I don’t know about you, but I find myself, like essayist Scott Russell Sanders, hunting for hope. He began his search following a distressing exchange with his son who said, “Your view of things is totally dark. It bums me out. You make me feel the planet’s dying and people are to blame and nothing can be done about it. There’s no room for hope. Maybe you can get by without hope, but I can’t.”
Now Sanders was not without hope, but obviously the breadth and depth of that hope was not evident to his son, and, quite frankly, it apparently wasn’t sufficient for Sanders. He went hunting for hope; he went on a journey “to gather his own reasons for facing the future with hope.” And he wasn’t willing to settle for platitudes or cheap grace. As he said, “No understanding of hope can be honest unless it reckons with the absence of hope, the dark night of the soul when nothing comforts and nothing reassures. . . If hope is a bright, indomitable bird, despair is the dark ocean over which it flies, against which it sings.” Sanders embraces Emily Dickenson’s image of hope as a bird, (i.e, “Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul,/ And sings the tune without the words,/ And never stops at all.”), but he rightly acknowledges the challenge that hope can face, a challenge as foreboding and immense as a dark ocean. The image of hope as a bird hovering over an immense ocean is fitting. The ocean is the abyss of despair or fear or illness or any other of the countless challenges that we encounter in life. The bird could fall into the ocean at any time, but it also has the ability to soar to incredible heights.
Scott Russell Sanders found hope in the wildness of the natural world and in his desire to restore the wilderness. He found hope in families that provide protection, guidance, affection, and companionship. Sanders writes, “In the struggle between a destructive, reckless, shallow culture and these ancient human needs, I place my faith in the family.” He found hope in beauty and community, in faith and fidelity. Sanders writes, “If we are determined to live in hope . . . we join with others who are making a kindred effort, and thus our work will be multiplied a thousand-fold across the country, a million-fold around the earth…. In order to live in hope, we needn’t believe that everything will turn out well. We need only believe that we are on the right path.”
Hope is a possibility that difficulties can be overcome or at least transformed. It is a decision that empowers and energizes us to grow. Hope is a connection that binds us with the hopeful of the world. It is a desire and a discipline to “be the change that we want to see.” Hope is an internal attitude, a state of mind and heart and soul that more is possible in life. It is a response, a strategy that encourages us to meet the challenges that beset us and the world with creativity. Hope is not passive, but active, demanding that we do what is necessary to deal with whatever gives rise to hopelessness.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I am thinking that hope may be an immune response on the part of Life to keep us evolving. It is far too easy to be overwhelmed by despair ("if you're not angry, you're not paying attention"), and yet, while anger can be a motivator for change it is a fast-burn motivator. Hope, on the other hand, can enable us to keep on going even in the face of insurmountable challenges.
I haven't finished reading your whole blog. You know how some things just stop you in your tracks and you say, "Wait a minute!" When I came to your statement that Scott Russell Sanders was not willing to settle for cheap grace, I felt like someone had struck me physically. I know that everyone does not believe as I do, being a Christian. But Christian or not, the death of a man, any man to buy grace for others is definitely not cheap. The hope I have in the Grace I feel Jesus purchased for me on the cross was very costly.
I will finish reading your blog, but in an age where it is definitely not cool to be Christian many people afford other spiritual beliefs more credence (I would say unless you are a Christian you are more likely to afford any religion more credence) where is your tolerance then. This is not a personal attack on you Kirk, it is just an observation I have experienced as a Christian in a postmodern world.
I find hope in nature as well, though I see God there as an example of the emergent nature of the universe—creation being a part of God. But nature changes and unfortunately we are doing things that is hastening changes with terrible consequences.
I also find hope in family, but people fail from time to time so I can not place all my hope there either. The only place I find that bird of hope is safe is resting on the “cheap grace” that was paid for by the death of a man who loved enough that even if I were the only person in need of salvation he still would have poured out his life for me.
I once opined in a sermon that "hope is the clear understanding, the deep knowledge that I am connected to, am part of the interdependent web of all existence, that I am not alone. When I have lost hope, I have lost that sense of connection, at least temporarily, but it is reborn in me whenever I again become mindful of the faithful repetition of the patterns of nature". That still pretty much works for me, because hope for me isn't tied to life/death, cure/illness, happiness/sadness.
Thanks for writing this Kirk. As someone who probably knows too much about the seriousness of our environmental predicament, I'm prone to despair. And of course despair doesn't help one bit. I'm heading out to look for some hope. Happy Earth Day.
While some may see evangelical Christianity as purveyors of cheap grace, others concentrate on the price Jesus paid as indicated by Lura's comment. Two of my three children asked Jesus to be their savior at an evangelical camp. I think the camp tried to force the fear of God in them by bringing up the subject of hell fire. Perhaps this is the kind of cheap grace that we can do without. I too was a purveyor of cheap grace in the early 1970s and today I rely more on Swedenborg's ideas in his book HEAVEN AND HELL for views about the afterlife.
Clearly we all need hope and some expectation that we will find our dreams.
Post a Comment