the middle aged Tuscon Quaker who found himself by happenstance at the birth of the underground railroad movement for Central Americans and who responded by helping to build a network of support:

The first lesson is where everyone starts:
despair that clears the way. …
Despair shouldn’t be cultivated,
just allowed to surface.
Being useless uncovers despair,
and the same empowerment occurs
when the optimist ceases to grasp at the future,
when the mourner ceases to grasp at the past, or
when the bereft ceases to grasp at what might have been.
— Jim Corbett, 1991