Hope is the bird that sings in the dark before
dawn: Tagore It’s excruciating to read the newspaper or listen to the news these days. I often find myself breathless with a mixture of astonishment, rage, and grief as our country and our world spin in a vortex of indifference, deception, and outright greed. I’m tempted to itemize the ever-growing list of horrors that are being generated by our leaders, governments, corporations, and ourselves, but the list is not enlightening; we’re all well acquainted with the fear and self-absorption that now characterize our society. It’s easy to flirt with despair in the midst of such overwhelming, humanly-generated and perpetuated suffering. So now is the best possible time to hope. Hope seems elusive even in the best of times, but it is only a virtue when exhibited in the worst. Hope is not a virtue unless all logic indicates that our situation is hopeless. A word on the nature of hope here: our common notions about hope are not those that characterize the genuine virtue. In our egocentric striving, we think of hope as the eventual fulfillment of our desires. We have “hope” that, even though things look terrible right now, in the future they will more nearly resemble what we believe to be the correct order. That’s not hope; it’s wishful thinking. Hope is about the fullness of the present moment, right here, right now, not some imagined future. To hope is to live fully conscious of the knowledge that the outcome of life is certain: we’re all going to die. And then to embrace the moments that are ours now, completely, intentionally, dancing on this razor’s edge called life. Hope, predicated on faith, is knowing that all is well right now, appearances notwithstanding, because we live every moment enfolded in the heart of God. In Hebrews 11:1, Paul articulates the relationship between faith and hope. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen,” and that hope arises from our deep and conscious connection to the Source of all Life, the indwelling God. We live in hope, because we live in God, always, eternally, at every moment of our lives, even when the power of hell seems more evident than the Light of the Spirit. God is always present, always overcoming the darkness, even if we don’t see it. Our difficult task is to stay rooted in hope, in this sure knowledge of God’s enduring, faithful love and presence. In search of hope myself, I’ve been asking friends and strangers to give me their definitions of hope. A few of the responses are: ► Hope is waking up every morning to a day of unknown possibilities. ► Hope is believing that if I just share the love in my heart everyday, the world will be better no matter what happens. ► It’s seeing the oak in the acorn, the flower in the seed. ► Hope is the reliance on one’s faith. All of these reflect what I believe is true of hope; that it is not we who hope, but God hoping in and through us, providing us with “evidence of things unseen.” Just as we are not good, but the God in us is good, and just as the Love we bear each other is the God in us loving, so it is with hope. God’s hope is manifested in us. Our work is to get our egos out of the way and allow the infinite power of God to wash through us and out into the world. This is the challenge of our lives and our common purpose: to connect with the God within and then be a unique conduit through which that goodness and love and hope flow into a thirsting world. If we are to live free from fear and despair, we must nurture the spirit of hope that dwells within us. Like all virtues, hope requires cultivation and our cooperation. What impedes hope? What can we do to edge away from the inertia and paralysis of despair? We humans lead such fragmented lives, largely inattentive to what Parker Palmer calls the “hidden wholeness” in which we share. God dwells in us, silently and hope-full-y, a timeless, patient, waiting presence. How can we access the hope that wants to be expressed through us? I would like to suggest a simple method for nurturing hope, some salve for weary hearts tempted to despair: focus first on Being, then on Doing. We have our priorities reversed. Our tendency in the face of difficulty is either to jump immediately into Doing Something or to edge toward inertia and paralysis, overwhelmed by the enormity of both personal and social trauma. I would like to urge us all to spend a bit more time Being, reflecting on the deep and vast connection between ourselves and God, and ourselves and each other. All stress and suffering spring from the illusion that we are separate from God and from each other. Much good would result from our deliberate and prayerful consideration of inter-dependence and connectivity. The rhythm of Jesus’ own life reflected this need to connect to the Source and be refreshed by the well of the Spirit, and then to move out into the world, anchoring God’s love to the planet in all we do and say and ARE. In her book Hope’s Edge, Frances Moore Lappe describes the cultivation of hope as embracing the dissonance we experience in our own lives and in the world, and then searching our own hearts and souls for the “disconnects” that may, in fact, be part of the problem. Having looked into our own hearts, we then live in hope, which she describes as “conscious risk.” This resonates with my own experience of hope. I have been graced with multiple instances in my own life when the surfacing of hope has had a profound and healing effect on my tendency to be paralyzed by fear or judgment: a deep peace and surety that all was well in the midst of sorrow, the experience of unconditional love and impossible kindness in the midst of suffering, a sudden transformation of anger into compassion, a baffling, illogical knowing in the midst of both personal and political storms that a Power greater that my ability to imagine flows in and through everything that is. Paradoxically, it is when we are most broken that there is the greatest possibility for both the birth of compassion and an inbreaking of joy, and it is at these times that hope is likely to be born. Our capacity for both compassion and self reflection is yet more of the “evidence” of things unseen that Paul refers to; it is one of the many ways in which we share in the life of God. As Lappe suggests, when we act affirmatively to uncover and become conscious of the multiple ways in which we are complicit in the creation of suffering, we have taken the first step toward hope. We feel most hopeless either when we don’t feel a deeply personal connection to a problem or issue, or conversely, when we feel connected, but overwhelmed and isolated from the possibility of an appropriate response. But our reality is interdependence, not separation; understanding and then trying to rectify the multiple ways in which we are part of the problem is an act of hope. Can we confess our own complicity, our lack of love, our dabbling in and use of the same energies that create injustice and suffering? On both micro and macro levels, we persist in our unconscious perpetuation of the very problems we decry, judging others as greedy, but being parsimonious in our personal lives. We label some people as evil, point our fingers at others, judge them as wrong, and fortify our own egos by seeing ourselves as virtuous and right. It is an act of both humility and hope to recognize that the energy of judgment itself is toxic, adding to the atmosphere of blame, anger, condemnation, and intolerance that has become warp and woof of our social fabric. In short, we carry the seeds of war in our own hearts. For years, the peace movement has spoken the language of “disarming our hearts.” Yet we persist in casting stones at others, waging our own wars against perceived “enemies” and evildoers, all in the name of peace and justice. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the problem, Dear Ones, lies not in others, but in ourselves. We will have taken huge strides toward peace and justice in our world when we recognize in our own personal lives and interpersonal dynamics the very attributes of which we complain. And this causes hope to arise in us: There IS something we can do, a threshold response we can affirmatively make to help end the vast suffering in our world; we can humbly acknowledge our own participation in the manufacturing of the energies of war and social dysfunction, and then prayerfully act to change ourselves. A Sufi prayer says it all: “Oh God, change the world by changing me.” And then, as Lappe suggests, we can live in hope, choosing conscious risk. Having prepared the soil of our lives through reflection, whatever action we take will grow from the depths of our Being, from our conscious connection to God. Our responses will be as individual as we are; there is no single “best” or “right” way to live the Gospel. But the world is trans-formed by little and by little; each of us manifesting the Spirit within as only we can. Light-bearers all are we. If that isn’t hopeful, I don’t know what is. To live this way is to live in joy, not despair. Connecting with the infinite spring of goodness, the divine life that resides within us, sometimes buried, often ignored, but present nonetheless, transforms our own lives, and so the world. This is all more easily said than done, but it’s much easier to access hope in this season of spring and Easter, when all creation and our sacred rituals cooperate in demonstrating that the darkness is always overcome by the Light. Simply paying attention, being conscious, yields the high dividend of hope. Full absorption in a single blossom can reveal the loving universe to us and dispel the pessimism and fear that take root when we forget that we are God’s. Buds, translucent light, blossoms with scents to make you swoon, all of this can stir the hope slumbering in our hearts. Dawn, sun, spring, love, always come, always triumph; life is victorious over death again, and again, and again. Hope is the bird who sings in the dark before dawn. Although our world seems very dark at the moment, let’s summon our courage, examine our lives, expand our hearts, loosen our tongues, open our mouths, and sing. Sing. Sharon Browning |