Hope - Sketch #2

Hope has long been a central virtue of Unitarian Universalism. While at times we have tended, as Unitarian Universalist minister Earl Holt observed, “toward a sometimes unrealistic optimism,” hope is part of our enduring good news. The Universalist minister John Murray said, “Go out into the highways and by-ways of America…. Give the people, blanketed with a decaying and crumbling Calvinism, something of your new vision…. Give them, not Hell, but hope and courage.” If he had been talking about an easy optimism, he would not have linked hope with courage. This linkage is essential because we must contend with the tragedy, suffering, and inhumanity woven through life.

Some people worry about false hope, concerned that what we hope for cannot be realized. Hope, however, is more resilient and durable than that. It is continually tempered, not by the impossible, but as William Sloane Coffin said, “by a passion for the possible.” Vaclav Havel reminds us that hope is “a dimension of the Spirit. It is not outside us but within us.” Do you recall what Emily Dickinson wrote? “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers-- / That perches in the soul-- / And sings the tune without the words-- / And never stops--at all.”

To better appreciate the importance of hope, consider the debilitating effects of hopelessness. When things appear hopeless, despair triumphs as we feel powerless, immobilized by events seemingly beyond our control. Often hopelessness is a consequence of loss, the loss of someone we love through death or the end of a relationship, the loss of a job, the loss of health, even the loss of a dream. It is as if things will never be all right again. At other times, hopelessness overtakes us without any identifiable cause. We experience desolation, a disquiet of the soul, a spiritual dis ease.

In moments like these, hopelessness can color every aspect of our lives and become overwhelming. William F. Lynch offers this good advice: “One of the best safeguards of our hopes...is to be able to mark off areas of hopelessness and to acknowledge them, to face them directly, not with despair but with the creative intent of keeping them from polluting all the areas of possibility.” Still, it is not enough simply to isolate hopelessness; we must also seek to heal our hopelessness.

Healing hopelessness begins with a process of naming. Robert Browning wrote, “Entertaining hope, means recognizing fear.” We might also say, “healing hopelessness, means naming fear.” Naming our fears allows us to confront them in their limited concreteness instead of being paralyzed by them in their unlimited diffuseness. Healing hopelessness thus requires courage. Part of this work is individual. Another part of this work can occur in community. In this, our church is a community of hope, a community of hopers.

Hopelessness is darkness, a kind of Hell. The caring and encouragement of others can help with its healing. Tom Owen Towle writes, “To en courage, literally denotes the act of ‘putting heart’ into a companion. When our days are dreary and crises bedevil us, spiritual kin are there to encourage us, to lift us up and push us forth, reminding us that there is still more affection and comfort for us to experience.”

The novelist Barbara Kingsolver suggests that, “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.” Wishing you hope.